CAD paid my way for over 20 years, a good tool to have around. Free Cad History Book. On line pdf one chapter at a time. The Engineering Design Revolution Table of Contents (Just click on the chapter you want to read. Each is a separate PDF file) Chapter Forward by Dr. Joel Orr 1 Introduction 2 Brief Overview 3 Computer-Aided Design Strong Roots at MIT 4 Research in the Second Half of the 1960s 5 Civil Engineering Software Development at MIT 6 The First Commercial CAD System 7 Applicon 8 Autodesk and AutoCAD 9 Auto-trol Technology 10 Bentley Systems 11 Calma 12 Computervision 13 IBM/Lockheed/Dassault Systèmes 14 Intergraph 15 Patrick Hanratty and Manufacturing & Consulting Services 16 Parametric Technology Corporation 17 Structural Dynamics Research Corporation 18 SolidWorks 19 Siemens PLM Software (UGS) 20 Tom Lazear and VersaCAD 21 Miscellaneous Companies 22 Analysis Companies Appendix A Terminology Appendix B Bibliography
This is cool, I have been a CAD operator for about 20 years. Thanks, when I get more time I will read this.
I started in CAD way back with the Original Macintosh, using a Product called "Claris CADD" written by Apple... Had an Apple Pen Plotter, to print out my Drawings... Then Claris got sued for using code from Ashlar in the App, and lost in court, and part of the Settlement was Claris had to stop marketing their App, and Ashlar had to make their Program "Vellum" available for a small Fee to Customers who had Claris CADD.... I chose to do that UpGrade, and have continued with Ashlar Vellum ever since. It is a Top Notch CADD App, and i still use it today... All of the Drawings I have posted here, on the Monkey, were done in Vellum. I do a lot of Plat Mapping and Survey minipulations, and once I get a Plat Map into Velum, it is easy to manipulate the Data and precisely locate corners and Survey Points... I first learned Mechanical Drawing in 8th Grade, in a Jr High School Class... Hooked on it ever since...
I learned and use Auto Cad II for all machining and 3D printing! Super easy to use and set up, and easy to import to the tool station when ready!
I hate to show my age but I remember when all dwgs were done by the draftsmen. When I owned my first machine shop, we had punch tapes. Next was AutoCad with serial interface to the machine and now SolidWorks which I love. It saves so much time updating details of the assembly and allows a 3D view that can be manipulated. It took me a long time to be able to "see" a part based on the dwg only but with SolidWorks, it jumps right off the page. Its amazing how manufacturing has progressed in a "few short years." Of course, the program is only as good as the designer and the machine operation is only as good as the setup but with pallet machines, you can load 20 tombstones and produce parts at a rate that would have been incomprehensible 20 years ago. However, with all these innovations, we have lost the skills so many real "tool makers." Once the program is loaded, all we have now are button pushers.
I have to assume that I was first involved with the love of electronic drafting by way of the books I near purloined from my local Liberian's control. You see I was a consummate reader at a early age and always looked for the best way to help around our place. Some of that help involved making prints by hand for the Hot Rod world which was a major part of my family's business. Grease and prints never worked well together so when I read of a way to be a drafter using electronics I could hardly wait for those good times to come. Below was my first exposure to what was to become AutoCad. Yes the Librarian in my town thought my choice of books were too advanced for my age!!!! The book was more than just SciFi for it had real world electronics and hardware in a system that took over the world of manual drafting.. The Door into Summer: Robert A. Heinlein: 9780345330123: Amazon ... https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345330129/?tag=survivalmonke-20. Not only was the book a good read but it was a lesson in life and told the world of business, theft of services as well as theft of intellectual property and of course the hazards trusting your partner and girl friend too much. Not a bad read for a 10 year old to use as a basis for the new world to come. The review below is a pretty good one. The Door Into Summer Review – Robert Heinlein Posted on January 13, 2010 by Andrew Kaufman Rating: 4.0/5 (1 vote cast) Summary | Review | Buy Like most of Robert Heinlein’s protagonists, the main character of The Door into Summer is a thinly veiled reflection of Heinlein himself. Much like his creator, inventor and engineer Daniel Boone Davis is a rugged individualist and scientific thinker. And while at times Heinlein may use Daniel as a means to pontificate on his own theories and insights on various topics, he more than makes up for it by sending him along on a fast-moving, ingeniously plotted and ultimately satisfying tale of betrayal, revenge and time travel. What starts out as a simple case of backstabbing and corporate intrigue, eventually turns into a time-bending story of one man’s attempt to get back what was taken from him. While some critics and fans have expressed discomfort at the romantic elements of the novel (which involve Daniel’s friendship with an emotionally mature 11 year old named Ricky), I don’t personally have a problem with them. In the end, Heinlein cleverly uses time travel to mitigate the age difference. In fact, compared with some of Heinlein’s other works, this is relatively tame stuff and shouldn’t keep you from enjoying the book. The Door Into Summer Summary: When we first meet Daniel, he’s been drinking for a while – drunk and despondent at losing control of the company he founded with his business partner Miles Gentry, Hired Girl Inc. While the company specialized in robot vacuum cleaners, Daniel was hard at work on an all-purpose household robot, tentatively named Flexible Frank. Through flashbacks we learn that Daniel was hoodwinked by the company’s beautiful and manipulative secretary, Belle, into giving her just enough stock in the company to team up with Miles to gain complete control. After objecting to the sale of the company to a large corporation, including the rights to Frank, Daniel is given a large financial settlement and fired as the chief engineer of the company. In his grief, he decides to take the “cold sleep,” a form of suspended animation, in the hopes of awakening into a better future with the value of his stock in the company having multiplied. Unfortunately, the doctors at the sleep facility won’t let him make the decision while drunk. After sobering up and mailing his stock certificate to the one person he knows he can trust, Miles’ 11-year old stepdaughter Frederica “Ricky” Gentry, he unwisely decides to confront Belle and Miles in their home. After injecting Dan with a drug that makes him temporarily complacent and docile, they go about forging documents giving the corporation ownership over his remaining shares. Their final act of betrayal is to put Dan into cold sleep anyways so that he can’t cause them anymore trouble. Dan wakes up 30 years later with no friends, no money, and almost nothing to live for…except revenge. The Door Into Summary Review: I won’t spoil the fun of learning exactly how Dan exacts his ingenious revenge. I will say, however, that Heinlein’s use time travel paradoxes to foreshadow and then reveal how Dan manages to reinvent and re-imagine his own timeline is a thing of beauty. While his ability to understand complex engineering details and causality paradoxes and seamlessly weave them into his stories makes his a master of Hard Sci-Fi, his ability to use those concepts in the service of a compelling story is what truly sets him apart from almost every other science fiction writer in history.
Does anybody have a favorite CAD package that runs on Linux? My needs are simple two dimensional design. This is one a small hand full of things keeping me from tossing Windows into the scrap pile.
