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How Advanced Computer Aided Design Can Help Your Business

3-D printing isn’t just breaking technology news any more: it’s technology reality for many companies. Adding a 3-D printer to your office can transform the way that you do design. According to the Harvard Business Review, “this technology has moved well beyond prototyping, rapid tooling, trinkets, and toys.” Streamline the way you create your products and develop products that better meet your company’s and consumers’ needs with the innovation of 3-D printing.

See and Improve Upon Your Failures

Developing an object layer by layer or piece by piece allows you to add a new element of visualization into your design process. The design process becomes intimate and iterative again as you can move back and forth between the physical creation of an object and the design of that object. You can add unlimited custom changes until you have an object or a diversity of objects that feel right and work correctly. 3D printing gives you the opportunity to fail and make changes on a small scale and to do so quickly, shortening the design process as you discover how you can make your products better.

Try a Product On For Size

Sometimes it’s helpful to hold something in your hand so that you can get a true understanding of how it will work for your business or your customers. 3D printing is a natural fit for the development of prototypes. The expanding number of materials that can be used in 3D printing opens up new opportunities for those who need to embrace diversity of materials in their prototypes. In addition to plastic, 3D printed materials can include ceramics, metals, and glass. This of course is super useful, as it can help any business who want to see what their design would look like on a certain product. For example, businesses that are interested in shirt printing, might prefer seeing what it would look like before they send it off to be made. If they like the way it looks, then it should come as no surprise that they would be happy to send their t-shirt designs to somewhere similar to this shirt printing Houston company (and it’s all thanks to the technology that we can see what it would look like before sending it to a printing company).

Incorporate Responsive Design

Back many years ago when craftspeople created more customized, individual objects, the process of creation focused on functionality, quality, durability, and customization. Rather than shopping for a pre-made shirt or dress, a mother or other skilled individual would sew it for a particular child. This helped ensure the right fit and style for the specific child that would wear the garment.

3D printing can bring your company back to these days of personalization and customization, with the added efficiency of machine-crafted objects. In today’s world, customers are looking for that personal connection with a company, and 3D printing can provide a level of customization that was previously difficult to achieve during the mass production process.

The affordability of this technology makes it ideal for large and small businesses. In fact, an article at Forbes says that “3D technology is a potential game changer for small business.”This ability to create small batches of more customized objects makes 3D printing ideal for small and medium-sized businesses as well. In an article in Entrepreneur Magazine, Bruce Bradshaw states that “There are a ton of companies, from one- and two-person organizations to sub-100-person organizations, that actually make themselves competitive with the 10,000-pound gorilla in their particular marketplace because of the advantages they get with 3-D printing.”

Technology News Flash: 3D Helps You Save Time and Money

3D printing has the ability to save your business time and money. It accelerates your research and development process by giving you the opportunity to fail, try again, customize, and hold a prototype in your hands.

If you decide to take 3D to the next level and use it for mass production, you’ll really see the time and money savings. 3D printing shifts the manufacturing process substantially, reducing the number of product pieces that need to be put together, since 3D printers can create products with many different pieces that contain different types of materials. This can allow you to develop products that are more intricate and delicate in their design, as they can now print in one piece. While 3D printing might seem like a slower production process, when you don’t need to spend time and money putting the pieces together at the end, you have a much more efficient production process.