What are legacy engineering workflows costing your business? In 2026, it’s time to do the maths and throw off the shackles of outdated methods that get in the way of true collaboration, writes Christina Rebel of CAD Rooms
There’s a question we should ask as engineers, but for some reason, we seldom do. How much time does your average CAD user actually spend designing, versus chasing file versions, waiting for supplier feedback or wrestling with legacy systems?
Over the past nine months, I’ve been investigating this issue across the space, automotive and industrial sectors whilst building CAD Rooms.
Honestly, the numbers make for grim reading. They represent a productivity crisis that most engineering organisations have simply accepted as “the way things are”.
What does this look like? It looks like supplier review bottlenecks, where STEP files (and frequent updates to STEP files) need to be sent to third-party suppliers, accompanied by painfully long email threads containing annotated screenshots.
Software developers solved the version control problem 15 years ago with Git and its branching and merging capabilities, yet mechanical engineering is still living in 2010
It looks like version control nightmares, in which files are given names like this: final_v3_REALLY_FINAL_actuallyfinal.SLDPRT.
I’m not even joking. This is how teams with brilliant engineers and sophisticated products manage their most valuable intellectual property. Software developers solved this problem 15 years ago with Git, which introduces version control, branching and merge capabilities, yet mechanical engineering is still living in 2010.
At the other extreme, it looks like the legacy PLM trap, where companies spend €2-€3 million annually on enterprise PLM systems that require six clicks just to check out a file. These systems were architected for a different era, when engineering teams sat in the same building, designs changed monthly rather than daily, and ‘collaboration’ meant occasionally sending a drawing to manufacturing. These PLM systems may excel at compliance and audit trails, but they’re spectacularly poor at enabling the rapid iteration of modern product development demands.
Finally, it looks like living in a state of licence lock-in. Consider the economics: a 25-person engineering firm typically spends €1.25 million per year on CAD licences alone. That’s €50,000 per seat. But most of that capacity sits idle whilst suppliers wait for “view access”. In the meantime, you’ve got engineers who can’t work because a file is checked out, suppliers who can’t provide feedback because they can’t afford a licence, and project managers who can’t review designs because they’re not in the CAD seat pool.
The traditional licensing model assumes scarcity – that software is expensive to distribute and access should be restricted. But we’re now in 2026. Browser technology can now render complex assemblies natively. The technical barriers have fallen; only the business model remains.
More modern methods
At Boston University, the rocket team shows what’s possible when you remove these constraints. They’re developing a liquid-fuelled rocket engine – by no means a simple engineering task. By going digital first with browser-based collaboration, they’ve cut development time significantly while working as a distributed team.
The key to their success? They treat collaboration as a first-class requirement, not an afterthought.
Suppliers can review designs in real-time. Version control is automatic. Approval workflows aren’t gated by expensive licences. The tools get out of the way and let the engineering happen.
There are plenty of practical strategies that teams can implement now if they want to emulate this kind of success without needing to rip out their entire toolchain. They should:
• Separate editing from viewing. Not everyone needs a full CAD licence. Browser-based viewers can handle 95% of review workflows at a fraction of the cost.
• Implement proper version control. If your engineers are manually managing file versions, you’re haemorrhaging productivity. Cloudbased PDM systems with automatic version tracking eliminate this overhead entirely.
• Rethink supplier collaboration. Give external partners the access they need without the friction of heavyweight tools. The delays you eliminate pay for themselves within weeks.
• Audit actual licence utilisation. You’re probably paying for capacity you don’t use, while creating artificial bottlenecks because you don’t have enough licences for review workflows.
The engineering software industry has sold us the idea that more features and higher prices equal better outcomes.
But the real measure of a tool’s value is simple: does it enable your team to iterate faster, collaborate better and deliver products that work? Everything else is just overhead.
About the author:
Christina Rebel is CEO of CAD Rooms and Wikifactory, where she leads the development of cloud-based collaboration solutions for distributed engineering teams.
Her focus is on bringing modern, accessible collaboration tools to engineering teams developing everything from electric vehicles to space tech.
This article first appeared in DEVELOP3D Magazine
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