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The Repetition Trap
How repetitive CAD tasks silently drain 40% of engineering productivity, and what it costs your organization.
If you ask someone to name some creative professions, the answer might include artists, composers, or writers; some might even say marketers. One profession that may not make this list is engineers. However, engineers know that their main job is to innovate, apply their minds to real-world problems, and design solutions to address them. All the while working with physical constraints.
Yet if you ask an engineer, they would tell you they could do more if they were not busy working on repetitive tasks, like file exports or data entry[1]. Studies show that up to 40% of their workday is wasted in these tasks. Creating and updating documentation is also up there, taking about 30%-50% of their time[2]. Throw in some meetings, and the day is gone.
Engineering Is Creative Work — So Why Aren’t Engineers Creating?
% of an engineer’s day is lost to repetition
0
Creating and updating documentation takes about 30%-50% of their time. Throw in some meetings, and the day is gone!
Where the Time Actually Goes
- Exporting drawings and DXFs one by one for manufacturing or vendors
- Renaming and organizing files to fit strict folder or naming conventions
- Manually updating properties (materials, revisions, metadata) across multiple CAD files
- Compiling Bills of Materials (BOMs) by copying CAD data into spreadsheets or ERP systems
- Uploading files or entering data into PLM/MRP tools for downstream teams
Individually, these tasks may take only a few minutes, but across projects, they may end up costing hundreds of hours of productivity loss.
Should Engineers Be Doing This Work?
Absolutely not!
Non-design chores like managing part numbers in spreadsheets, hand-building BOMs, entering data into PDM/ERP, and chasing the latest file versions[3], are tedious, error-prone, and demoralizing.
“In this day and age, I can’t believe this is not automated in a CAD system as standard. It’s frustrating because it takes time away from actual design work.”
-Whitegrr
Countless engineers share their frustrations in various communities, pointing out the lack of automation in CAD systems[4]. They all realize that each minute spent on mindless file wrangling is a minute not spent solving problems. This repetition trap undermines the very purpose of hiring skilled engineers, not just wastes time.
Breaking the Repetition Trap
The first step is to recognize the problem.
Repetition in engineering processes is a clear sign that it did not evolve over time.