OVERVIEW OF CAD/CAM

What is CAD?

CAD if often defined in a variety of ways and includes a large range of activities. Very
broadly it can be said to be the integration of computer science (or software) techniques
in engineering design. At one end when we talk of modeling, iIt encompasses the
following:

Use of computers (hardware & software) for designing products

Numerical method, optimizations etc.

2D/3D drafting

3D modeling for visualization

Modeling curves, surfaces, solids, mechanism, assemblies, etc.

The models thus developed are first visualized on display monitors using avariety of
techniques including wire frame displa, shaded image display, hidden surface removed
display and so on. Once the designer is satisfied, these models are then used for various
types of analysis / applications. thus, at the other end it includes a number of analysis
activities. These could be:

Stress (or deflection) analysis, i.e. numerical methods meant for estimating the
behaviour of an artifact with respect to these parameters. It includes tools like
the Finite Element Method (FEM).

Simulation of actual use

Optimization

Other applications like

o CAD/CAM integration

o Process planning

These are activities which normally use models developed using one or more of the
techniques mentioned above. These activities are often included in other umbrellas like
CAM or CAE. A term often used is CAx to include this broad set of activities. They all use
CAD models and often the kind of application they have to be used ina determines the
kind of amodel to be developed. Hence, in this course I cover them under the umbrella
of CAD. In this course we will strive to give an overview of modelling techniques followed
by some applications, specifically CAM.

Thus there are three aspects to CAD.

Modeling
 Display/ Visualization

Applications

MODELING

Modelling typically includes a set of activities like

Defining objects

Defining relation between objects

Defining properties of objects

Defining the orientations of the objects in suitable co-ordinate systems

Modification of existing definition (editing)

The figure below explains what a typical CAD model would need to define, what kind of
entities need to be defined and what relationships exist between them.
At the highest level we have the volume which is defined by (or "delimited by") a set of
surfaces. These surfaces can be either planar or curved / warped. A planar surface can
be bounded by a set of curves. A curved surface can be seen as a net of curves. These
curves are typically a succession of curve segemnts which define the complete the curve.
The curve segment is defined using a set of end points / control points which govern the
nature of the curve. Thus a relation ship is defined between entities at each level.

Once such a relationship is defined, a geometric model of the artifact is available. In any
design there might be manysuch artifacts. One then has to define properties of each of
these artifacts and define a relationship between them. The properties and the
relationships needed are dependant on the application the model is to be used for
subsequently. But one common application that all models have to go through is
visualization of the model (s).

DISPLAY / VISUALIZATION

Displaying the model requires the following:

 Mapping objects onto screen coordinates: Models are typically made in a model
coordinate system. this could be the world coordinate system, or a coordinate
system local to the object. these coordinate systems are typically three
dimensional in nature. To display the object on a 2D screen, the object
coordinates need to be mapped on to the 2D coordinate system of the screen.
This requires two steps:

o Viewing transformations: The coordinates of the object are transformed in

a manner as if one is looking at the object through the screen. This
coordinate system is referred to as the viewing coordinate system.

o Projections: The object in the viewing coordinate system is then projected

onto the two dimensional plane of the screen.

Surface display or shading / rendering: In displaying the objects on the screen

one often likes to get a shaded display of the object and get a good feel of the
three dimensional shape of the object. This requires special techniques to render
the surface based on its shape, lighting conditions and its texture.

Hidden line removal when multiple surfaces are displayed: In order to get a
proper feel of the three dimensional shape of an object, one often desires that the
lines / surfaces which are not visible should not be displayed. this is referred to as
hidden line / surface removal.

Once a model is visualized on the screen and approved by the conceptual designer, it has
to go through a number of analysis. Some of the kinds of usage this model might have
to go through are the following:

Estimating stresses / strains / deflections in the objects under various static

loading conditions

Estimating the same under dynamic loading conditions

Visualizing how a set of objects connected together would move when subject to
external loading. This leads to a whole set of activities under simulation. These
activities would vary depend upon the application the object is to be subject to.

Optimizing the objects for

Developing 2D engineering drawings of the object

Developing a process plan of the object

Manufacturing the object using NC / CNC machines and generating the programs
for these machines so as to manufacture these objects.

