COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN

DPL Engineering has access to the latest Computer Aided Design (CAD) software and can offer a wide range of services at an affordable price.

Do you have old or broken components / assemblies? We can take the existing components and fully measure and draw them. From this information, replacements can be manufactured to exacting standards, using quality raw materials. This can all be done to very demanding time-scales. When required, we will work overnight and through the weekend to get that vital job complete.

Do you only have rough sketches or just ideas? We can convert these ideas into virtual computer models to check for correct function and make sure there are no clashes. Fully detailed drawings can then be generated. This all happens before anything is machined, eliminating costly scrap items. On approval of the design, the electronic data is utilised to program the machine tool direct, eliminating any chance of errors.

We can also assist and advise on part design with regard to "machiniblity". Put simply, the machinibility is how easy and quick a part will be to produce. By reducing the actual machining time and by using suitable cutters, significant cost savings can be made.

Computer-aided design

Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computer technology for the design of objects, real or virtual. The design of geometric models for object shapes, in particular, is often called computer-aided geometric design (CAGD).

However CAD often involves more than just shapes. As in the manual drafting of technical and engineering drawings, the output of CAD often must convey also symbolic information such as materials, processes, dimensions, and tolerances, according to application-specific conventions.

CAD may be used to design curves and figures in two-dimensional ("2D") space; or curves, surfaces, or solids in three-dimensional ("3D") objects.

CAD is an important industrial art extensively used in many applications, including automotive, shipbuilding, and aerospace industries, industrial and architectural design, prostethics, and many more. CAD is also widely used to produce computer animation for special effects in movies, advertising, technical manuals. The modern ubiquity and power of computers means that even perfume bottles and shampoo dispensers are designed using techniques unheard of by shipbuilders of 1960s. Because of its enormous economic importance, CAD has been a major driving force for research in computational geometry, computer graphics (both hardware and software), and discrete differential geometry

Computer Aided Design: Front Nose

Produced by Solid Modelling

Computer-Aided Design

Computer-Aided Design is an established international journal that provides engineers, designers and computer scientists in academia and industry with key papers on research and developments in the application of computers to the design process.

Computer-Aided Design invites papers reporting new research and novel or particularly significant applications within a wide range of topics, including:

• CAD in conceptual design
• Design automation and optimization
• AI in design
• Geometric methods and applied computational geometry
• Surface and solid modelling
• Parametric, constraint-based, and feature modelling
• CAD interfaces to testing and analysis, including finite-element methods
• Design and planning for manufacturing, including numerical control, rapid prototyping and robotics
• Design and planning for assembly, maintainability, recycling etc
• Engineering data management and exchange, including design databases, component selection, product models, and life-cycle modelling
• Space and facilities planning and layout
• CAD user interfaces, including computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality
• Significant benchmarks, APIs, formats and standards in CAD

Contributions are acceptable across a wide range of disciplines, including:

• Mechanical and production engineering
• Civil engineering, architecture and building
• Industrial and aesthetic design

Papers in areas such as electrical and chemical engineering are also welcome provided they have a significant geometric component, and present developments likely to be of interest across other areas of CAD; Computer-Aided Design does not cover topics such as logic and process design.

Types of Papers

Ideal research papers will report significant developments, describe the relevant theoretical background, present a workable algorithm and give examples taken from real applications, stressing the practicality of the approach being presented.
Application papers will present the results of using a CAD technique in practice, present ground-breaking results and/or analyse the application in a way that is likely to stimulate and influence research.
Review papers are encouraged. They should give genuine insight into specific areas of CAD research and development.