Methods
Computer-Aided Design
Also Known As CAD
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Computer-aided design is the use of computer software to create, analyze and document engineering and architectural designs in place of hand drafting. Ivan Sutherland built the first widely recognized system, Sketchpad, in 1963 as part of his PhD research at MIT, running it on the Lincoln Laboratory TX-2 computer and letting a user draw, store, duplicate and recall line drawings directly on a screen with a light pen rather than typing coordinates. Sutherland described the aim as letting a person and a computer converse rapidly through the medium of line drawings, and Sketchpad is generally recognized as the first computer-aided drafting program and an early ancestor of the graphical user interface. Commercial CAD systems followed from the 1970s onward as computing costs fell, replacing drafting tables across mechanical, electrical and architectural engineering, and CAD models are now the starting point for methods such as finite element analysis and additive manufacturing.
Facts
Core PrincipleRepresent a design as a structured digital model, geometry, dimensions and constraints a computer can store, recompute and check, rather than as fixed marks on a drawing. 1 Origin Year1963 is when Ivan Sutherland demonstrated Sketchpad at MIT, generally recognized as the first computer-aided design program. Cross-Tradition Connections
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Sutherland's 1963 Sketchpad, described in his MIT PhD thesis, is the founding program in the interactive-graphics lineage that grew into modern computer-aided design.
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