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In this article:
- What is Computer-Aided Design?
- Applications of CAD
- History of CAD
What is Computer-Aided Design?
The employment of a variety of computer tools that assist engineers, architectures and other design professionals in designing is called as Computer-aided design or CAD. CAD software packages are capable of making 2D vector based drawings as well as 3D animation and design modeling.
Applications of CAD
CAD has been put to use in designing and developing products such as consumer goods and intermediate goods. CAD software has also been used to design machinery and other capital equipment and components. Application of CAD also includes drafting and designing buildings. These buildings can be small residential houses to larger buildings such as hospitals, factories, offices etc. CAD software is an important part of the engineering process these days and is used to lay down the conceptual layout as well as a detailed analysis of components and other things. CAD has been used in the field of architecture, engineering , garden design, construction, building design, design of roads, highways, sewage systems, design of aircrafts, space vehicles and satellites, ships and railway coaches and also in digital circuit design and more recently, in fashion designing.
Computer-aided drafting software, an important aspect of CAD, acts as a basic tool which used by other disciplines such as Civil Engineering, site design and in mapping and cartography. Designing of landscape architecture and interior designing is also done with the help of CAD software. CAD software also assists in the production of plans and sketches. Results of a CAD design maybe used as are or they may act as input for other software programs such as for creating fly-through animations etc.
More recently, software applications are being designed using CAD software. This is done in order to get a prototype or basic design of a software product before any coding is done. Since software has the same lifecycle as any engineering product, it is considered a good way of having a basic idea how the product would look like and how it will work when finished. It also makes the management and updating of complicated software programs easier.
History of CAD
Though computers have been used by many designers for calculative purposes since they were introduced, the actual beginning of CAD was in the 1960s when aircraft and other automotive industries started using computers to make 3D representations of their products. These operations were done privately and revealed only years later. A major development happened it 1963 when Ivan Sutherland developed SKETCHPAD at MIT. This software allowed a person to interact with the computer by using a light pen on the monitor and laid the base for Graphical User Interfaces of today. General Motors made use of the DAC-1 computer for CAD in 1964.
The major problem of the computers of that time was that they were expensive and hard to maintain and operate. This is why, only large companies were able acquire them and put them to use. The revolution in the field of CAD came when computers became more affordable and the CAD software could finally be run on desktop computers. This gave the field of CAD the necessary momentum required for its development. While the 1970s saw the emergence of 2D imaging, more versatile applications came in the 1980s, most remarkably, the ones which allowed solid modeling such as Uni-Solid and Romulus. AutoCAD, the famous 2D design system was developed by Autodesk that was formed in 1982. Today, CAD software has earned accolades in various fields of design and has achieved various feats in the field of engineering design amongst others.
Technologies behind CAD
CAD software is an advanced software application which puts strain on the hardware and software resources of a computer. Early CAD software were developed in languages such as FORTRAN which limited their functionality. However, as object-oriented programming progressed, a radical change was brought about. Today, such systems are built with the help of programming languages such as C and C++ etc. CAD software is usually Windows-based, though some also run on UNIX and Linux. Use of such software requires high speed processors and lots of RAM and so also high-end graphics cards.
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