subject: What is CAD Conversion? [print this page] What is CAD Conversion? What is CAD Conversion?
Imagine being able to see every room of your new home or office, try different colors, and alter the interiors before it is event built! Welcome to the world of CAD. It gives shape to your dreams and helps you alter them even before they are made real.
What is CAD?
CAD stands for Computer Aided Design, also spelt CADD, meaning Computer Aided Design and Drafting. CAD is designed to replace the drawing board with a computer, printer or plotter and some CAD software. CAD draftsmen can use these tools to create drawings to a higher standard of precision and presentation than possible when drawing by hand. Draftsmen can also plot as many copies of the drawing as required and save it for future alterations and prints.
What is CAD conversion?
In the past, all of the designs, whether architectural, mechanical, or civil, would be made by hand on a set of blueprints or paper. These blueprints contained all the necessary information to correctly design the intended project. But the industry standard today is CAD. So in other words, there are a lot of blueprints that need to be updated or converted to CAD. This is where we get the term CAD conversion from.
There are numerous organizations where technical data is treated as a critical asset. Efficient management of this data is important for the functioning of the business. Similarly, for companies where blueprints need to be created and stored, Cad Conversioncomes in handy. Converting hard copy paper work to electronic format makes archiving, retrieving, copying, editing, and sharing of the drawings easier.
Industries that benefit from CAD
Paper-intensive industries and engineering firms, where blueprints are important for business, use CAD effectively. Architecture companies, designing firms, infrastructure units are some verticals where CAD has benefitted the companies immensely. However, as the technology is becoming popular it is being used in unconventional industries as well - office planners, surveyors, musical instrument manufacturers, police force are just some of them.
Specific industries have developed specialized applications of CAD systems. Below are some of the main industries using CAD and their related CAD applications:
The Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry
Structural Engineering
Factory Layout
Industrial Plant Design
Mechanical (MCAD) Engineering
Construction
Civil Engineering
Electronic Design Automation (EDA)
Electronic and Electrical (ECAD)
Residential and Commercial Architecture & Design
Landscape Architecture
Mapping and Surveying
Highways and Roads
Water and Sewer Systems
Aerospace
Automotive
Machinery
Consumer Goods
Shipbuilding
Biomechanical Systems
Digital Circuit Design
Manufacturing Process Planning
Industrial Design
Apparel and Textile CAD
Fashion Design
Entertainment
Computer Graphic Animation (CGA)
What are the features that CAD offers?
CAD offers numerous useful features and capabilities including:
Absolute and relative coordinates: To build 3D or 2D drawings on X, Y, and Z coordinates.
Drawing tools: Designers can use its various design tools to create shapes and objects easily.
Snaps, modifiers, and constraints: These enable higher precision and accuracy of the drawings.
Layers: Designers can have different layers for floor plans, electrics, and dimensions. They can take different prints from the same drawing.
Symbols: CAD comes with thousands of free smart symbols for creating drawings.
Macros and scripts: This speeds up repetitive tasks by creating shortcuts.
API programs: New programs and add-ons can be created and added to CAD.
Raster to vector conversion: Raster to vector conversion is included in CAD. Vector drawings enable rapid scaling and manipulation capabilities.
Solid modeling: Solid modeling is a more advanced way of creating 3D objects which are treated as actual solids which have a material, mass, weight, volume, centre of gravity, etc.
What are the benefits of CAD conversion?
Apart from reduced operational cost, there are numerous benefits of CAD conversions:
Saves time and increases efficiency
Gets higher quality work
Maximizes precision
Cuts down cost of operations
Helps to meet project deadlines
Resource optimization
Saves on hiring skilled manpower
Saves cost on training
Reduction in overhead costs of hard copy paper management
Beneficial in the competitive market
Helps you focus on other business issues
Gives you higher return on your investment
Gets benefits of updated technology and management
Why should companies invest in Cad Conversion?
As the marketplace evolves and technology benefits start affecting the bottom-line of a company, it is only beneficial to adopt innovative technologies to help businesses grow. Advantages of time, quality of work, reduction in costs are reasons enough for a company to throw away blueprints and adopt CAD. The fact that most production machinery gathers its design information from CAD is another contributing factor leading to CAD conversions.
