Affordable 3D CAD a haven for Hobbyists
If the high-end CAD products (CATIA, UG) are the Lexuses of the CAD industry, so we can regard the mid-range CAD - SolidWorks, Inventor, Cocreate etc - as the BMWs and Audis, then the 'affordable' CAD (Alibre, Rhino, TurboCAD etc) are about to become the Toyota Camrys and Honda Civics of the world - used by the 'everyman' who needs to get around in 3D.
There is a documented, growing market in what we can call the 'hobbyist' market - people who don't just want to dream about designing a product in their basement, but now actually want to design and build it. And with sub-$1,000 products available, which have growing sophistication, these hobbyists are increasingly able to do exactly that. These people who used to aspire to eventually buying AutoCAD, maybe after a rare, hefty tax refund, find themselves able to afford 3D design without much thought!
Coupled with this is the rising availability of 'home' milling machines - Tormach, with its sub-$7k CNC machine, is a prime example. So now for less than $10k total, these people can go home, create an idea in 3D and then simply machine it in their garage...pretty cool. Even better, the Tormach systems do not need any additional electrical supply, and can be delivered on a truck with a hand-held forklift for placement.
While I have always been advised not to make predictions, well, here goes...Affordable 3D CAD is perfectly placed to undermine the traditional individual user-base of the mid-range CAD vendors, and this will only continue. The 'low-end' 3D CAD market has seen such an increase in sophisticated tools, functions and abilities, that the trend is already occuring under our noses. The low-end 3D CAD is rapidly catching up to the features and functions in mid-range 3D, and is blessed (most of them anyway) with newer kernels, less legacy development data and not hindered by legacy formats that can stymie new development. Their progress has been very rapid. And this will only continue. Mid-range vendors need to beware.
