THE FUTURE AND THE EVOLUTION OF CAD （未来和CAD的进化）.pdf

14th International Research/Expert Conference ”Trends in the Development of Machinery and Associated Technology” TMT 2010, Mediterranean Cruise, 11-18 September 2010 THE FUTURE AND THE EVOLUTION OF CAD Stefano Tornincasa Politecnico di Torino Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 10129 Torino, Italy Francesco Di Monaco Politecnico di Torino Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 10129 Torino, Italy ABSTRACT The Computer Aided Design has constantly evolved since its appearance at the beginning of 1960s. This work summarize the history of CAD and analyze the development perspectives. Particularly have been studied the actual main topics in CAD as the data transfer problem and the debate between feature based and direct modeling. It also has been studied the impact of new available technologies as touch-screen or multi-monitor in the way of design by computer. In the last part of this work a short comparison between CAD software has been proposed. Keywords: CAD history, future of CAD, CAD evolution 1. COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN EVOLUTION 1.1. CAD Chronology Although in 1957 Dr. Patrick J, Hanratty developed PRONTO, first numerical control programming tool, the father of CAD is usually considered Ivan Sutherland that in 1963 developed Sketchpad as part of his MIT PhD Thesis. In Sketchpad the user interacted with the software through a light pen on a large CRT monitor (it was very innovative, at that time computers ran only in batch mode using punched cards and magnetic tapes).