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CAD software - 1970s CAD software started its migration out of research and into commercial use in the 1970s. Just as in the late 1960s most CAD software continued to be developed by internal groups at large automotive and aerospace manufacturers, often working in conjunction with university research groups. Throughout the decade automotive manufacturers such as: Ford (PDGS), General Motors (CADANCE), Mercedes-Benz (SYRCO), Nissan (CAD-I released in 1977) and Toyota (TINCA released in 1973 by Hiromi Araki's team, CADETT in 1979 also by Hiromi Araki) and aerospace manufacturers such as: Lockheed (CADAM), McDonnell-Douglas (CADD) and Northrop (NCAD, which is still in limited use today), all had large internal CAD software development groups working on proprietary programs.

Most CAD software programs were still 2D replacements for drafting, with the main benefits to manufacturers being: i) reduced drawing errors, and, ii) increased reusability of drawings. One of the most famous of those 2D CAD software programs, and one which still exists (in name only) more than 30 years later, was the CADAM (Computer Augmented Drafting and Manufacturing) system originally developed by the Lockheed aircraft company. In 1975 the French aerospace company, Avions Marcel Dassault, purchased a source-code license of CADAM from Lockheed and in 1977 began developing a 3D CAD software program named CATIA (Computer Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application) which survives to this day as the most commercially successful CAD software program in current use.

The 1970s started with simple 2D CAD software programs such as CADAM but research and commercial interest in 3D CAD software was rapidly gaining momentum and one of the most influential pieces of research of the decade was in complex 3D surface modeling for CAD software. K. Vesprille's (at Syracuse University) 1975 PhD dissertation "Computer-Aided Design Applications of the B-Spline Approximation Form", built on the 1960s research of de Casteljau, Bezier, Coons and Forrest and earlier (1973) work by R.F.Risenfeld (also at Syracuse University) and continues to be one of the foundations of complex 3D curve and surface modeling in 3D CAD software to this day.

The first 3D solid modeling program, SynthaVision from MAGI (Mathematics Application Group, Inc.) was released in 1972, not as CAD software but as a program for performing 3D analysis of nuclear radiation exposure. SynthaVision's 3D models were solid models similar to the CSG (constructive solid geometry) models used by later 3D CAD software. In general though, and despite steadily increasing computer performance, solid modeling was still too compute intensive for most practical applications. Extensive solid modeling research was done by Charles Lang's group (at Cambridge University) and by Herb Voelcker and his team throughout the decade and the approaches taken throughout the 1970s by the two groups were fundamentally different, as were the CAD software products ultimately based on their research.

Herb Voelcker's efforts focused on CSG solid modeling and resulted in the 1978 release of the PADL (Part and Assembly Description Language) solid modeler, which was subsequently used in several commercial 3D solid modeling CAD software programs in the early 1980s. B-rep (boundary representation) data structures had been proposed by B. Baumgart in the early 1970s for their advantages in finte-element meshing applications but it was Ian Braid, working in Charles Lang's group at Cambridge University, who released prolific research on the applications of b-rep in solid modeling throughout the mid 1970s to culminate in the 1978 release of the BUILD solid modeler, the first true boundary representation solid modeler implementation. Shortly after that release, Ian Braid moved into Shape Data Ltd. a CAD software consulting company which had been established by Charles Lang, Ian Braid and others in Cambridge in 1974.