Computer have had a major impact in industry where products are designed and manufactured. Computer aided design (CAD) is used to develop products. Computer aided manufacturing (CAM) is used to produce them. Advanced CAD systems provide designers with at least 3 benefits:
Graphics Capabilities CAD systems allow the designer view a product from different perspectives, including three-dimensional rotations, and various cross-sections. The designer can also make proportional changes in scale, or change angle of an are with the click of a mouse rather than drawing the entire product.
Design, Storage and Retrieval: Some CAD systems can store the design characteristics of existing products and components. Then, for example, if a company needs a part for a new product, the designer can enter the relevant information about the part, such as its length, width and required hardness into the CAD system. The CAD system determines whether the company is already using an identical similar part, if yes, then it can be retrieved from the database.
Automatic Evaluation of specifications: One of the most time-consuming aspects of design for highly technical products is calculating whether or not product specifications, such as strength, heat resistance or aerodynamic drag are satisfied. These calculations can be programmed into some CAD systems so that whenever the designer change the design, these performance characteristics are recalculated automatically and compared to the product requirements. This is sometime called Computer Aided Engineering.
Product Design and Product Data Management:
Designing complicated products can require the efforts of thousands people working together. This teamwork is greatly enhanced through the use of computerized designs. On the other hand, one the other hand, one of the major challenges is to the maximize time-to-market benefits of concurrent engineering while maintaining control of your data and distributing it automatically to the people who need it, when they need it. Keeping master copy in secure place and disturbing duplicate copy to various departments for design, analysis and approval achieve this purpose. The new data is then stored back.
Architectural walk-through:
To help visualize what a building design will really be like when it's built computers "walk-through" are prepared. One application of this technology on the web is to let you talk through an auditorium or stadium to select a seat for an event. Before you purchase a ticket, you can even "sit" in the seat to see what your angle of view will be like.
