Is CAD Computer-Aided Drafting, or Computer- Aided Design?
Some prefer “CADD” as being all-encompassing. Maybe both terms have had their day and are almost as ridiculous as “pencil-aided drawing” or “calculator-aided computations.” Simply put, CAD is computer graphics associated with design or engineering tasks. Drawings are a common part of technical communication. Even people who don’t consider themselves “technical” often use a pencil on the back of an envelope to describe a situation better and faster with a picture than with words. CAD is a way to create technical drawings. In the simplest case, a CAD drawing might just be series of lines without any unseen intelligence. It could just as easily include solutions resulting from complex engineering computations and link group of lines to non-graphic data. The difference between a CAD program and a common drawing program (such as Windows Paint) is defined by five criteria: • Vector Graphics Drawing entities are defined by their mathematical properties (which include vectors). The displayed l
