Autocad vs. Drafting
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES
Modeling with CAD systems offers a number of advantages over traditional drafting methods that use rulers, squares, and compasses. For example, designs can be altered without erasing and redrawing. CAD systems also offer "zoom" features analogous to a camera lens, whereby a designer can magnify certain elements of a model to facilitate inspection. Computer models are typically three dimensional and can be rotated on any axis, much as one could rotate an actual three dimensional model in one's hand, enabling the designer to gain a fuller sense of the object. CAD systems also lend themselves to modeling cutaway drawings, in which the internal shape of a part is revealed, and to illustrating the spatial relationships among a system of parts.
To understand CAD it is also useful to understand what CAD cannot do. CAD systems have no means of comprehending real-world concepts, such as the nature of the object being designed or the function that object will serve. CAD systems function by their capacity to codify geometrical concepts. Thus the design process using CAD involves transferring a designer's idea into a formal geometrical model. Efforts to develop computer-based "artificial intelligence" (AI) have not yet succeeded in penetrating beyond the mechanical—represented by geometrical (rule-based) modeling.
Other limitations to CAD are being addressed by research and development in the field of expert systems. This field is derived from research done in AI. One example of an expert system involves incorporating information about the nature of materials—their weight, tensile strength, flexibility, and so on—into CAD software. By including this and other information, the CAD system could then "know" what an expert engineer knows when that engineer creates a design. The system could then mimic the engineer's thought pattern and actually "create" more of the design. Expert systems might involve the implementation of more abstract principles,
Modeling with CAD systems offers a number of advantages over traditional drafting methods that use rulers, squares, and compasses. For example, designs can be altered without erasing and redrawing. CAD systems also offer "zoom" features analogous to a camera lens, whereby a designer can magnify certain elements of a model to facilitate inspection. Computer models are typically three dimensional and can be rotated on any axis, much as one could rotate an actual three dimensional model in one's hand, enabling the designer to gain a fuller sense of the object. CAD systems also lend themselves to modeling cutaway drawings, in which the internal shape of a part is revealed, and to illustrating the spatial relationships among a system of parts.
To understand CAD it is also useful to understand what CAD cannot do. CAD systems have no means of comprehending real-world concepts, such as the nature of the object being designed or the function that object will serve. CAD systems function by their capacity to codify geometrical concepts. Thus the design process using CAD involves transferring a designer's idea into a formal geometrical model. Efforts to develop computer-based "artificial intelligence" (AI) have not yet succeeded in penetrating beyond the mechanical—represented by geometrical (rule-based) modeling.
Other limitations to CAD are being addressed by research and development in the field of expert systems. This field is derived from research done in AI. One example of an expert system involves incorporating information about the nature of materials—their weight, tensile strength, flexibility, and so on—into CAD software. By including this and other information, the CAD system could then "know" what an expert engineer knows when that engineer creates a design. The system could then mimic the engineer's thought pattern and actually "create" more of the design. Expert systems might involve the implementation of more abstract principles,