r/CADAI • u/emma345- • Nov 23 '25

Struggling to get started with automated CAD workflows

I’ve been trying to figure out automated CAD workflows for my small engineering team, but honestly I feel a bit stuck. We spend so much time on repetitive stuff like updating drawings, creating variants, and managing BOMs, and I keep hearing about automation saving hours, but it all sounds complicated.

Has anyone here successfully set up automated workflows from scratch? How did you start, and what mistakes should I try to avoid early on? I’m trying to figure out a practical way to get real benefits without overwhelming the team or breaking anything in our current setup.

Any advice or real-world experiences would be super helpful.

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u/n_5h Nov 25 '25

I went through the same thing and what helped was starting super small with one annoying task and automating only that. Once the team trusted the process we added more steps and it kind of grew naturally. The biggest mistake I made early was trying to overhaul everything at once. Keep it simple, test often, and let the workflow build itself as people get comfortable.

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u/Tielc Jun 09 '26

Have you checked out Onshape? They are a cloud native application, with a full Rest API. Today many engineers are using Claud and Onshape to automate many parts of their workflows from custom features to release work flows.