Mobile apps aren’t ideal for everything engineers do, but the engineering user base is definitely growing, as a host of engineering apps attest to.
Is the desktop computer being slowly phased out as tablets and smartphones move into the space?
Perhaps. But still, don’t look for the desktop to go away any time soon as mobile device features play catch up.
“But we have to get used to the idea the day of the computer is being replaced by that of the iPhone and iPad, which are almost as powerful as computers and in the not-to-distant future will be as powerful,” says, Marc Schulman, president MultiEducator Inc. of New Rochelle, N.Y. “Your mobile device does everything you could possibly need, but fits into your bag.”
That last is key. Mobility. With the help of mobile applications for smartphone and tablet, engineers are discovering new ways to work that don’t have them tied to their desks. Pretty much whatever job you can do on a desktop you can do on a mobile device running the proper app, Schulman says.
In today’s work environment, engineers can’t be tied to their desks. They need tools equivalent to what they have on their desktop but that they can take with them wherever they go, says Ken Hosch, director of innovation, research, and strategy, at Siemens PLM Software. He recently introduced Catchbook from his company, which is built on an industrial drawing engine and allows users to draw and trace with accuracy, Hosch says.
They also need tools that they can take out onto the shop floor to demonstrate to a machinist, for example, how the design looks and works, or to bring to a customer meeting at which an engineer can show off a rendering of what the finished product will look like to spark customer interest.
Most of the big CAD names now have mobile apps. For instance, AutoCAD 360 mobile is for virtual editing and drafting and resides on Autodesk servers (the cloud), so users can access their files from any mobile or desktop device. SolidWorks has eDrawings, with which users can open, zoom, rotate, animate, browse, store, monitor, and manage your product designs from a device.
And while mobile design programs are very popular in the engineering community, other workhorse apps help engineers do their jobs when away from their office or desktop computers.
MultiEducator, for example, has created the Formulator series. Engineering Pro from the series includes formulas for chemical, civil, electrical, environmental, hydrology, and mechanical engineering.
For presentations and client meetings designers can turn to one or the many 3D data visualization apps on the market.
For quick renderings and “napkin-style” ideas and drawings, they might turn to an app like uMake, which lets designers draw two-dimensionally on an axis to render 3D images.
Meanwhile, the desktop computer as CAD creation area isn’t going away just yet, as many companies still make local, as opposed to cloud-based, software that includes many necessary features and can be integrated with needed analysis and product lifecycle applications.
So while engineers are more mobile than ever, their entire working world isn’t yet in their back pocket.
