The survey results showed that future CAM software growth potential is predicted as 17% this year and 29% over the next three to five years.
Overall, 56% of CAD users are aware of CAM, 24% currently use it and it ranks seventh out of 15 in importance across all the trends. As expected in CAM, there is significantly higher usage in Manufacturing (34%) than in AEC (9%) or other industries.
Looking at just those that use or plan to use CAM software, 34% of them increased their usage of it over the past year, 48% used it about the same amount as the previous year and 4% saw a decrease. This indicates continuing potential to maintain and upsell current users.
Six in 10 want to see ‘more’ software development effort on CAD/CAM integration. 70% think it is ‘important’ to have machining instructions automatically generated from 3D CAD models.
The most used CAM software products are MasterCAM (20%), NX CAM (14%), InventorCAM (10%), SolidCAM (9%) and CAM for Fusion 360 (8%).
Chris Turner, CEO of Business Advantage Group said: “All this portends well for increased focus on CAM by CAD vendors.”
He added that the trend towards increased usage of 3D printing is a closely related trend to CAM and is likely to be increasing the increasing use of CAM.
