What Is Computer Aided Design & Drafting?

Computer-aided design and drafting, also known as CADD, has become the industry standard for putting drawings together.Many different industries, including automotive, shipbuilding, aerospace and architectural ones, use CADD extensively in the design of objects, both real and virtual, as well as engineering drawings.

What Is It?

Computer-aided drafting and design software packages deliver 2-D or 3-D vector-based drawings. They can be solid or surface modelers that can be drawn to represent an object, a car, a plane or a building. These dynamic modeling programs can render objects, and some can even apply textures and shadows to provide a realistic appearance.

Benefits

CADD provides many benefits, essentially allowing a virtual prototype to be built so that designers and engineers can study the design and work out any potential problems. The software allows engineers and designers a chance to develop the work on the screen, edit the model and save it for future use.

Significance

The emergence of CADD in the mid-1980s changed the way many industries worked. Companies no longer depended on drafters taking days and weeks to draw prototypes by hand. CADD allowed companies to create drawings quickly and to reuse them. This saved time for projects that involved repeatedly drawing the same things over and over. CADD speeds the work of drafters and allows sequencing of work.

Considerations

As CADD has become a standard for many industries, it has also become more readily available for students to learn. This has put the role of the drafter in many industries in the hands of many younger, inexperienced, new graduates. This may have a significant effect on the quality of the work being produced.

Many times in the past when drawings where produced by hand, checks and quality control pertained in the process of drawing the objects over and over again. Now that drawings are produced quickly and repeatedly, quality control can be lost to speed.

Potential

CADD has given many industries unlimited potential. The advances of CADD, which have grown exponentially in the past decade, have allowed many industries to create realistic designs that look as if they have already been built. CADD has gone from being a 2-D, vector-based software to being able to create animations and montage to give the illusion of a real world in the virtual space. Many of the different software programs have combined the advances used in movies and in animation to allow for greater flexibility in the design of objects.

References

• Architectural Drafting & Design; Alan Jefferis & David A. Madsen; 2004