3D printing enables reduce part weight, raw material and cut total energy used in production. But to take advantage of 3D printing, engineers need updated, intuitive and easy-to-learn CAD tools.

1. 3D Printing & It’s Utilities

2. l
3D printing enables reduce part weight, raw material
and cut total energy used in production. But to take
advantage of 3D printing, engineers need updated,
intuitive and easy­to­learn CAD tools.
l
So in order to keep pace with deveopment in 3D
printing, CAD technology must move into the cloud,
become easier to use and be better able to support
eccentric and not­yet­dreamed­of designs.
l
If CAD technology can evolve everyday objects like
electric toothbrush, blender or even the engine within
your automobile, will take the shape of nothing one
has ever seen before.

4. l
That matter is CAD keeping up with 3D printing.
Most 3D printers take their printing instructions
from 3D CAD files. Since the 3D printer receives its
instructions from CAD files, the printers are limited
in the shapes they print that those CAD systems
generate.
l
The 3D printers can print objects with geometries yet
unimagined. Any shape, no matter how twisting,
undulating or odd, it might be.
l
But CAD software allows for designers to work with
recognized geometries: circles and ovals, squares and
rectangles, and so on.

6. l
Guided by the design file, a 3D printer lays down
layer after layer of a material to print an object in
3D. Some of today’s printers and materials can create
objects that can instantly be utilised, doing away
with the need for another manufacturing step.
l
While CAD continues to evolve, changes to that
software are seen in the way engineers interact with
the software rather than in the designs and shapes
they can create with the software.
l
For example, sketching applications that allow
engineers to draw their designs as they would on
paper, instead of pulling or piecing together existing
geometries. Catchbook, from Siemens PLM, is one
such example.