Use of 3D in industry in general?

[maxwellbests]

Hi all

Currently studying drafting and embarking on learning 3d and Rhino in particular here in Australia. Am trying to get some idea of the extent of industries that use 3d on a regular basis and to what end. One of the things that pops into my mind is architectural visualizations. Which seems to be more of a sales tool, correct me if I am wrong. Does manufacturing use 3d often, for example? Which subsets of industries would tend to use a 3d tool like Rhino (or other tools be they Inventor, etc) here in Australia? (Apologies for the somewhat country centric questions here). Trying to gauge the split between 2d and 3d work going on out there, whether it be 80 percent 2d and 20 per cent 3d, whatever. Thanks for your patience.

[ReMark]

Every day more and more companies are looking to make the move to 3D if they haven't already done so. I know you'll find 3D used in the field of medical devices, boat design, machine tooling, civil, underwater exploration, snowmobiles, footwear, motorcycles, chemical plant design, jewelry design etc., etc., etc. The list is just too long to fully mention here. There will always be a need for 2D output but much of it can be generated from a 3D model.

[shift1313]

If i need anything in 2d, 99% of the time ill draw it in 3d and break it back down. It really depends on what industry you want to go into. I dont think 3d skills will ever be looked down upon.

Software like rhino I think are less mechanical based and more surface based. Programs like Inventor are more mechanical based(production).

With the advancement of pre-production analysis in softwares like Inventor and Solidworks, more and more industries are spending more time in 3d model space and less building prototypes. You can build, analayze and find weaknesses of a design in much less time than in the real world. For instance one thing SW09 can now do is analyze composites including sandwich composites. You can drop test parts, wind tunnel test and so on. These tools let designers take products farther.

[Danny]

IMHO 3d is worth the time to learn, as mentioned in the above replies it is becoming almost a requirement in any work place. We work directly from a model. Any changes (engineer updates, I&C/Mech mark-ups) are all checked out first in the model, for structural or anything that may snowball as a result of our friendly engineers :). So again IMHO 3d will be an industry standard for any large company.