Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Decades later, it turns out that Microsoft, Apple, and Autodesk gambled
correctly on microcomputing. As the tidal wave of low-cost desktop computing
swept over the landscape in the 1990s, MicroCAD (now renamed AutoCAD)
and other commercial computer-aided design software rode along on its
momentum. Even a run-of-the-mill cell phone these days has more comput-
ing and visual display capacity than a 1970s mainframe computer.
Today Autodesk is a billion-dollar global company. More than 10 million
copies of AutoCAD have been sold. The days of “word processing for draw-
ings” are history; modern AutoCAD is a powerful design tool that models in
three dimensions.
Keeping track of x, y, and z coordinates
Design software must seamlessly capture the continuous and geometric essence
of the analog physical world and reduce it into discrete binary units. World-
renowned physicist Richard Feynman recalled in his memoir a conversation
that captured this non-symbolic, non-verbal nature of geometry:
One time, we were discussing something—we must have been eleven
or twelve at the time—and I said, “But thinking is nothing but talk-
ing to yourself.”
“Oh, yeah?” Bennie said, “Do you know the crazy shape of the
crankshaft in a car?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“Good. Now tell me: how did you describe it when you were talking
to yourself?”
2
Feynman makes a good point. The human mind's eye perceives the shape,
composition and behavior of the physical world as a collection of an ininite
continuum of differently shaped objects. But reducing all of this information
into a workable set of symbols that can be re-described to someone else is a
challenge.
Design software must reduce our ambiguous and varied physical world
into a precise unambiguous “language.” Early computers quickly surpassed
humans when it came to calculating and keeping track of symbols such as
numbers or text. However, it has taken decades and great gains in available
computing power to process raw geometry.
