Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Design software,
the digital canvas
Design software shapes our world. Behind almost every architectural model,
product prototype, and completed product lies a computer design file.
The chair you are sitting on, the stapler on your desk, your car, even the but-
tons in your shirt were digital before they became physical. Computer design
files are the language of modern engineering.
Design software is the heartbeat of 3D printing. Like the pencil and paper
hand drawings that guided Victorian shipbuilders through the construction
process, a design ile tells a 3D printer how to print.
A word processor for drawing
The irst crude, primitive computer-based design tools appeared in the 1950s
and were used by researchers and scientists for specialized calculations and
crude computer-based simulations. Early commercial design software came
onto the market in the 1960s and cost about $500,000 (sold by a company
called Control Data Corporation). When I was an undergraduate, we envied
the PhDs who “got time” on a CDC mainframe. This gigantic computer took
a minute to render a design model, something your cell phone can run thirty
times a second.
In 1982, John Walker, the CEO of a small software company called Autodesk
wrote an internal memo to his employees. He described his vision for a radical
new design software product. He passionately pitched this new product as a
low-cost “word processor for drawings” that would run on a microcomputer.
At about the same time a few thousand miles away, Chuck Hull was fabricat-
ing the world's irst crude 3D printed objects.
