CAD And Ease Of Use – No Nonsense!
I think man
y people have a rough idea what we mean when we say CAD. C for computer, certainly. A for aided or assisted – you pick. D for design or drawing. I say drawing. But hey – again you pick. The basic idea with CAD is that you use your computer to draw things you hope to make. But just like tools in the shop - there are many approaches, varieties, and levels of quality – and many opinions about which is better.
Here’s my take based on nearly 45 years of drawing things I intended to build or have someone build for me.
But first I digress. My first attempt at mechanical drawing, as it was called back then, was at Erie Community College – just outside of Buffalo NY in 1969. I went to the bookstore to buy my supplies. Those triangles, scales, tee square, eraser (critical tool) and all else on the list were really cool. (Both “mechanical drawing” and “cool” indicate I am of a different era.) Then I went to class and sat at my drafting table. It was impossible to draw the line my instructor wanted – uniform thickness – no smudging. I could barely keep my pencil point pointed!!! And to clearly have two lines meet? Well just say that my drawings were at the lower end of the class in terms of quality. It was a tough semester. No job prospects as a draftsman.
Decades later came the computer with a basic drawing capability. The computer could ”draw” lines of uniform thickness – and if you were real careful with the mouse it let two lines meet exactly in a corner. Home free – no smudges. Where were you, computer, in 1969?
Move ahead to 2011 – the basic drawing packages have long been replaced by this thing called CAD, which in my opinion automates the drawing of lines. It took a, for me, a painful process of drawing lines and made it easier. But you see it could have done soooo much more.
I heard a radio story about LED lighting. An engineer was telling of the potential of LED lighting – like being “painted” onto a wall to make a very large light. But interestingly – the basic LED bulb target output was 60 watts. Why? Because that was what dear old Edison picked and — we don’t want to be too different now, do we? And why did Edison pick 60 watts of output? Because – yep you got it – that was roughly the output of that amazing technology of his time – gas lights. I wonder if the cave torch was also rated at 60 watts. So here we are with LED technology picking a standard set by a lighting system hundreds of years old. Having the computer draw lines for design is like having LED lights at 60 watts. It could be so much more but its developers were looking backwards – not at the light bulb but the drafting table.
When using computers in design, we can choose to stick to the 60 watt bulb approach or take full advantage of new technology. What is the difference? Instead of drawing lines to make rectangles and rectangles to make cubes to make our woodworking projects – let’s just jump ahead to using the computer to model actual-virtual (think!) 3D boards and such. Then we can easily move these boards around in 3D space — getting instant feedback on our designs. Somewhat like moving pieces of wood around on our assembly tables or workbenches. At that point we are not involved not with lines and boxes, but with our design.
And if the software is easy enough to use and we can learn to do this in an evening or a maybe day — then we really have computer assisted design.
Dave Rozewski Developer SketchList 3D
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