Development history of CAD

Up to now, CAD technology has gone through more than 50 years. Throughout the whole development process of CAD, it can be divided into five stages:

(1) In the initial preparation stage, 1959, at a planning meeting held at MIT in February, the concept of CAD was clearly put forward.

(2) In the experimental stage, in 1962, Sutherland, a doctoral student in Lincoln Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published the paper "Sketchpad Man-Machine Interactive Graphic System", which first proposed new ideas of computer graphics, interactive technology and hierarchical storage data structure, and realized the design method of man-machine combination. 1964, General Motors and IBM successfully developed the DAC-I system which applied CAD technology to the linear design of automobile front glass. This is the first time that CAD is used in a specific object system, and the development speed of CAD has developed rapidly since then.

(3) In the stage of technology commercialization, CAD technology was applied in 1970s, and software companies developing CAD technology began to emerge in endlessly from 2D technology to 3D technology.

(4) the stage of rapid development. Since 1980s, CAD technology has entered a stage of rapid development. With the rapid development of science and technology, the cost of computers has obviously decreased, while the functions of computer software and hardware have improved, and the price has fallen instead of rising, so that the hardware configuration and software development of CAD can meet the affordability of small and medium-sized enterprises, and CAD technology is no longer monopolized by large enterprises. 1982, Autodesk company introduced AutoCAD, a computer-aided design and drawing software system, and then updated the version several times to improve the system functions, which had a great impact on the development of CAD.

(5) In the stage of overall popularization, since 1990s, CAD technology has been widely used in the field of design and has become an important design tool in the engineering field.