Computer-aided Drawing and Design

Book excerpt: This book is intended for engineers, computer scientists, managers and all those concerned with computer graphics, computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacture. While it is primarily intended for students, lecturers and teachers, it will also appeal to those practising in industry. Its emphasis on applications will make it easier for those not currently concerned with computers to under stand the basic concepts of computer-aided graphics and design. In a previous text (Engineering Drawing and Computer Graphics), two of the authors introduced the basic principles of engineering drawing and showed how these were related to the fundamentals of computer graphics. In this new text, the authors attempt to give a basic understanding of the principles of computer graphics and to show how these affect the process of engineering drawing. This text therefore assumes that the reader already has a basic knowl edge of engineering drawing, and aims to help develop that understanding through the medium of computer graphics and by the use of a number of computer graphics exercises. The text starts by giving an overview of the basics of hardware and software for CAD and then shows how these principles are applied, in practice, in the use of a number of graphics packages of different levels of complexity. The use of a graphical database and the implications for computer-aided design and manufacture are also discussed. This book is unique in its applications approach to computer graphics.