ADVANCES IN CAD/CAM WORKSTATIONS

To understand what we know and be aware of what is to be known is a necessary approach to treating CAD/CAM issues. The challenge for all of us interested in CAD/CAM and engineering data handling is to under­ stand what we know and what we need to know about today’s and tomorrow’s technology, to track the explosive development of our field and its broadening range of applications, to sort through the details which compete for our attention, and to perceive underlying trends. A key development in the past year was the rapid and widespread acceptance by all user segments of personal computer-based CAD/CAM workstations, coupled with widespread use of software packages, both those developed for PC-based workstations and others converted from main­ frame and mini systems for use on PC-based or 32-bit workstations. If this trend continues for a few more years, as much as 900/0 of all design work may be accomplished on advanced versions of PC-based workstations. Many software systems vendors unknown until recently to the PC-based CAD/CAM community have now come to dominate the market-companies such as Autodesk, Chessell-Robocom, Future Net, T&W Systems, P-CAD, Cascade, 4-D Graphics, CADAM, Wang & Hornbuckle, and more than 20 other companies who sell PC-based CAD/CAM software.