Industry Update: CAD and Virtual Prototyping Software

A number of the executives we polled indicated that the CAD market has become a “mature” market, meaning that the number of truly innovative improvements in the technology has leveled off. “For several years, the CAD market had been on a fairly steady and maturing path, with incremental improvements to how CAD tools operated,” according to Joan Hirsch, vice president of product design solutions for Siemens PLM Software. “However,” she added, “over the past few years, there has been somewhat of a revolution taking place. While it may have seemed that the introduction of breakthrough technologies was over for CAD, we believe recent advancements like synchronous technology have opened a new chapter in how products are designed.”