Advantages of Computer Aided Design (CAD) Software – Automated CAD Drafting

Categories : Cad and auto cad
Tags : Mechanical engineering

Automated CAD Drafting

Drafting is the process of making the drawings of the designed parts. After designing of the object its assembly and detail parts drawings have to be made which includes specifications of various materials also called as bill of materials used for the manufacturing the components of the object. Automated Drafting is one of the most important applications of the CAD software. In fact a number of designing professionals and firms use the CAD software exclusively for drafting purposes.

Advantages of using the CAD software for Drafting

1) Increase in productivity: In the traditional manual drawing process the draftsman creates drawing by using card sheet and drawing board, which is very slow and tedious process. By using the CAD software for making the drawings the process becomes very fast. It has been observed that CAD software increases the productivity of drafting by about five times.

2) Future reference: By using CAD software the drawings can be saved easily and printed for any future reference. Some parts of the drawing which are used frequently can be saved separately and they can be used readily in any other drawing in future, thus the designers don’t have to make those drawings again and again. There is also library feature in the CAD software that contains a number of standard part drawings which can be used anywhere in the drawing when required. This further increases the productivity of the designer.

3) Excellent drawing tools: There are number of tools in the CAD software for making the drawings. Apart from the basic tools like points, lines, circles, polygons, etc, there are important features like automatic dimensioning, generation of cross hatched areas, scaling of the drawings, developing sectional and enlarged views of part details, etc. There are also tools to perform rotation of the object and other transformations in the object. Creating oblique, isometric or perspective views by using CAD software is very easy. A number of CAD software can generate about six views of the objects.

4) Parts classifications and coding systems: This is the process of grouping similar part designs classes and relating by certain codification system. With this feature the designers can retrieve the existing part designs by using specific classes and their codes without having to design those parts again and again.

Reference

Book: CAD/CAM: Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing by Mikell P. Groover and Emory W. Zimmers

This post is part of the series: Applications of CAD

This is the series of articles describing various applications of CAD software like geometric modeling, engineering analysis, FEA, design review and evaluation, drafting etc.