Reason #62: The Tools Aren't Yours Either

You spend two years getting fast in SolidWorks. You learn the shortcuts, the assembly mates, the way the BOM export talks to your company's ERP. You build templates. You know where the configurations break and how to fake a sheet metal flat pattern when the algorithm chokes. Then you switch jobs and the new shop runs Creo. Everything resets. See Reason #56.

This is not like switching from Python to Java, where the logic carries and the syntax is a weekend. CAD platforms are ecosystems. The sketcher behaves differently. The constraint logic is different. The surfacing tools assume different workflows. The PDM vault has its own rules, its own check-in behavior, its own way of making your life difficult when a reference breaks. Your fluency was never in "mechanical design." It was in one company's licensed installation of one vendor's software on one IT department's image. You take none of it with you.

And the industry is fractured enough to make this hurt every time you move. Aerospace lives in CATIA and NX. Automotive splits across NX, CATIA, and Creo. Consumer products leans SolidWorks. Heavy equipment has pockets of Inventor. Some shops still run legacy seats they cannot afford to migrate. No standard won, so your resume becomes a list of platform allegiances that hiring managers scan like passports. The wrong stamp and you do not get past the filter. See Reason #1. When there are two and a half candidates for every seat, the one who already knows the tool gets the call. See Reason #34.

Software engineers pick up new frameworks because the abstractions transfer. A frontend developer moving from React to Vue is productive in a week. A controls engineer switching PLC vendors at least carries a logic structure that maps. Your move from SolidWorks to NX is not an abstraction shift. It is a muscle-memory rebuild, and it happens on the clock, under pressure, while the project schedule pretends you are already competent. See Reason #54.

The simulation side is the same story. You learn ANSYS at one company, then the next shop runs Abaqus, or Nastran, or a proprietary solver wrapped in a workflow you have never seen. Your FEA theory is identical. Your button knowledge is worthless. And button knowledge is what gets the model out the door by Thursday.

Nobody advertises this cost. The degree teaches you "engineering principles," and the career teaches you that principles do not matter until they are inside a specific tool on a specific seat that a specific employer is willing to pay for. Your competence is rented, not owned. The moment you walk out, the license stays behind, and so does most of what made you efficient. See Reason #8.

You will learn the new platform. You always do. It will take months, and during those months you will feel like an intern with a decade of experience and nothing to show for it.