Where CAD packages shine is in creating objects that were (or would be) designed using CAD packages. This holds true for any modelling paradigm and there are trends that stem from the software available to industrial designers at the time things were designed.
I regularly blend CAD and SubD in my workflow, using Modo's PowerSubD plugin, which is more powerful than Fusion (it supports edge weighting, whereas I don't believe Fusion does). However, I do mainly product design, and whenever possible I lean on MeshFusion in Modo. That being said, CAD modeling will be superior for most…
Last time I used it (which was a few months ago) it still didn't allow for intuitive placement of points and curves in 3d space. Meaning that the program gets extremely frustrating when modelling anything based on an approved piece of concept art typical of a game art pipeline. It's great to create CAD-like parts VERY…
Consider that a boolean-heavy workflow, so popular today for hardsurface work, and popularized in no small part by myself, is largely imitating a CAD environment with polygons. Defining matter additively and removing it subtractively is at the heart of all modeling in any environment, but only in polygons do we have to…
I see how that's an interesting theory, but I don't see how it's relevant or true. Industrial designers need to model things that Game Artist do not. We don't often have to model inner workings of functional mechanics. Even if we did, I believe it would be easier with polygons anyways. Its literally the exact same things…
I believe the exact advantage of NURBS over polygons, was actually that it was projected, and therefore had infinite levels of resolution. Just like Vector graphics has over Pixels. You can scale up an Illustrator document a few hundreds times and it never loses its resolution. Just like NURBS you could zoom in as close as…
Actually ... for the sake of clarity I should probably provide a practical example. I personally don't do much modeling anymore, but here's a hardsurface facemask / helmet I did a few years ago. It is fanart, meaning that it has to stick very closely to the source material ; but said source material mostly consists of…