Peter D's Blog
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CAD software history CAD CAM computer aided design: "design and manufacture physical products ranging from buildings, bridges, roads, aircraft, ships and cars to digital cameras, mobile phones, TVs, clothes and of course computers! CAD software is often referred to as CAD CAM software ('CAM' is the acronym for Computer Aided Machining).
While he could never have foreseen today's CAD software, no CAD software history would be complete unless it started with the mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, who, in his 350 B.C. treatise on mathematics 'The Elements' expounded many of the postulates and axioms that are the foundations of the Euclidian geometry upon which today's CAD software systems are built.
It was more than 2,300 years after Euclid that the first true CAD software, a very innovative system (although of course primitive compared to today's CAD software) called 'Sketchpad' was developed by Ivan Sutherland as part oh his PhD thesis at MIT in the early 1960s. Sketchpad was especially innovative CAD software because the designer interacted with the computer graphically by using a light pen to draw on the computer's monitor. It is a tribute to Ivan Sutherland's ingenuity that even in 2004, when operations which took hours on 1960s computer technology can be executed in less than a millionth of a second and touch-sensitive TFT combination display/input devices are readily available, there is no leading CAD software that has yet incorporated such directness into its user interface.
Sketchpad was the world's first CAD software but the first commercial CAM software system, a numerical control programming tool named PRONTO, had already been developed in 1957 by Dr. Patrick J. Hanratty. For that reason it is Dr. Hanratty who is most often referred to as 'the father of CAD CAM'.
Due to the very high cost of early computers and to t"
