CAD, CAD/CAM, CAE and Integrated Systems - an Overview

The development of numerical control, interactive computer graphics and finite element analysis has spawned an overabundance of new acronyms to describe the application of computers in the engineering and manufacturing environment. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of these technologies and describe how greater productivity improvement can be achieved via the synergistic benefits of integrating these diverse systems.

Discussions will be based largely on the Ford Motor engineering and manufacturing environment which includes not only the internally developed Ford graphics systems, but systems provided by every major turn-key graphics vendor. Evaluation of the Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) and communication of computer graphics data to Ford suppliers will also be discussed.