A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

CNCCookbook – CAD market share trends 2017 / 2018

CNCCookbook – CAD market share trends 2017 / 2018
Oleg
Oleg
17 March, 2019 | 2 min for reading

CNCCookbook published 2018 CAD survey results. Check them here. I found a few interesting data points: (1) Significant growth of Autodesk Fusion360 and Solidworks; (2) A relatively flat position of others.

Check the following picture of 15 CAD products representing 82% of the market. The picture is also including a comparison of 2017 and 2018 results.

CNCCookbook represents a very specific, but an interesting niche of the market. So far, ~400 people answered on their survey.  Here is the key summary passage:

The two market leaders, Fusion 360 and SolidWorks continue to grow like crazy, although Fusion 360 has taken over the lead position from SolidWorks for the first time. It’s interesting to look at Autodesk’s combined share for Fusion 360, Inventor, and AutoCAD, because the latter two lost considerable share.  The combined share in 2017 was 35.4% and in 2018 it is 36.9%.  In other words, while Autodesk grew over all, most of the Fusion360 growth looks like folks moving off AutoCAD or Inventor and onto Fusion 360. Solidworks, OTOH, while no longer in the lead, grew by much more overall.  Most of the other players were flat to down.  The two leaders are slowly absorbing the market.

Because of a specific type of customers, some CAD systems aren’t represented (eg. CATIA). Also a dominance of Autodesk Fusion360 can be influenced by a rich set of Fusion360 features in manufacturing.

What is my conclusion? The dominance of Solidworks is not a surprise. This software is a de-facto standard for mechanical engineers. It is very interesting to see growing numbers about Autodesk Fusion360. Because this is a good place to watch disruption. CNCCookbook is representing only a specific niche of the market. But it is a place where disruption can be seen in a much better way in my view. What we can learn that you can change dominant positions by aggressive pricing and much broader feature set. Both the characteristics of Autodesk Fusion360. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud-based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
7 February, 2012

I want to talk about Part Numbers. Yes, Part Numbers, again… My previous blog – Part Numbering and the future...

13 October, 2017

Graph is a very powerful paradigm. For many years, the idea of “graph” or “connection” was empowering software engineers to develop...

24 July, 2014

Cool factor is trending in software these days. The time when software was ugly is probably in the past. Everyone...

4 August, 2009

In one of my previous post I discussed Tagging techniques and technologies. Historically PLM was very taxonomy and built on...

18 December, 2022

Integration was a big deal for manufacturing companies implementing PLM systems for a very long time. It is very rare...

1 December, 2015

This week is busy. Social channels will be overloaded with a massive amount of information coming from Autodesk University. Follow...

28 November, 2016

I’ve been catching up on reading over the weekend. One of the articles caught my attention. Forbes article by Kevin...

8 September, 2011

For the last couple of days, I’m digesting materials from the Dreamforce conference organized by Saleforce.com. I wasn’t able to make it...

13 February, 2025

Have you ever found yourself doing something just because it’s the way you’ve always done it? No real thought, no...

Blogroll

To the top