Unless designing or drafting is in your line of work
you might not necessarily know what CAD is. You're not alone. Even in
today's world where it seems that every second person is a computer
genius, there are still plenty of people for whom a lot of jargon
travels way over their heads. I share their pain or embarrassment,
because its no joke being the only one in the room who doesn't get the
computer hacker joke and as result ends up smiling with a dull blank
expression on her face and nodding like an idiot.
CAD stands for
Computer Aided Design, it used to stand for Computer Aided Drafting but
was changed because as it improved, it evolved to do more than just
drafting. It is also know as CAID - Computer Aided Industrial Design
and CAAD - Computer Aided Architectural Design.
The programme was
created to design and develop products, which can be goods used by
consumers. It is also used in the design of tools and machinery that
manufacture components, as well as in the drafting and design of
buildings. It is used throughout the entire engineering process from
the onset of conceptual design and layout all the way through to the
definition of manufacturing methods of components. Another important
way in which it can be used is in the detailed engineering of 3D models
and 2D drawings of physical components.
An area where CAD has
gained significant importance is Computer Aided Technologies. The
advancements in this field have included a reduction in product
development costs and shorter time spent on the design cycle.
CAD
can be used in a number of different ways, depending on the task at
hand, the profession of the user, as well as the type of software that
is run. CAD comes in a variety of systems, and each requires a
different pattern of thought on how to use it to maximum benefit. In
addition, each system's virtual components must also be designed in a
different way.
CAD generally operates on computers that are
Windows based, although some systems run on hardware that uses Unix
operating systems and a few work with Linux. There are a few CAD
systems e.g. Ocad and NX that provide multi-platform support and these
include Windows, Linux, UNIX, and Mac OSX.
In order to use CAD it
is generally not necessary to obtain any special hardware other than a
high-end OpenGL based Graphics card. If you are going to be doing
complex designs then you will need computers with high speed CPUs and
large amounts of RAM. A computer mouse is used as the human-machine
interface, although a pen and digitising graphics tablet can also be
used.
Once a programme like this has been created and become so
well used and mainstream, it is difficult to imagine a time when it
wasn't used. What did people do before CAD? They had to do everything
by hand. It was painstaking work. At times it could be frustrating
because even the smallest mistake could set you back days. I wonder
what their level of job satisfaction was like? These days CAD
developers strive to make future work on the project as simple as
possible. They need a very good understanding of the system in order to
do this. After all, extra time spent now could mean great savings later.
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