Design projects can begin with a blank sheet, go to production start, multiple production change cycles, and then, end-of-life. Throughout this process, the scale at which engineering teams need to work efficiently changes dramatically. Handling this variation in scale can be difficult for many design teams as their tools are not adapted to the task. One CAD tool may be exceptional at managing extraordinary levels of detail, yet be ineffective as an early design tool. Or a design tool may handle individual production modules easily, yet slow to a crawl with a single production line design. 

General-purpose mechanical CAD tools are not able to handle this range of design workflow needs in a single program. CAD vendors usually respond with a suite of tools. As a result, designers find themselves jumping from one tool to another, managing more design assets, and struggling with cross-tool data-exchange. The imposition of multiple tools, along with the corresponding restraints on the design process this creates, hampers design effectiveness and slows the creative engineering process.

This issue of scale is particularly pertinent in machinery production design.  For the machinery production engineer, amore natural alternative  to suites of programs is an integrated design environment.  Such an integrated tool would deliver engineering capabilities specific to machinery production projects -when and how the engineer requires it. An ideal design environment includes a flexible conceptual design environment, a capable detailed design environment, an integrated set of analysis tools, and a high-performance CAD engine for working with extremely complex models. When a single design environment contains these capabilities and handles this level of project scaling, productivity increases.