Crowd-Sourced CAD Software Rating Report Published

G2 Crowd publishes a report ranking machine and product design software titles.

G2 Crowd, a site that applies the crowd-sourced model to business software rating, has just published a report on Product and Machine Design software programs, encompassing major 3D CAD titles.

Overall, the results aren't dramatically different from what industry insiders might suspect. SolidWorks, for example, leads the pack, closely followed by Inventor. These top two spots in the "Leaders" corner remain the same whether measured by G2 score or by user satisfaction.

In an earlier report ranking general purpose design software, AutoCAD claimed the leading spot.

"Leaders," according to G2 Crowd, are those with "substantial scale, market share, and global support and service resources. "

In the consolidated CAD software rating chart involving both building design and product design packages, AutoCAD ranks higher than SolidWorks.  The ranking confirms AutoCAD's market dominance despite the availability of many AutoCAD clones and replacements that are priced significant lower or offered at no cost.

In the Product and Machine Design report, Rhino snuck in as a niche provider, which suggests the prevalence surface modeling in addition to traditional solid modeling in the industry.

Explaining its approach to software rating, G2 Crowd writes, "The Grid represents the democratic voice of real business and IT users, rather than subjective opinion of one analyst."

On its pool of reviewers, G2 Crowd writes, "Any user of business software is welcome to share their experiences with the products they use in a review on G2 Crowd. We verify that reviewers are real business professionals, and no one can review their own product or that of a competitor, eliminating bias. Our software recommendation engine, the Grid, ranks products based on customer satisfaction scores reported in the user reviews as well as publicly available data on vendors. No outside opinions or influence is added to the rankings."

G2 Crowd's Grid also incorporates other factors that are difficult to measure, such as followers on social media, momentum (as represented by web traffic and searches), employee satisfaction and engagement (derived from social media). The company sells its reports online. It also offers software vendors the chance to license its reports.