Cloud-Native CAD 2025 Wins: Revenue Growth, Real-Time Collaboration, Unified CAD-CAM

Cloud-native CAD delivered some remarkable results in 2025. Companies switching to online 3D CAD design posted some dramatic outcomes: Revenue growth year-over-year, faster collaboration, complete elimination of IT overhead, and a more integrated workflow between engineering and manufacturing.

The common thread? Desktop limitations disappeared, and teams could finally work the way they wanted to. Here’s what changed for product development:

U.S. Manufacturer Grows Revenue After Going Cloud-Native

After switching from desktop SOLIDWORKS to Onshape, Alternative Engineering Inc., a Michigan-based custom machinery manufacturer, experienced year-over-year revenue growth.

Founder Robert Rodriguez watched as his company transformed from a small operation tackling “ugly jobs” nobody else wanted into a scalable products business. The shift to online 3D modeling eliminated the IT burden, automated repetitive design work, and resulted in the recovery of 10,000 engineering hours annually, valued at $1.25 million.

AE Inc. went from building one-off custom machines to running a products company at scale. Cloud-native CAD with built-in PDM removed the constraints that kept them small.

K2 Sports Solves the Version Control Nightmare

If you’ve ever dealt with file-based CAD, you know the pain: multiple versions scattered across drives, files named "part_JED_final_v2.sldprt" where nobody's quite sure which one is actually final, and endless confusion about who's working on what.

K2 Sports faced exactly these challenges before moving to cloud-native CAD. Now, they're leveraging branching and merging capabilities – concepts borrowed from software development – that let engineers explore new ideas without creating chaos. Because everything lives in the cloud rather than scattered across local drives, teams maintain a clean, authoritative single source of truth.

The real impact? K2 slashed their design-for-manufacturability communication cycles with manufacturing partners from a week down to a single day. That's the kind of time savings that directly impacts your bottom line, and it's only possible when your entire team can access the same platform simultaneously.

What Happens When CAD and CAM Work Together

For many manufacturing teams, workflows often involve multiple steps, for example, design a part in CAD, export it, import to a separate CAM software, then generate toolpaths. If the design changes, start over.

Onshape’s CAM Studio eliminated that disconnect. Released in early 2025, it integrates CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) directly into Onshape.

Here’s what engineering and manufacturing teams gained since:

• CAM strategies version alongside CAD models. CAM jobs live in the same document as your designs, powered by Onshape’s built-in PDM. Teams can version control NC code and setup sheets, then branch and merge manufacturing strategies to test different approaches without disrupting production.
• Cloud compute scales automatically. Toolpath generation and machine simulation run on AWS infrastructure, rather than local hardware. Traditional installed CAM systems often require a long wait when generating toolpaths, but CAM Studio processes complex operations quickly.
• Machine simulation included. Machine simulation comes standard with CAM Studio for all Professional and Enterprise subscribers. Teams can verify toolpaths with complete machine kinematics, detect collisions with fixtures and workholding, and simulate 2.5- to 3-axis operations.
• Unified library updates automatically. Machines, tools, and post-processors live in a centralized library maintained by Onshape. New machines and post-processors become available instantly across all accounts with no software updates to download or no new files to manage.

The integration closes a gap that has existed since CAD and CAM software first appeared. For teams already using Onshape’s online 3D modeling, it means one less system to manage, one less file transfer to worry about, and one less place where updates can break the workflow.

Manufacturing feedback occurs when changes are still inexpensive to implement, not after parts have already gone into production.

The Pattern Behind the Results

AE Inc. grew revenue by eliminating constraints. K2 cut feedback cycles through real-time collaboration. CAM Studio unified workflows that had been split for decades.

The thread connecting these wins? Teams stopped accepting desktop limitations and gained capabilities that weren't possible before, like instant access from anywhere, automatic version control, zero IT overhead, and workflows that actually match how modern product development happens.

Desktop CAD had a good run. But 2025 proved the constraints it creates are no longer worth tolerating.