As 2014 comes to a close and we look upon a fresh, new year, many of us reflect on what’s happened–both good and bad–throughout the year. We’re doing the same here at 3D CAD World. With this thought in mind, we thought we’d take a walk back through the year and share with you all some of the most popular 3D CAD World blog posts of 2014.
Without further ado, here are the top 7 blog posts of 2014 in order of popularity.
1. 7 Career Tips for Engineers. There’s more to being a successful engineer than being good at math and science. Check out this blog post for tips and strategies you can employ to increase your chances of career advancement, some of which might be surprising.
2. 10 Tips for Writing a Better Functional Specification. Every design project starts with the creation of a formal functional specification, which becomes the roadmap by which all design participants must travel to hopefully arrive at a successful product launch. Check out this post for some how-to tips for writing a functional spec that will help guide the efforts of design team members and ensure that the project’s objections are met.
3. Will CAD Subscriptions Shatter Cost Barriers to Entry. Subscription sales models allow users to pay for CAD software on a monthly basis or on an as-they-need-it basis, eliminating the high upfront cost of CAD and enabling companies to move CAD from a capital expense to an operating expense. The goal is to open up high-end 3D CAD tools to users at smaller companies with low-end budgets as well as those in more cyclical businesses, somewhat untapped markets.
4. 10 Reasons CAD Standards are Still Important. The introduction of a new CAD standard can be a disruptive and time-consuming process, but the risk for companies is that the longer they continue with an inefficient system, the more disruptive, time consuming, and ultimately costly it becomes to replace it when they later have more staff and project work attached to it.
5. 10 Holiday Gift Ideas for Engineers. Engineers are a special breed of people, and as such, they need special gifts. Though many of you reading this post probably are engineers, share this list with your loved ones, who let’s face it, don’t get you and your left-brained nature. You love gifts that make you think, that challenge you and put your particular brand of smarts to use.
6. Top Ten Tech Predictions for 2015. As the end of the year quickly approaches, we look ahead to 2015 to see what new technologies are poised to disrupt the status quo for all of us. Every year, IDC issues a report that predicts what technologies will be the most significant. Click through to see which of the tech trends IDC predicts will be most disruptive to the status quo in 2015.
7. Autodesk Acquires Nastran NEI Solver. In May Autodesk announced that it had acquired the Nastran solver from NEi Software. To be clear, this is not the Nastran that was based on the original NASA-sponsored code. NEi Nastran, however, is often benchmarked against the original Nastran as well as ANSYS and Abacus. Though the company has yet to unveil its plans for the software, it is speculated that the company will add the solver’s powerful linear and nonlinear as well as dynamic response capabilities to the other solvers the company has acquired in recent years.
