A lot has been written here about companies that are not making daring improvements to their software but are there any software companies that are actually pushing the boundaries and creating new CAD capabilities?
I think most would say that NX and Solid Edge with their direct editing capabilities. Not certain if its really taken off in those circles. @matt swears by it, or swears at it, not really sure 
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The CAD companies would point to their Cloud CAD initiatives like Onshape and Dassault (CATIA and SolidWorks). While its a big shift, from what I seen in both, they are just rushing to trying to bring those programs on par with the existing desktop options.
Not much else going on Iv’e seen except them pushing “feature prediction” lately in Solid Edge and SolidWorks 2025. Didn’t feel helpful to me, I know what feature I want next and where its at. SolidWorks in particular already offers too many ways to get to a feature. While you don’t have to use them all, new users could be confused (Do I use the S key, keyboard shortcut, the mouse gestures, menus, command manager, toolbar, and now feature predictor.)
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Along the lines of what Jason said. What would this next big improvement be? Solid Edge’s Synchronous Tech is a game changer for many, for others it was in the way and broke things that used to work.
I haven’t really seen any that are customer driven needs, most of the changes seem to be solutions looking for problems or new ways of generating revenue or grabbing data.
I’ve had a notion and it is way out there and probably not even possible, but plugin and extension based features/UI layer on top of the kernel. So often changes to how features are built and how their data is stored in the file end up causing conflicts with new versions or other features. I’m not saying it’s even possible, but I think that if companies to cherry pick which functionality they want and only install those instead of getting everything that every user wants could make cleaner UIs, simpler models, fewer crashes, etc. Yes, it would likely still be on the user/company to find bugs or interferences between various extensions/plugins. Be we have that now and very limited ability to do anything about it. If we had the option to not install certain behaviors when they cause problems it could be a game changer.
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It is interesting because there were decades of gradual improvements in the capabilities of 3D CAD (or it seemed that way from reading This history of CAD!) , and I don’t see any great strides in the past several years. Yes SolidEdge does seem to have put a lot of design into their software, true, have to give them props for that…
If you read the solidworks release notes, there are ground breaking new features every year. Heck, large assembly drawings have been sped up so many times it should happen instantly.
What is it that your cad software doesn’t do that you need it to? It frustrates me that users are always asking for improvements, when it is obvious that SW is more interested in bragging about new improvements than actually creating usable improvements, or fixing the crap that’s been broken for years (decades?). I feel like those constantly requesting new features are part of the problem.
I think the next big leap will come from ML / LLM / AI. How exactly that will be implemented in the cad world, I have no idea.
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TBH I don’t know what I want until someone shows me something new! I just want to know who is doing cool stuff. I don’t have any real issues with software; I use SW 2022 and am pretty happy with it overall. Its a stable release, and what it doesn’t naturally do for me I can write a macro for, or do in Rhino with some Python or something.
The early years (95-2010) of SolidWorks were great with huge strides in functionality. Granted, the 3D CAD world was less mature then.
I think there are areas that could see big improvements but it wouldn’t be flashy enough marketing. Basic UI speed efficiencies in a lot of places. Some old UI elements (Curve through reference points) are still present. Presentation of data and editing it, especially with configurations, properties, etc.
There are still some niceties released each year, but they are either small things, or marketing fluff. Do we really need the 3DX forum in the Task Pane (recent addition) when the existing tabs there could use some attention? Search in Appearances? Enhance the custom property builder? Easily edit the “Rousources” tab to add Company links like standards? How about hide the “View Palette” tab when in parts and assemblies because its for drawings, duh 
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I urge you not to be tempted by the SW hype. I feel like 22 had fewer issues than either 23 or 24.
And now I’m in the boat where I feel like I have to try 25, hoping it will be better, but fully aware it could get worse.
Nah. I’m not going to upgrade unless there’s a really good reason to, like game changing speed improvements etc
I see a lot of talks around using A.I. to facilitate/automate the drafting/engineering process but I have huge doubts about how efficient it would be
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