Synchronous Computer-Aided Design (CAD): A Mid-level Technology Affordance Perspective

Recently, cloud-based software enabling real-time collaboration has migrated into the realm of physical product design, with computer-aided design (CAD) software platforms such as PTC's Onshape and Autodesk's Fusion 360. Now that CAD is becoming cloud-based and offers synchronous design and collaboration among contributors, little is known from a theoretical and practical viewpoint on the affordances that impact synchronicity as seen through the lens of the development of physical product design. Recent research has begun to use a socio-technical affordance lens to examine innovation and knowledge creation in large-scale collaboration networks. Technology affordances are relational and denote action possibilities offered by a set of technology features to meet the goals of an individual, group, or organization. This conceptual research fills several gaps in our current theoretical understanding of collaborative CAD tools by illustrating a lack of differentiation amongst the features of the tools, and therefore lack of clarity on the complex affordances of these new tools. Secondly, there is a lack of a conceptual framework that links high-level social-technical affordances with the engineering actions undertaken in the CAD platform. Our research develops a conceptual framework for mid-level affordances of cloud-based CAD that links specific engineering challenges within knowledge-based theory on collaborative networks. We illustrate our mid-level affordances with real-world design data.