Worldwide 2016 CAD trends revealed

24th August 2016
Posted By : Anna Flockett
Worldwide 2016 CAD trends revealed

Further details have been announced from The Business Advantage Group’s Worldwide CAD Trends 2016 Survey, specific to current and predicted BIM use. The survey results are based on responses from CAD users, Designers, Engineers, Professionals including managers and senior executives. 

Chris Turner, CEO of Business Advantage Group commented: “BIM has been in flux over the last year with predicted growth not met. However, 19% of professional CAD users and managers across all industry sectors now use BIM and that is forecast to grow to 29% in the next 3-5 years. BIM current and future usage unsurprisingly will continue to be dominated by the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sector.  In the AEC sector 38% of respondents use BIM now, users predict 34% growth this year to 51% using BIM.”

BIM continues to be a very significant trend in the CAD market, the 7th most important of the 15 studied in this year’s report and one of the leading trends as it has both ‘high importance’ and ‘high usage.’ 

Interestingly there is 5% usage of BIM in the Manufacturing sector and that is expected to increase to 10% in the next three to five years. Overall, BIM users (as well as those planning on using BIM) perceive the main benefits of using BIM to be:

  • Design improvements (62%)
  • Savings on design time (47%)
  • Cost savings (40%)
  • Faster response time to market (35%)

Current BIM usage is highest in large companies (30%) and about the same in medium sized (15%) and small (13%) companies. By Region, current BIM usage is highest in EMEA (22%) and N. America (20%), followed by APAC (11%).

Obviously the use of BIM moves users from 2D drawings to 3D models and we wondered therefore if the importance of 2D drawings is diminishing. The survey asked: “How important to your company are 2D drawings which are automatically (either fully or partially) generated from 3D CAD or BIM models?” 45% of AEC users report that the importance of 2D drawings has not changed, 27% report a net decrease in importance and 23% report a net increase, therefore the main message is that the overall importance of 2D drawings remains the same and is not diminishing as a component of AEC design.

The Worldwide CAD Trends 2016 Survey Report is a high level report and many deeper insights are available from the full data set. If you are interested in more detailed analysis/insights, for example CAD managers’ preferences by region, industry or software vendor, then please feel free to contact us.


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