Design Tools For All: The 35-Year Evolution of CAD

Jon Hirschtick is the founder of Onshape, the first professional 3D CAD system to run on a web browser, phone or tablet. He previously founded SolidWorks, was the director of engineering at Computervision, and began his career as an intern at the MIT CADLab. His hobbies include magic, golf, blackjack, 3D printing, tennis and yoga.

Over the last four decades, I’ve watched CAD grow to become a vital part of the way virtually all products are designed and manufactured. In 1981, when I was a student at MIT’s CAD research lab, there were probably only thousands of CAD users in the world. Now there are millions.

It’s understandable why CAD began as a tool for the elite few. Back then, one seat of CAD cost hundreds of thousands of dollars – you ordered the computer, the software, the monitor, the table and even the chair all from the CAD company. It was sold as a “turnkey system.” The notion that you’d buy software and run it on an independent computer was considered wacky.

At the same time, engineers were paid a fraction of what they are paid today. You had one super expensive computer surrounded by a lot of “cheap” engineers. Now, it’s the exact opposite: Each highly-paid engineer can easily be surrounded by many relatively cheap computers – laptops, desktops, tablets, and their phones.

Then two very significant things happened in the 1990s. First, CAD technology evolved from simple “wireframe” and 2D drafting to 3D solid modeling. Equally important, the computing platform migrated from mainframes and proprietary terminals (the CAD companies made the hardware) to UNIX workstations and Windows PCs.

Moving to desktop personal computers was truly transformational: It was the democratization of CAD, making the tool accessible to millions of engineers whose companies previously could not afford the technology. With 3D professional CAD, every company could make design improvements faster and dramatically speed up their production cycle.

Having been personally involved in some of these changes, it’s been gratifying to see 3D solid modeling go from a curiosity in a lab to eclipsing 2D and becoming the way products are routinely designed. But the story isn’t over.

The computing platform is evolving yet again. Cloud, web and mobile technologies are making CAD available on any computer, tablet and phone. Running CAD in a web browser means engineers can work on any Mac or Windows PC or even on inexpensive Chromebooks, lowering the financial barrier for entrepreneurs and startups to turn their ideas into successful products.

With cloud-based CAD, design tools are also finally adapting to the way people really work today. Many products are no longer designed and manufactured under one roof. Design teams are often distributed in offices around the world. For the first time, multiple engineers can simultaneously work on the same CAD model. With mobile CAD fully running on phones and tablets, design teams no longer are chained to their offices; work can happen whenever and wherever inspiration strikes.

Engineers aren’t so “cheap” anymore. Increasing their productivity is vital for a company to survive and thrive. As CAD technology continues to rapidly evolve with the times, I’m thrilled to still have a front row seat.

Visit onshape.com for more information

Company Overview:

Onshape is the first and only full-cloud 3D CAD system that lets everyone on a design team work together using any web browser, phone, or tablet. Onshape was built from scratch for the way today’s engineers, designers and manufacturers really work, giving them secure and simultaneous access to a single master version of their CAD data without the hassles of software licenses or copying files. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Onshape is a new venture-backed company that includes key members of the original SolidWorks team plus elite engineers from the cloud, data security and mobile industries.