When it comes to getting a job in industrial design, 3D skills are highly preferred

Jason Morris of Western Washington University compiled a survey of how often various software skills and specific software packages came up in industrial design job listings. This is very interesting, because these are skills that the industry is demanding right now. If you’re looking for a design job in this tough market, this list is a great resource on which skills to acquire or grow. It paints an interesting picture of the 3D CAD landscape as well.

The 2D design tools may still be at the top of the list, but 3D skills are still preferred. All 3D CAD packages combined are mentioned 116 times, while the 2D counterparts are only mentioned 84 times. The dominant requirements for 2D skills are of course fluency in Illustrator and Photoshop. The 3D marketplace is much more fragmented. Illustrator and Photoshop obviously complement the 3D tools.  But honestly, if I was allowed only one design program, it would probably still be Illustrator. Sorry Solidworks!

The competition in the fragmented 3D space in interesting. Solidworks has grown its lead, which Core 77 found interesting seeing as how Solidworks was originally an engineering software. I am not surprised. It is easy to learn, makes highly editable models, and has a rendering engine that gets better and better. Solidworks beats Pro Engineer, its solids modeling rival, by slim but respectable 5 points. The surface modelers are right up there with Alias just under Solidworks. It shows that surface modeling is a great skill to have in addition to solids modeling. Alias nearly doubles Rhino’s score, so it’s clear what you want to start playing around with. AutoCAD and 3DS Max are falling into the background because they are being positioned towards architecture by Autodesk. The competition in the 3D CAD marketplace only benefits us as users; while we may need to learn multiple packages, the innovations will keep coming from the competing companies.