Having given the overview of the kind of activties that can come under the umbrella of
CAD the uses these CAD models can be put to, I know highlight what aspects of these
would be covered in this course. Needless to say, all these activities would be well
beyond the scope of one single course. Therefore this course, which is targeted to give
an overview of CAD and its applications would include the following:

1. An overview of the hardware systems used in CAD

 2. 2D and 3D transformations used to shift between coordinate systems

3. Projection transformation used to get the object in screen coordinate systems

4. Modeling of curves and surfaces

5. Modeling of solids

VIDEO DISPLAY DEVICES

Typically, the primary output device in a graphics system is a video monitor(Fig.below). The
operation of most video monitor is based on the standard cathode-ray tube(CRT) design.

Refresh Cathode-Ray Tubes:-

Refresh Cathode-Ray Tubes

Fig.below illustrates the basic operation of a CRT. A beam of electrons (cathode rays),
emitted by an electron gun, passes through focusing and deflection systems that direct
the beam towards specified position on the phosphor-coated screen. The phosphor
then emits a small spot of light at each position contacted by the electron beam.
Because the light emitted by the phosphor fades very rapidly, some method is needed
for maintaining the screen picture. One way to keep the phosphor glowing is to
redraw the picture repeatedly by quickly directing the electron beam back over the
same points. This type of display is called a refresh CRT.

The primary components of an electron gun in a CRT are the heated metal cathode
and a control grid (fig.below). Heat is supplied to the cathode by directing a current
through a coil of wire, called the filament, inside the cylindrical cathode structure.
This causes electrons to be boiled off the hot cathode surface. In the vacuum inside
the CRT envelope, negatively charged electrons are then accelerated toward the
phosphor coating by a high positive voltage. The accelerating voltage can be
generated with a positively charged metal coating on the in side of the CRT envelope
near the phosphor screen, or an accelerating anode can be used, a in fig below .
Sometimes the electron gun is built to contain the accelerating anode and focusing
system within the same unit.

Spots of light are produced on the screen by the transfer of the CRT beam energy to
the phosphor. When the electrons in the beam collide wit the phosphor coating , they
are stopped and there are stopped and their kinetic energy is absorbed by the
phosphor. Part of the beam energy s converted by friction into heat energy, and the
remainder causes electron in the phosphor atoms to move up to higher quantum-
energy levels. After a short time, the excited phosphor electrons begin dropping
back to their stable ground state, giving up their extra energy as small quantums of
light energy. What we see on the screen is the combined effect of all the electrons
light emissions: a glowing spot that quickly fades after all the excited phosphor
 electrons have returned to their ground energy level. The frequency ( or color ) of the
light emitted by the phosphor is proportional to the energy difference between the
excited quantum state and the ground state.

Different kinds of phosphor are available for use in a CRT. Besides color, a major
difference between phosphors is their persistence: how long they continue to emit
light ( that is, have excited electrons returning to the ground state ) after the CRT
beam is removed. Persistence is defined as the time it take the emitted light from the
screen to decay to one-tenth of its original intensity. Lower-persistence phosphors
require higher refresh rates to maintain a picture on the screen without flicker. A
phosphor with low persistence is useful for animation ; a high-persistence phosphor is
useful for displaying highly complex, static pictures. Although some phosphor have a
persistence greater than 1 second, graphics monitor are usually constructed with a
persistence in the range from 10 to 60 microseconds.

Raster-Scan Displays:-

Raster-Scan Displays

In a raster- scan system, the electron beam is swept across the screen, one row at a
time from top to bottom. As the electron beam moves across each row, the beam
intensity is turned on and off to create a pattern of illuminated spots. Picture definition
is stored in memory area called the refresh buffer or frame buffer. This memory
area holds the set of intensity values for all the screen points. Stored intensity values
are then retrieved from the refresh buffer and painted on the screen one row (scan
line) at a time (fig.below). Each screen point is referred to as a pixel or pel (shortened
forms of picture element).

