To promote the use of Computer Aided Designing (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) technology in country's industrial sector, Technology Upgradation and Skill Development Company (Tusdec) is planning to set up centres in different industrial towns of the country to impart training to the youth in the emerging technologies.
Initially, those centres would be set up in Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore, Hyderabad, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Sialkot and Quetta to help producing skilled manpower, much needed to manufacture quality products in a cost-effective manner with an ultimate aim of increasing country's exports, sources in the Company told Business Recorder here on Friday.
The project was still in preparatory stage but hopefully work would be launched on those centers in two months time, the sources added.
They further said the use of the computer-aided designing and manufacturing had totally revolutionised the industrial sector across the world. The major dividends of the digital manufacturing are the improved quality of the products especially the engineering goods and the cost-effectiveness.
"No doubt, the use of CAD/CAM software in industrial activity is seen in all the developed and emerging economies of the world. Yet very few industries in Pakistan are making use of this vital technology, mainly due to non-availability of skilled manpower trained in the CAD and CAM," the sources added.
In Pakistan, some public sector organisations like Pakistan Industrial Technical Assistance Centre (Pitac) and a number of private sector firms, especially in the engineering sector, are using this technology for the last few years.
Yet there was a need for promoting that technology instead of creating islets of state-of-the-art technology in the ocean of obsolete technology and skills, the sources said.
The sources maintained that before the CAD/CAM technology, drafts, calculations and product design involved pencil, paper and a seemingly endless succession of blueprints. The CAD/CAM's use has made the process easier.
In the developed world, virtually ever manmade product is being designed and manufactured using a CAD/CAM programme. The CAD/CAM is utilised in every facet of industry from designing phones to plotting out tool paths in die and mold shops.
Throwing light on the history of CAD/CAM development, the sources averred that the CAD/CAM technology was developed in the United States in 1950s. The first computer actually rendering such a programme was conceived at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In 1960, computer scientists at the MIT produced yet another project called Sketchpad, an application that is now considered to be the first design programme with industrial use. A similar programme sprouted up at General Motors soon after. At that time, mainframes were still large enough to take up entire rooms.
During the 1960's the CAD/CAM technology continued to evolve and spread to other areas. Automotive companies were the first to adopt the technology, and used it primarily to design automobile bodies. It then quickly spread to other sectors of the industry, which were only too eager to abandon traditional pen and paper methods of drafting.
By 1973, the CAD/CAM was being used to design industrial tools. Midway through the decade, the 19-inch monitor came out, which meant that drawings could be viewed larger than the previous standard of 11 inches. In the last half of the 70's, solid modelling software became available. It allowed users to take "geometric primitives" (basic geometric shapes such as boxes and cones) and combine them using Boolean operations.
In 1982, Auto desk made CAD/CAM history when it released the first version of AutoCAD, which soon became the premiere software platform for automobile design.
During the early 1990s, Unigraphics introduced hybrid modelling, which featured both traditional modelling and advanced parametric techniques. By the end of 1994, over one million units of AutoCAD had been sold, and by the end of 1995, there were about 350,000 users of generic CAD/CAM reported world-wide.
In 1996, General Motors signed the largest contract in CAD/CAM's history by selecting Unigraphics as its sole vendor for vehicle development software. Soon afterwards, Unigraphics would once again transform the medium by releasing CAD/CAM software that allowed for the definition, control and evaluation of product templates.
Another major advance in the CAD/CAM occurred in 1999 when Think3, a "Johnny-come-lately" to the world of CAD/CAM, introduced the first mechanical design software that could fully combine the power of parametric solids, advanced surfacing, wire frame and two-dimensional drafting on the desktop in one environment.
Subsequently, a plethora of software vendors has surfaced, inundating the market with competing the CAD/CAM platforms and causing designers to be alternately pleased and confused by the sheer number of options available to them.
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