How Outsourcing CAD Services Can Increase Innovation

With most companies, developing the next big thing is the sole focus. This means a lot of time researching, developing, analyzing, and innovating. When it comes to innovation, there are a few avenues you can go down. A common option today is to outsource the CAD work.

This guide is all about how outsourcing CAD services can increase innovation. Our experts will give you different scenarios and examples explaining how outsourcing CAD can save you money, expedite your project, alleviate some headaches, and drive your innovation.

What Is an Outsourced CAD Service?

An outsourced CAD service is a company that does the CAD work for your project. They are outside contractors that work on a per-project basis for you.

Let’s say you’re facing a huge factory redesign. You might outsource CAD work for a number of different parts of the redesign, and you can contract it to different companies or a single company.

The outsourced CAD service might handle designing and drawing all of your new tools, the structural design, and/or the machinery layout. You can either hire multiple or a single group to handle all of these efforts.

At the same time, your in-house engineering team can handle the proprietary designs that are going into your new factory redesign.
The simple answer is that an outsourced CAD service is a team of qualified engineers that are outside of your organization but work on your project.

How Outsourcing CAD Services Can Increase Innovation

More and more companies are deciding to outsource their CAD work. Even if they have a full team of engineers on-staff, companies realize that outsourcing CAD services can greatly increase innovation. Let’s discuss how this happens.

Saves You Time

First and foremost, an outsourced CAD service will save you time. They’re handling the design work, which means that you don’t have to.

In a lot of our projects, our customer gives us specs about the project then we get to work in the background. This allows your company to concurrently design other parts while the outsourced CAD team works. With more time under your belt, you can look into other ways to innovate your process.

Frees Up Engineering Effort

There are a lot of scenarios where it makes sense for your engineering team to focus on other projects and take on bigger priorities.
For instance, let’s say you’re building a new jet turbine production plant. Your on-staff engineers might focus on sourcing equipment, looking into the logistics, and ensuring the plant follows 5S (from Six Sigma) best practices.

While that’s happening, an outsourced CAD team of engineers can start laying out your equipment, designing the conveyance system, and optimizing the design of your machines.

On a smaller scale, imagine you’re placing a new machine in your operation. An outsourced CAD service can design the bracketry and interfacing parts while your team handles arranging the delivery and changing the layout of the room. Now that your engineers can shift their focus, they can move on to a new R&D project or find further innovation in the current one.

Rely on Industry Experts

There’s something to be said about experience. In engineering, there’s a rift of knowledge between a beginner and an industry expert. With something as versatile as 3D modeling and designing, expertise becomes even more important.

A high-quality outsourced CAD team will have experience in all different industries, applications, and project types. As a result, they might have resident experts in different industries.

It also means that the team likely has a rich history of engineering and design work. This means that solutions come quicker, and design confidence is higher. After all, someone who has designed a clutch in the past is better equipped to design a clutch for your project.

In addition, these outsourced CAD teams have seen a lot of projects in the past. There’s a good chance that they’ve worked on something similar to your project and they already know what will work for you. By leveraging previous experience, you’ll get the most innovation out of every project.

Only Pay for Engineers You Need

Another benefit of CAD services is that the team only works on your project when you need engineering help. After the job is done, it’s fine to end your contract and move forward without a team of designers.

If you compare this to on-staff engineers, it’s not as clean. You’ll either have to fire your engineers after the project, reassign them to another project that they might not be a good fit for, or pay them while they don’t work on anything. Any of these three scenarios lead to wasted time, wasted money, and damaged morale.

Instead, you can bring in an outsourcing CAD service team. The outsource manager will assign as many engineers as you’d like, and you never have to pay for engineers that you aren’t using. When the job is done, you don’t have to make a tough decision of reassigning or firing your staff — the outsource team will just assign them to a new project with a different company.

With this direct access to engineering, you can really focus your innovation efforts. You can assign a lot of engineers to the project during the height of design and prototyping, and wean off as you get towards production milestones. All the while, you have plenty of designers and engineers that can help improve your product and get you the best results.

Get High-Quality Digital Twins

A digital twin is a 3D CAD version of your product, facility, or parts. It’s drawn in a 1:1 scale and has a ton of versatility. Most outsourcing CAD services can deliver digital twins which can help your company in a number of different ways.

A good team will create high-quality digital twins that can boost your innovation, expedite your new designs, and optimize your newest projects. All the while, your team can work on other parts of the project.

Conclusion

Bringing in an outsourced CAD service is a great way to increase the innovation of your whole team. Doing so can save you time, free up your engineers, optimize results thanks to previous experience, save money, and leave you with high-quality digital twins.

For great results, consider bringing in CAD/CAM Services. We are a full-service drafting outfit, and are one of the oldest and most experienced CAD companies in the US.