CADKEY or Catia?
Boeing’s Billion-Dollar 3D CAD Mistake!

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By Joe Brouwer - Boeing trained Design Draftsman and 3D CAD/CAM Dealer

'All problems start with a solution process, that leads to a better process, that leads to a better process and on and on, with each advancement providing a more productive solution. Unless something gets in the way that stops the advancement of this process by putting in a much less productive process based on politics or vested interest. This is a story of how politics and vested interest made a decision that caused Boeing to make a Billion-dollar 3D CAD mistake.'

Update 5-23-18

Boeing's move to MBE, using PMI as the engineering deliverable has put them on a path they may not be able to recover. This idiotic solution is still looking for the problem that caused it. But what is worse, is Boeing has given this costly process, legitimacy in many industries!

Update 9-13-17

As I ponder on this article I realize that this decision by Boeing alone delayed the industry at least 12 years from effectively moving 3D CAD to the PC. This caused an untold amount of incompatibility in the 3D CAD industry. This set the path for the dated and complex Pro/e (Creo) design system to become the de facto system, creating more incompatibility. Sadly, this system was adopted by the PLM gurus, who thought they could digitalize a system based on engineering documents causing a huge data management mess.

Boeing 747 Flight Deck 1986

I already had 4 years of 3D CAD experience on Computervision CADDS 4 when I took a contract at Boeing Everett 747 flight deck in 1986. It was a drafting job on the board, which bummed me out, but the Seattle area was my home and it was great to get back. I just had a new son and missed the family.

The 1980's - 3D CAD - The Beginning

The group had 3 seats of Catia 2. They mostly provided loft lines for the board draftsman to use for reference. I don’t think the Catia users did any design. Like Computervision CADDS 4, Catia 2 was a 3D wireframe system. The Catia 2 operators were prima donna draftsman. They ran these systems, easily costing well over a $100,000 each, 8 hours a day. Cost effective??

On my other contracts we were actually designing on Computervision CADDS 4. Most companies had at least two shifts and a few had 3 to make these systems cost effective. These systems weren’t cheap. You had to buy a minimum of 3 seats for $750,000. It came with a mainframe computer in a tempature controled room, three terminals, a Versatec plotter, 250 meg removable hard drive, backup tape system and a control counsel. As I think of this, only those with government contracts had more than 3 seats.

Most of the companies moved all of their draftsman to CADDS 4. 3D CAD was in the realm of the draftsman in those days because 3D CAD engineering deliverable was still the blueprint. These were not drawings. We designed in 3D and created our engineering documentation from placing instances of the model in different views and detailing them and adding other annotation to the industry drawing standards.This was Computervision's claim to fame: CADDS (Computervision Automated Design and Drafting System).Most 3D CAD users are familiar with this process today. The days of the drawing were gone. In truth, this was also Pro/e sales point when released, 'Faster Drawings'. The effective use of the 3D models as a pattern didn't show up for years and the PDF at the turn of the century.

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The Death of the Drawing

May 23, 2018 CADKEY at that time had no documentation module, but full drafting capabilities in the 2D/3D model mode. We would copy the different views and place them on the same level (which we had 256) and detail them. We would put in a border. We always designed and detailed in full size and request the print shop to scale the print.
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These prints were copied and handled just like vellum or mylar drawings, but more than likely released as microfiche for the larger companies. The only thing different was when a change was necessary it would be done on CADDS 4.

At Boeing there was no way a contractor was getting close to the Catia 2 system. I would moan and groan about being on the board. Suddenly a fellow said “There is a PC based 3D CAD system on those two Compaqs in that room”. I already was in the world of PCs. I even had some experience on AutoCAD. It was on my Compaq luggable with a tiny amber monitor. But I was already a 3D CAD mechanical designer and was not interested in a badly designed architectural electronic drafting package.

So, I headed toward the computers. The product was CADKEY. It was very much like CADDS 4. It had an easy to use GUI, much better than CADDS 4 with its “dig” (digitizer) pen, tablet and keyboard input. CADKEY also had a colored monitor which was a $25,000 option on CADDS 4. After 2 weeks of lunch hours I talked management letting me take on a project.

An engineer and I proceeded to design the 747 first observer’s workstation. We got the outer mold loft lines for the station lines we were going to be mounting the station from Catia in IGES.

IGES worked very well between the products. It is quite surprising that that level of compatibility was programed into the programs at this level of introduction of 3D CAD. Later I had the same success with Computervision CADDS 4.

The project went incredibly well and management was hugely impressed. They started ordering seats of CADKEY by the dozens. We had a list of those who were waiting anxiously to get the next seats. We had an ongoing list of enhancement requests that we would send to CADKEY that they would implement as soon as they could

The word started spreading. Other groups would stop by to coordinate and we would give them a demonstration.

We would send HP formatted files to the print department. Nope, no plotters in the drafting room. So, we had to wait a couple of days for our prints to be reviewed for errors, maybe a better design and to check. CADKEY at that time had no documentation module, but full drafting capabilities in the 2D/3D model mode. We would copy the different views and place them on the same level (which we had 256) and detail them. We would put in a border. We always designed and detailed in full size and request the print shop to scale the print. This offered some very interesting problems.

I was not sure how Catia 2 worked. But by this time, we had 25 seats of CADKEY and still only 3 seats of Catia, mostly being used for structural frame and OML support delivered to support the CADKEY users.

I was put in charge of training. It was easy, all were experienced Boeing draftsman, contractors and board engineers that took to CADKEY like fish to water. Soon all the engineering documentation was going out of CADKEY. It was funny, we promoted the users to play games like solitaire to familiarize themselves with this new world of the PC.

All you want to know about 3D CAD training!

But not all was good. Computers had been expanding in all industry based on the mainframe computer. The computer groups were gaining power. BCS (Boeing Computer Services) power soon surpassed engineering. Mainframes and workstations were in the realm of BCS, but not these newfangled PCs (Personal Computers). BCS soon found that it could not control these PC's. They were not called Personal for nothing. BCS hated CADKEY. We could load it, configure it, licensed it (dongle), maintain it without any input from BCS, Ah, but Catia 2 was totally under their control.

Boeing could have led the world into PC based 3D CAD.
Just a small point – Catia did not show up on the PC for another 12 years.

BCS allowed no programming outside BCS. CADKEY had CADL (CAD Advanced Design Language) like LISP in AutoCAD wo