Closing the CAD Collaboration Gap

Overview

As hardware development becomes increasingly distributed and cross-functional, collaboration has grown more complex — yet the core tool used to build products, computer-aided design (CAD), has not evolved at the same pace.

While vendors were investing in cloud and synchronous CAD, there was no systematic understanding of:

• Where distributed workflows actually break down
• Which collaboration issues are tooling vs process problems
• Why adoption of collaborative CAD remained slow

I led an in-depth interview study to investigate collaboration breakdowns in professional CAD workflows and identify where meaningful intervention is needed.

Goal

Move beyond anecdotal complaints about CAD collaboration and systematically answer:

1. What collaboration challenges do professionals face in distributed CAD workflows?
2. Where do current tools fall short?
3. What workarounds have professionals developed in response to these challenges?

The broader aim was to inform future CAD tooling and collaboration infrastructure.

Process

Research Design

I conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with professional CAD practitioners:

• Interns to senior engineers to CEOs
• Aerospace, automotive, electronics industries
• Teams using both manual file management and enterprise PLM systems

Rather than asking directly about "pain points," I asked participants to walk through a recent real project from start to finish. Participants were prompted to describe frustrating, time-consuming, or risky collaboration moments.

This surfaced coordination failures organically within real workflows.

Analysis Strategy

We conducted three rounds of analysis:

1. Open coding to identify breakdowns in specific workflow activities
2. Challenge identification to isolate root causes
3. Axial synthesis to group related challenges into higher-level systemic themes

I used Miro to conduct the affinity mapping and axial synthesis:

This process resulted in 14 collaboration challenges grouped into four structural domains:

• Collaborative design
• Synchronous communication
• Data management
• Permissioning

Rather than listing isolated usability issues, the outcome was a structured taxonomy of collaboration breakdowns.

Key Findings

The study surfaced recurring systemic patterns across industries and company sizes.

1. Collaboration Runs on Workarounds

Teams rely heavily on:

• Slack/email screenshots (redlining outside the system)
• Manual Excel change logs
• File duplication for branching
• Assembly configurations as informal sandboxes

These workarounds reduce traceability and accumulate technical debt.

2. Dependency Awareness Is Reactive

Designers often:

• Reuse legacy models without understanding linked artifacts
• Modify models without visibility into downstream impact
• Manually refresh files to avoid overwriting teammates

Dependency management is largely manual and error-prone.

3. Version Control Lacks Change Intelligence

PLM systems automate storage but do not:

• Summarize semantic differences between versions
• Surface change impact before release
• Highlight cross-document ripple effects

Designers must manually reconstruct what changed.

4. CAD Is Used for Communication — But Isn't Designed for It

During design reviews:

• Navigating live models is slow and fragile
• Stakeholders without CAD access rely on screenshots
• Model orientation and feature visibility require manual manipulation

CAD functions as a communication tool without communication affordances.

Impact

This project had three major outcomes:

1. Reframed the Problem Space

Shifted the conversation from isolated usability issues to structural coordination failures — particularly dependency visibility and traceability.

2. Informed Subsequent Tool Development

The dependency-awareness findings directly motivated later prototype development focused on visualizing and managing model dependencies.

3. Established a Strategic Roadmap

Clarified which collaboration challenges require:

• Tooling improvements
• Organizational standards
• Management processes

This provided a framework for prioritizing infrastructure investments rather than incremental feature tweaks.

Reflection

This study shifted my lens from "feature gaps" to "coordination visibility." I now look for the social workarounds teams build around tools — because those often reveal the real design opportunity. If teams are going through the trouble of developing temporary solutions, it must signal a persistent pain point. Improving complex systems is rarely about adding capability; it's about reducing hidden friction.

Related Publications

• In the Age of Collaboration, the Computer-Aided Design Ecosystem is Behind: An Interview Study of Distributed CAD Practice — CSCW 2023