Post by thomasallencummins on Jun 26, 2007 11:30:57 GMT -5
Computer Aided Drafting has been a primary part of my job since 1990 or thereabouts. In those days, in the land surveying business, CAD was used but its effectiveness was still under debate by old timers that saw the technology as a hindrance to getting real work done. The computers upon which we ran the software were 386/486 caliber machines that by today's standards were about as powerful as your average wrist watch. My first bit of CAD software was Autocad Release 10 and its Coordinate Geometry package DCA for Release 10. Most of the basics of todays Autocad was available in the early versions although the software ran on basic DOS 6.0 and was a bit clumsy in performance. The old machines and software had a difficult time displaying images so every so often you were required to "regen" or regenerate the image by entering a command. The entire visual display within your work environment would be re created and sometimes at a very very very slow rate. I would sometimes joke that you had time to read the sports section of the newspaper before the regen was completed. As the years went by upgrades in computer technology and software gradually pushed CAD to the state it is today. Comparatively lightning fast computers and more full featured and efficient software that make the job of drafting/rendering/calculating far easier than we could have ever hoped for back in the day.
