Essay: COMPUTER INTEGRATED MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS – CAD

COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN
Concept of CAD as drafting and designing facility, desirable features of CAD package, drawing features in CAD – Scaling, rotation, translation, editing, dimensioning, labeling, Zoom, pan, redraw and regenerate, typical CAD command structure, wire frame modeling, surface modeling and solid modeling (concepts only) in relation to popular CAD packages.
1.1 Concept Of Cad As Drafting And Designing Facility
CAD Drafting services basically architectural drafting services, mechanical drafting services, electrical drafting services, electronic drafting services, Auto CAD drafting services and 3D modeling services and so on. It provides offer advanced and latest CAD technology to the clients.
There is an actually no denying of the fact that in current circumstances, these CAD drafting services have become an integral part of the mechanical and construction industry. The reality tells that Design Development, Building plans, construction documents and a variety of types of drawings is not possible without CAD Drafting. These services are efficient enough to increase the quality of our business. Satisfaction of customers allow only signals the fact that you can rely upon these services and they work upon the precise clients requirements / specifications. It also comprise of PCB design, circuit designs, telecommunication equipment designs, instrumentation system design, etc.
The CAD Drafting techniques are used such as AutoCAD, Micro Station, Vector-works and finally get the output in desired CAD format i.e. DWG, DGN or DXF. The preparation of the technical drawings and plans are a great concern that is mostly used during the production and construction of products such as machinery, building plans and many more.
CAD Designs can also be converted into any format such as Auto CAD (DWG, DXF), Micro Station (DGN), Coreldraw (CDR), Vector Works,Adobe illustrator (Al) etc. The process for the preparation of the general structure of any product or services is known as CAD Designing. It is basically done for construction plans, building plans, mechanical drawings, electrical drawings etc. CAD services offers analysis, designing and meticulous detailing of various types of reinforced concrete structures, steel structures, pre-stressed structures, foundations etc.
CAD designing services benefit all types of companies from small/ big to the midsized ones, CAD designs are for all. Apart from that the custom made CAD Modeling services help to create/recreate the best interior or exterior views of houses and other business complexes. Architectural Modeling and CAD Modeling of the floor creates a view of the interior such as furniture and flooring . CAD modeling can enable a person without any knowledge about the layout plans to clearly understand the plan. Some of the Architectural CAD drafting services can also be great for floor plans, furniture arrangements plans, elevations and views for residence and multi-storied building in raster image and hand sketches.
1.2 Desirable Features Of Cad Package
In the current CAD market, ProE and AutoCAD are arguably the most dominating CAD software. AutoCAD is basically a 2-D program with some capability to create 3-D models where as ProE is a truly 3-D CAD package. Besides these software there are several other CAD software that have sales exceeding $100 millions. No one CAD package is suitable for all the CAD users in the world. The product we are designing dictates the type of CAD package we need. A good CAD package includes good software as well as a compatible hardware. Following is a brief description of the general criteria for evaluating a CAD package.
Hardware: Most desirable features in a good hardware are:
• Open architecture.
• High speed, large storage.
• Compact size.
• Inexpensive components.
• Inexpensive upgrading.
Software: In general, the most comprehensive software are written to satisfy almost all the modeling needs of a modeler. Consequently the software tend to be very complex and hard to learn. To create a simple model, we go through several unnecessary steps and lack the intuitiveness of a simple, straight forward program. ProE is a good example where we have to go through several layers of menus to create a simple solid. On the other hand if we were to use a simpler CAD program the same solid can be created by only a few simple commands. There are several other factors that we should consider when evaluating software. Following is a brief description of these factors.
• Operating System: Unix or Windows/NT. PCs in general use Microsoft Windows where as operating system for Workstations is Unix. For a large organization, workstations are preferable.
• User Interface: Most popular CAD software have menu driven commands which is preferable to the old system of non-menu driven where user interface was completely by responding to software commands. The most popular CAD programs work with menu driven interface with some input/action required through command prompts.
• Documentation and Support: Learning a software can be very difficult if the software lacks good documentation. Documentation usually comes in the form of a user’s manual a tutorial book, commands manual and on-line help. The recent trend is to provide access to the above-mentioned documentation through the Internet or provide the manuals on a CD ROM. Some CAD vendors provide additional technical support help through phone .ProE is a very good example of this type of support.
• Maintenance: Cost of the hardware and software upgrades can significantly impact the small and medium size companies decision to choose one software over the others. Most CAD vendors go through an upgrade on the average every two years. Usually hardware upgrade is not as frequent.
• Modeling Capabilities: In general a CAD software can be classified as either a 2-D or a 3-D program. If we were basically involved in 2-D drawings any well established 2-D software similar to AutoCAD would suffice our needs. On the other hand if we need to create 3-D models and assemblies we will be better off with a 3-D molder,ProE, SOLIDWORKS, etc.
• Ease of Modeling: As a rule-of-thumb a general all-purpose type CAD software is much more complex and difficult to learn than a special purpose CAD package.
• Interface with other CAD Packages and Data Transferability: A CAD package is used to create models that will be used for analysis, manufacturing or some other applications. Therefore a CAD software should be capable of transferring and accepting files from other CAD or CAM programs without this provision the CAD program has only a very limited use.
• Design Documentation: Besides creating a model the software should be capable of creating drawings assemblies,dimensioning various views (isometric, orthogonal, etc.), labels and attributes etc.