Azure Virtual Desktop for CAD: What Engineering Teams Need to Know

In 2000, Blockbuster was the undisputed king of home entertainment. 10,000 stores. 80 million members. Friday night meant driving to Blockbuster. They had the chance to buy Netflix for $50 million. Someone asked: "Why buy them? We already have stores everywhere." That answer cost them everything. On September 23, 2010, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy.

"We already have…" might very well be the most effective way to kill progress and innovation in business. It shows up in engineering departments more often than you'd think—even when the stakes are much lower than Blockbuster's.Here's the engineering version: "Why don't we just use Azure Virtual Desktop for our CAD? We already have Azure!" One question that will cause one year of going nowhere.

It's like inviting an important client for a business lunch and suggesting "why go to a restaurant? Let’s heat up a ready meal in the office?" Faster, cheaper, and yes, “we already have…” a microwave.

Here's why “we already have Azure” are 4 very dangerous words for engineering departments.

What is Azure Virtual Desktop?

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is Microsoft's platform for running Windows desktops in the Azure cloud. IT departments use it to give employees and contractors remote access to their applications—primarily Office, email, browsers, and standard business tools.

AVD is popular for office workers. It's cost-effective because multiple users share the same server. It integrates with Microsoft 365. For spreadsheets and email, it works fine.

That's the ready meal. Fine for what it is. Just don't serve it to anyone important.

The three problems with serving it at your business lunch:

First, it's just not that good for what you need. Ready meals are designed for convenience, not quality. AVD is designed for office workers doing email and spreadsheets, not engineers running 3D models.

Second, you can't turn it into something it's not. No amount of plating or garnish turns a microwave lasagna into restaurant food. The IT team can configure AVD, tune it, optimize it—but the ingredients are what they are. It was made for office work. You can't cook it into an engineering platform.

Third, it's not even as easy as it looks. "Just heat for 8 minutes" never works as promised. One customer's IT department paused a Designair project to see if they could build AVD internally instead. A year later, they abandoned it. One reason? They never figured out what it would cost. Think about that. Microsoft publishes a pricing calculator. You fill in the quantities, it tells you the price - and how to get discounts. They couldn't get through it. They couldn't read the price sticker on the box—and they were going to build engineering infrastructure in Azure?

The 5 problems with AVD IT can't deny

1. Resource sharing kills performance.

Ready meals are portion-controlled. One serving per package. Now imagine splitting that meal between five hungry people.

That's AVD. It saves money by putting multiple users on the same machine. Ten engineers sharing one server's GPU. Your engineer is rotating a 3D model while someone else's render job takes priority. Everyone's hungry.

2. RDP is the only way to see your work.

You know the picture on the ready meal box? Perfectly styled, vibrant colors, steam rising. Then you open the actual meal. Grey, soggy, nothing like the photo.

AVD uses Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to display your screen. RDP compresses the image to save bandwidth. For email, you don't notice. For 3D engineering models, you see the compression—blocky textures, colors that shift when you rotate, lag between your mouse and the response. Your engineers never see the crisp version.

3. The clever features don't work for engineering.

Ready meal packaging loves to shout about features. "Now with quinoa!", "New resealable lid!" and  "30% less sodium!" None of that matters if you're serving an important client.

AVD has impressive features too. Take "AppStreaming"—instead of a full desktop, users get a single application streamed to their screen. Efficient for a call center agent who lives in one app. Useless for an engineer who has AVEVA E3D, Revit, Excel, and Navisworks open at the same time. AVD has a list of clever features like this. Great for office workers. Irrelevant for engineering.

4. No cost control.

Here's where the ready meal analogy breaks down—because ready meals are at least cheap. GPU machines aren't.

Think of it as a tap. AVD leaves the tap running. It's designed for office desktops that run 24/7—because the water bill is low, nobody bothers with an off switch. But GPU machines are 10 times more expensive. That tap is costing you serious money every hour. And AVD doesn't have a simple way to turn it off.

Your engineer goes to lunch, the tap runs. Goes home for the night, the tap runs. You can build custom automation to shut it down, but then you risk killing someone's work mid-flow.

5. No one to call when it breaks.

When a ready meal disappoints, who do you complain to? The supermarket says "we just sell it." The manufacturer's customer service line puts you on hold forever. You're on your own.

AVD works the same way. When your engineer says "Intergraph Smart 3D is slow," who does IT call? Microsoft says "Azure is running fine." Hexagon says "our software is fine." The GPU driver vendor says "driver is installed correctly." Everyone's product is working. The meal is still bad. And your IT department is stuck in the middle, permanently responsible for something nobody else will support.

What to Say When IT Pushes Back on Designair

Call it a hunch—you're reading this because you've chosen cloud workstations. Your concern about AVD derailing the project is real. Here's how to nip it in the bud.

"We already have Azure.""We have electricity too. That doesn't mean we should build our own machines."

"It's the Microsoft standard.""Microsoft's standard for office workers. Not for engineering. That's why they don't market AVD for CAD."

"We can configure it for GPU workloads.""You can configure it. You can't change what it was designed for. We'll spend six months tuning a platform that still won't match something built for engineering from day one."

"We should at least pilot AVD first."A pilot will prove it can technically run our applications. It won't show us what breaks at scale, or what IT's workload looks like in year two. We'll spend three months proving something works in a lab, then discover the real problems in production."

"AVD will be cheaper.""The Azure VMs might cost the same. But who's building the automation? Who's maintaining the images? Who's on call when it's slow? That's not free—that's our people, forever."

The Battle Card: AVD vs. Designair

The Bottom Line

AVD is a fine ready meal. For office workers doing email and spreadsheets, it works.

But you're not feeding office workers. You're running an engineering department. Your client is at the table. The question is whether you serve them a microwaved lasagna or take them to a restaurant.

IT means well. "We can build it ourselves" sounds resourceful. But a year from now, you'll either have engineers working—or a half-built AVD project that nobody wants to own.

Keep IT’s ready meal in the freezer. Designair’s restaurant is open.

‍