The True Cost of Only Designing in 2D

I have seen many companies that seem to be content with 2D-only CAD design capabilities because of their lower cost and relative ease of use. They say things like “we don’t make anything that complicated”, “3D software costs too much”, and “we’d have to learn brand-new software”. Only designing in 2D with that mentality could be holding them back, and moving to a dedicated 3D design ecosystem like SOLIDWORKS could be the best decision they make.

Where Does 2D Design Fail?

There are many areas where 2D design falls short and costs not only time but also money. For example, the time to market with a new product is significantly slower when only designing in 2D. What else could not leveraging 3D design tools be costing them?

Motion, FEA, and CFD Simulation

A big way 3D designs are better is that they help you see how your parts move when put together and check for interferences that you may not otherwise detect in a 2D design. A 3D model also allows you to run advanced simulations to find out if your product will work before you ever even have a prototype.

You can do static strength, fluid flow, thermal, and frequency simulations alongside drop testing, buckling, and fatigue studies with the 3D models. These features greatly reduce the time to market with new designs and the cost of making prototypes that just don’t work exactly right. Your first tangible design has already been tested out in a digital world with 3D software in a way you just can’t do in 2D.

Sheet Metal and Weldment Design

Even if you don’t make something that is supposed to move, such as a simple sheet metal part or a welded frame, the tools that 3D users have are much more powerful and can help you stop wasting time in 2D. With SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we have tools that make sheet metal and weldment production greatly simplified.

If you need a flat pattern for that sheet metal part, you can just click a button and have it flattened out with bend lines automatically inserted. If you take it to a drawing, automatically generated bend notes are added to tell workers the angle and direction of the bends.

A sheet metal drawing generated from the 3D model

In a 2D program, you would have to either design flat patterns yourself, trying to figure out how to accurately draw a part with complex bends by only seeing one direction at a time. With SOLIDWORKS weldments, you can simply draw lines anywhere you would like tubes to be. Then you can select the type of structural members to be inserted and how they are trimmed. The process gets even easier when taking these items to production because the 3D software helps you produce automated cut-lists that include member length and end cut angles.

CAM Capabilities

Let’s say your job is to draw a part and then machine it. If you use 2D software, you may have to figure out how to program the CNC machine on your own or with more expensive software. If you design your models in 3D using SOLIDWORKS, you get the added benefit of being able to leverage built-in CAM software to extend your CNC capabilities. You can also simulate the toolpaths and watch how the item would be machined to check for problems prior to machining the part in real time.

Real-time toolpath simulation

Extended Collaboration

Thanks to the 3DEXPERIENCE and SOLIDWORKS, communicating a product idea or design has never been easier. There are markup and sharing capabilities that make it as easy as a few clicks to share a model with someone so they can view it in 3D and add comments.

Design markups added directly in 3D

These tools can easily share a model for use in your shops’ production, and if they want, they can view the model in 3D and see the parts involved on most tablet or smartphone devices. Seeing a model in 3D and being able to zoom in and rotate around it makes things so much easier than having to interpret 2D views only in drawings.

Looking to Move Past Designing in 2D?

With all the above benefits of 3D modeling, time to market and the cost of developing new products also decrease dramatically. Once you have a 3D model of what you need, you can use various rapid prototyping tools to bring it to life in days, not months. The biggest cost of using only 2D design tools is that we live in a 3D world, and having a 3D model makes it so much easier.

Learn more about switching from 2D design to SOLIDWORKS here.