## 4 Discussion  
The findings of this study demonstrate that specialized CAD toolsets such as AutoCAD Mechanical significantly enhance both efficiency and creativity compared to standard AutoCAD, for undergraduate mechanical engineering students, being beginner CAD users, engaged in mechanical drafting tasks. The analysis of command usage, access frequency, and task completion times clearly indicates that AutoCAD Mechanical provides a more streamlined and optimized workflow, reducing the number of commands required by nearly 50% across various drawing tasks. Furthermore, the reduction in command repetition and task execution time confirms that the automation features embedded in AutoCAD Mechanical lead to higher productivity and lower cognitive load for users. The comparison of creativity metrics further underscores the advantages of AutoCAD Mechanical. The results show that designs created using AutoCAD Mechanical scored higher in originality, functionality, and efficient CAD tool usage, with statistically significant differences in these categories compared to standard AutoCAD. The ability to leverage parametric constraints, automated dimensioning, and standard part libraries allows users to focus more on design innovation rather than manual drafting, leading to better-optimized and more functional solutions. The graphical quality scores, while slightly higher for AutoCAD Mechanical, did not show statistical significance, suggesting that manual drafting techniques in standard AutoCAD can still achieve similar visual precision. This outcome merits additional discussion. One possible explanation is that graphical quality--as defined by clarity, precision, and adherence to drafting standards--depends more on users' general drawing discipline and less on the specific toolset employed. Both software environments offer the essential functionalities required to produce technically correct drawings, such as line control, annotation, and layout tools. As such, even beginner users using standard AutoCAD can produce high-quality visuals when guided by consistent instructional standards. Moreover, the rubric criterion for graphical quality may involve less cognitive abstraction compared to creativity or functionality, allowing students to achieve comparable results regardless of the software used. This may explain why the scores in this category showed a smaller and statistically non-significant difference. These findings suggest that while automation enhances workflow and innovation, visual precision may be more influenced by instructional emphasis and drawing conventions than by tool complexity alone. The findings of this study align with and extend previous research on the impact of automation in creative design environments. Prior studies have shown that automation-supported tools can enhance creative output by reducing cognitive load and facilitating iterative exploration. For instance, it has been demonstrated that CAD tools integrating automation features contribute to improved problem-solving strategies and increased ideation diversity among engineering students [10]. Similarly, it has been found that simulation-enabled CAD environments promote design thinking and innovation through real-time feedback mechanisms [19]. Our results corroborate these observations by showing that beginner users equipped with automated CAD functionalities--such as parametric constraints and standardized part libraries--achieved higher scores in originality and functionality. Unlike many prior studies that rely on qualitative observations, the current research contributes a quantitative framework for evaluating creativity in CAD-based tasks, thus offering a more structured comparison of tool impact. A key insight from the study is that automation in CAD software advances greater creativity by allowing users to explore multiple design variations more efficiently.