The Influence Of CAD On Society

Before computers there were hands and tools. Before hands and tools there were just hands. Humans have always been designing and throughout human history drafting is what became of it. With new technology in building during the earlier years drafting needed to be changed to accommodate it. Humans have always been able to find better ways to accomplish things. Drafting is no different.

Before people used tools to draw something they went to what we call now a “General Contractor” with an idea and he had to come up with the rest. After a while the contractors wanted more. Just an idea wasn’t enough for them. Their clients sometimes wouldn’t like what they had built for them. So eventually the contractors asked the clients to tell them exactly what they wanted. Since it was hard to sketch accurately, tools were developed to aid them in drawing. This enabled the client to show the contractor exactly what he wanted.

As the population grew rapidly the demands for faster and more accurate plans did also. Once again drafters looked for a new way to draw. They decided to turn to the computer. In the 1950s MIT discovered the capability to display a computer-generated image on the screen (Zandi, 5). Up until the mid to late 1970s drafters used this technology just for mathematical calculations (Goetsch, 23). Then they discovered that the computer could be used to display more than just numbers. They found that they could use it to draw on. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that this new technology caught on (Goetsch, 23). Drafters found that using computers was much quicker, more accurate, and much neater than hand drawn plans. They had found their solution, Computer Aided Drafting and Design or CADD.

Now that CADD has found it way into drafting it has been improving upon drafting greatly over the past 20 years. Today nearly all firms use CAD (Friedman). It has changed the way people go about their drawing and designing process. The variety of new programs has made everything more accurate, there are many more ways to think towards a problem, and the process of fast tracking has come about. It has changed the society in many ways.

Whether using CADD or drawing a project traditionally, drafters always start off with a sketch. When brainstorming ideas i...

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... in the office (Friedman). People sometimes have conflicting ways to go about something but in the end it all looks the same (Friedman).

The human beings’ inherent slowness and inaccuracy in performing manual drafting tasks such as lettering, line work, and scale work, coupled with the ever increasing demands for higher levels of productivity, led to the wide scaled development of CADD (Zandi, 4). Drafting has been influence by CADD over the years and so has technology. The more we can do by drafting the more we can accomplish technologically. CADD has allowed us to accomplish these things. It devises a different way of thinking. (Friedman) And like the railroad, electric light, or the car it will eventually alter our economic structures, our social systems, and our daily living. IBM’s best thinking on this matter is that the computer did not turn out to be primarily a computational mechanism but is for many different things (Zandi, 22). CADD allowed us to design something as complex as a skyscraper and it allows us to create many other complex things. (Grad, 17) Many things are still to come of CADD can we can only await to see how it will change or society and our drafters more.