The Power of CAD Software
Published on 16 January 15
James0
Gone are the days when design meant getting a set of number 2 pencils out and drawing on a blank canvas. No! Things are far, far more sophisticated these days and Computer Aided Design (CAD) has taken the design industry by storm.
Before, you’d have to use your imagination to understand how a drawing of your dream home would look when it’s finished, but with the power of CAD you can see a 3D working model before a brick has been laid!
The beauty of CAD is that it can be used for a various projects, whether you are designing a new product or constructing a multi-story building, CAD will have some revolutionary benefits.
Increase the productivity of the designer
Have you ever thought there just aren’t enough hours in the day to even make a dent in your to-do list? Well CAD can certainly help to speed things up and you’ll find yourself finishing projects much more efficiently.
You’ll get a real sense of the design and also be able to add animations as required to see how your design will perform in a working environment - meaning that you can make changes immediately without having to build the product and then identify major design flaws that impact on functionality.
Improve the quality of your designs
CAD offers a number of tools that help designers ensure that their design is engineered to the appropriate specifications. No more having to worry about having a ruler out to measure things and if you make an error along the way it’s easy to delete parts of your design.
Ultimately, us designers are left with far more accurate designs that can help manufacturers get their side of things completed much quicker - not to mention wastages in manufacturing due to a faulty design should be a thing of the past!
Save your designs
This is particularly important if you work in a product development environment. CAD allows you to easily save drawings and 3D models so that components don’t have to be redesigned again and again. You can even standardise certain components so that they can be fixed to other designs with the click of a button.
Bring your designs to life with CAD
Sometimes designers can struggle to visualise how their drawing will look once a working model is constructed - so a client will be forgiven for not having an imaginative bone in their body.
Systems like autokitchen allow designers to produce an authentic 3D working model of the client’s home and it will literally feel like they are standing in their kitchen when they look at the screen - the system is so advance that it even shows the effect that certain lighting fixtures will have.
Where CAD can literally change the way in which clients and designers see things is through making designs a reality. For example, if you are in the kitchen design business, it must be tough to try and get a client to imagine what certain worktops and appliances will look like in their kitchen.
Not only can CAD help a designer in the design phases of a project but also when it comes to actually pitching their ideas to clients. Those intense presentation meetings will be a lot easier to handle if you have an authentic design that really captures the imagination of a client, and that is something that pen and paper will always leave you struggling to do.
Computer Aided Manufacture (CAM)
In addition to CAD we also have CAM. In a nutshell, CAM can make the design on your screen a reality fairly easily. Now, you can’t design a house and expect a printer to build it for you. However, what you can do is produce certain elements for models, the computer will calculate measurements and using equipment like a laser printer, you could have the shell of a phone prototype cut out in seconds.
A popular advancement in CAM is 3D printers. These are still very much in the early stages of development but it could well be that you can print entire architectural models from the click of a button in the not so distant future.
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Development & Implementations
, Industry Specific Applications
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