New TechnologyOverkill

Is technology today too much of a good thing? Alex Iskold thinks so in Rethinking 'Crossing The Chasm':

Since today's new technologies are being brought into the market at an unprecedented pace, the early adopters are stretched. They love trying new things and there are so many of them that they can't keep up and adopt as many new applications and services. It might just be the case that a good technology does not make it because the early adopters abandon it to try something new.

This kind of reminds me of the cluttered space in CAD. If new CAD vendors with hot new CAD technology don't make it today, that's because we early adoptors are burned out from trying out too much new stuff.

Comments

[R.Paul Waddington.]

Is technology today too much of a good thing?
Are we early adopters burned out from trying out too much new stuff?

Given my CAD experience predates this, www.ozemail.com.au/~cadwest1/gallery/Digitizer_Puck.html, 1985 file by more than 10 years that may make me a so called 'early adopter' and I wouldn't like to think I am burned out. The difficulty new (an some existing - read 3D) CAD products face is that they have to overcome a hurdle that many consumer products, like IPods etc, don't have to face. CAD products are tools and try as marketers do to make CAD a consumer item - it isn't - and it is unlikely to ever become one.

Why are 3D CAD vendors still having to work so hard to sell 3D to the market place, why do they have to keep telling all who will listen how good it is, how much more their productivity will improve etc. when it has been around for 'as long' as 2D CAD.

The reasons Ipods and toasters are bought are totally different to the reasons CAD is implemented and so the role of early CAD adopters is also different and they can be counter productive. Copious articles giving 3D CAD products high praise, 5 Star ratings and backed by loads of unqualified productivity claims has not helped 3D products 'Cross the Chasm'.

Early adopters played a large role bringing 3D CAD to the notice of the market but I have met few early adopters brave enough to admit that its not for all and that 3D does not have the productivity gains claimed nor as greater gains as did 2D CAD over manual draughting.

eg, Recently I received, from the predominate CAD company :-), a promotional e-mail detailing how the use of their 3D Architectural package would increase a users productivity by 25% over an earlier version of the same package. Reading the 'white paper' revealed the stats but requesting the detail of the trial to verify the stats has been meet with total silence. It matters not what we, early CAD adopters or 'White Paper' writers think of a product it is whether it will make money for those who follow that counts.

Early adopting IPoders bought because they want to "be seen with...": early CAD adopters also want to "try the new...."; but, on the other side of chasm real CAD users want to make money using the products they buy! A thought that would pass through few IPoders' brains when they are making their 'new technology' purchase.

No I don't think technology is too much of a good thing nor that we are burned out; what I see is CAD vendors giving us more of the same in different colours. A new CAD, 2d or 3d, product that is truly new and genuinely makes money, for the purchaser, will be quickly and closely scrutinized by (old and young) early adopters and will "Cross the Chasm" with ease.

It probaly will have a name like...thinking...aah Mechanical Desktop...yea that's a great name ;-)

R.Paul Waddington
cadWest.

[Tony in SV]

If you want to follow the hype, you can definitely get overloaded. As I get older, my hype detector gets more sensitive.

As far as 3-D CAD goes, yes, there is too much cloning and too little interoperability. At work, we switched from AutoCAD to Solidworks, and have no regrets. I don't know if it's faster, but the results are better.

Just one example - when I design a printed circuit board, we get 3-D part models from the connector vendors and mate them onto the PCB holes to verify they will fit before we get the board made (for some reason, it's really easy to mess up connectors). We never would have done that with AutoCAD.

In general, one big advantage AND disadvantage of 2-D is that it is more general, because it's just lines. AutoCAD is jack of all trades (architectural, public works, PCB, machine wiring diagrams, machine design, etc) but master of none (OK, maybe not quite true, but there are better, more specialized programs for most things it can do).

Put it another way, you don't use Solidworks to design buildings, and you don't use Revit to design machines.