The CAD Design Process

This article explains about the CAD design software process. In the past twenty years, interactive computer implementation, combined usage of integrated computer hardware and software known as CAD technology has had a serious impact on the drafting, design and manufacturing processes. In a market economy, product development will be in response to a perceived market or customers' need, and this need will be identified by marketing specialists who will eventually express it in the form of a design brief. This design brief will be the basis for the subsequent product development. Subsequently, the product goes through two main processes from the idea conceptualization to the finished product, which is the CAD design software process and the manufacturing process.

On the other hand, synthesis and analysis are the main subprocesses that constitute the design process. Synthesis is as crucial to design as analysis. The philosophy, functionality, and uniqueness of the product are all a direct result of the synthesis. The major financial commitments to turn the conceived product idea into reality are also made here. The ultimate goal of the synthesis subprocess is a conceptual design of the respective product.

With CAD software, the conceptual design can be presented as geometrical model inside the computer and thus geometric modeling must also be regarded as corresponding to the shynthesis phase. To use geometric modeling, the designer constructs the graphical image of the object on his monitor by inputting three types of commands to the computer. The first type of command generates basic geometric elements such as points, lines, circles, splines. The second command type is used to accomplish scaling, rotation, or other transformations of these elements. The third type of command causes the various elements to be joined together into the desired shape of the object. During the CAD design software process, the computer converts the commands into a mathematical model, stores it in the computer files, and displays it as an image on the screen.

When designing a given item with CAD software, some analysis is required. The analysis begins with an attempt to put the conceptual design in the context of the abstracted engineering science, to evaluate the performance of the expected product. This needs design modeling as well as simulation. The design analysis could include strain calculations, heat-transfer computations, or the use of differential equations to describe the dynamic behavior of the system being designed. The computer can be used to aid in this analysis work.

Perhaps the most powerful analysis feature of a CAD system is the finite-element method. With this technique, the object is divided into a large number of finite elements (usually rectangular or triangular shapes), which form an interconnecting network of concentrated nodes. By using a computer with significant computational capabilities, the entire object can be analyzed for stress-strain, heat transfer, and other characteristics by calculating the behavior of each node. Then by estimating the interrelating behaviors of all nodes in the system, the behavior of the entire object can be assessed.