Globally, many users rely on the intuitive computer-aided design (CAD) software from IronCAD, and it’s innovative design methodologies for maximum design flexibility over traditional CAD software. 

As a pioneering design software, IronCAD accelerates the design-to-production process and provides designers and engineers with a continually expanding range of features, functions, and capabilities that enable them to bring their designs to life.

From concept to final design, IronCAD simplifies the design process to get to the market faster and allows users to take a modern, more flexible, and far more productive approach to 3D design. In addition, this CAD software enables the user to execute changes to designs quickly, solve design problems without delay, and economically deliver designs faster than any other traditional CAD Software available today.

Now, when compared to other traditional design software for CAD, it is important to keep in mind the key benefits that make IronCAD, the 3D modeling software of choice today. 

Flexible History Tree

Make design changes in seconds, without worrying about how the model was made or if you’ll break the history tree. The amount of time and money spent making late design changes is simply crazy, and IronCAD changes that by letting you model with or without history dependency. Making a change to your model is as simple as doing it. Traditional software is history-dependent, this means that almost everything you do is dependent on the things and features that came before it. So if you delete or change one of those features, you can very easily “break” your model, which can take a long time to fix.

IronCAD works differently, you choose when, where, and if you want to have history dependency. This means you can just grab a feature or part and delete it, while the rest of your design remains untouched. With a flexible history tree, you have the option to move features up and down the tree, you still have feature history, it’s just not history-dependent. If (in a very rare case) you want history-dependency, there is the option turn it on.

In addition to this, IronCAD provides a range of direct editing tools that even work for imported data from other systems, meaning you can directly edit faces to make large changes to a model.

“We use about 20 seats of IronCAD. You can design in 3D way faster than normal programs, and it’s so easy that even a 15-year-old boy learns it within 2 days… ” – Johannes Schreiber – Robotunits

Manage Just One File

IronCAD lets you model an entire assembly in one file. This means you’re designing every part in the context of its assembly, sizing and positioning in relative to other parts so that everything fits perfectly the first time.

Design everything in one file, all your components are already in the right place fitting perfectly. There’s no need to mate components unless you’d like them to have movement, in which case just mate the ones with movement and leave the rest. 

Award-Winning Triball

The TriBall is one of the most powerful and useful CAD tools in the world. Move, copy, pattern, and link features, parts, and assemblies all in 3D with a few clicks. Push and pull to make precise changes in seconds, and create an entire assembly in one file. It’s 3D modeling the way it should be. Get to know the award-winning TriBall and see why it’s one of the most loved tools in the mechanical engineering CAD industry.

Stay in 3D Longer

In traditional CAD software, you usually start a model by creating or selecting a plane, then creating a sketch on that plane, and then creating a 3D shape from that sketch (like an extrude, spin, sweep, loft, etc.)

IronCAD lets you stay in 3D longer, giving you a better overall perspective on your design. There’s far less need to go into 2D sketches, which keeps you designing and working in 3D. Even when you to go to a 2D sketch, whenever it is required, you are still in the 3D scene, seeing how the sketch relates to the affected part, the other parts or assemblies.

In IronCAD, you skip these steps. They are still available for you if you want them, but you don’t need them. For example, simply drag and drop a shape into place, it now has a sketch plane and cross-section already drawn for you, you can edit them at any stage, but you skipped the boring (and unnecessary) process of individually creating them.

Innovative or Structured Design - You decide.

IronCAD provides two design paradigms that are shown in these videos. It is more clearly explained in this article IRONCAD's Unique Two Design Paradigms!

No Constraints - Innovative Design

There’s no need to mate/constrain every part — they’re designed together, so they’re already in the right place. When you have a need for constraints or a moving part, simply apply the constraint to that part of the model. IronCAD is conducive to StreamLIned Sketching and Feature based design where there is no need for constraining the sketch. You can see these techniques applied in these IronCAD vs most of the Major and not so major CAD packages lessons in this article.

3D Modeling Techniques Defined

For most design the only parts that need to be constrained are ones that may have specified movement (like a wheel or lever). But for the most part, you can completely skip the mates and constraints, which saves a considerable amount of time compared to traditional methods.

You have complete robust constrain options available in the Innovative Design to use as you need them.

Innovative Design

    
Constraints - Structured Design

You can design like you do in Solidworks and the other major programs when you are creating a family of parts or know there are going to be unique changes. Both paradigm allow you to drive your design by parametrics.

Structured Design

Save Time With 3D Catalog

Using the IronCAD 3D catalog, you can model fast. This means getting ahead of your competitors and getting to market more quickly with tools that skip many of the tedious steps in traditional 3D CAD. IronCAD’s drag and drop catalog system is your 3D palette for useful CAD data. Whether it’s useful parts, features, tools, materials, animations, and more, you can drag and drop them in to save them and out to use them at any time. Get far more return on investment for every minute you spend designing.

Experience the IronCAD CAD Software difference today by trying a free, fully-functional trial of the IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite, including IRONCAD, IRONCAD INOVATE, IRONCAD DRAFT, and IRONCAD COMPOSE, as well as IronCAD’s powerful Design Extensions and catalogs.

Purchasing Options

IronCAD has both Annual Rental and Perpetual Options Available.For more Information, to Sign up for Workshops/Newsletters or Download Your Free Trial