Refreshing on raster-scan displays is carried out at the rate of 60 to 80 frames per

second, although some systems are designed for higher refresh rates. Sometimes,
refresh rates are described in units of cycles per second, or Hertz (Hz), where a cycle
corresponds to one frame. At the end of each scan line, the electron beam returns to
the left side of the screen to begin displaying the next scan line. The return to the left
of the screen, after refreshing each scan line, is called the horizontal retrace of the
electron beam. And at the end of each frame (displayed in 1/80th to 1/60th of a
second), the electron beam returns (vertical retrace)to the top left corner of the
screen to begin the next frame.

On some raster-scan systems (and in TV sets), each frame is displayed in two passes
using an interlaced refresh procedure. In the first pass, the beam sweeps across every
other scan line from top to bottom. Then after the vertical retrace, the beam sweeps
out the remaining scan lines(fig.below). Interlacing of the scan lines in this way
allows us to see the entire screen displayed in one-half the time it would have taken to
 sweep across all the lines at once from top to bottom.

Random-Scan Displays:-

Random-Scan Displays

Random scan monitors draw a picture one line at a time and for this reason are also
referred to as vector displays (or stroke-writing or calligraphic displays).The
component lines of a picture can be drawn and refreshed by a random-scan system in
any specified order .

Refresh rate on a random-scan system depends on the number of lines to be

displayed . Picture definition is now stored as a set of line-drawing commands in an
area of memory referred to as the refresh display file. Sometimes the refresh display
file is called the display list, display program, or simply the refresh buffer. To
display a specified picture, the system cycles through the set of commands in the
display file, drawing each component line in turn. After all line- drawing commands
have been processed, the system cycles back to the first line command in the list.
Random-scan displays are designed to draw al the component lines of a picture 30 to
60times each second.

Color CRT Monitors:-

 Color CRT Monitors

The beam penetration method for displaying color pictures has been used with
random-scan monitors. Two layers of phosphor, usually red and green, are coated on
to theinside of the CRT screen, and the displayed color depends on how far the
electron beam penetrates into the phosphor layers.

Shadow-mask methods are commonly used in raster-scan systems (including color

TV) because they produce a much wider range of color than the beam penetration
method. A shadow-mask CRT has three phosphor color dots at each pixel position.
One phosphor dot emits a red light, another emits a green light, and the third emits a
blue light. This type of CRT has three electron guns, one for each color dot, and a
shadow- mask grid just behind the phosphor coated screen.Fig.below illustrates the
delta-delta shadow-mask method, commonly used in color CRT systems. The three
electron beam are deflected and focused as a group onto the shadow mask, which
contains a series of holes aligned with the phosphor-dot patterns. When the three
beams pass through a hole in the shadow mask, they activate a dot triangle, which
appears as a small color spot the screen the phosphor dots in the triangles are arranged
so that each electron beam can activate only its corresponding color dot when it
passes through the shadow mask.

Flat-Panel Displays:-

Flat-Panel Displays
 The term flatpanel displays refers to a class of video devices that have reduced
volume, weight, and power requirements compared to a CRT. A significant feature of
flat-panel displayed is that they are thinner than CRTs, and we can hang themon walls
or wear them on our wrists.

We can separate flat-panel displays into two categories: emissive displays and
nonemissive displays. The emissive displays (or emitters) are devices that displays,
and light-emitting diodes are examples of emissive displays. Nonemissive displays( or
nonemitters) use optical effects to convert sunlight or light from some other source
into graphics patterns. The most important example of a nonemissive flat-panel
display is a liquid- crystal device.

Plasma panels, also called gas discharge displays, are constructed by filling the
region between two glass plates with a mixture of gases that usually include neon. A
series of vertical conducting ribbons is placed on one glass panel, and a set of
horizontal ribbons is built into the other glass panel (fig.below). Firing voltages
applied to a pair of horizontal and vertical conductors cause the gas at the intersection
of the of two conductors to break down into a glowing plasma of electrons and ions.
Picture definition is stored in a refresh buffer, and the firing voltages are applied to
refresh the pixel positions ( at the intersections of the conductors) 60 times per
second.

Another type of emissive device is the light-emitting diode (LED). A matrix of

diodes is arranged to form the pixel positions in the display, and picture defination is
stored in refresh buffer. As in scan- line refreshing of a CRT, information is read from
the refresh buffer and converted to voltage levels that are applied to the diodes to
produce the light patterns in the display.

Liquid- crystal displays (LCDs) are commonly used in systems, such as calculators
(fig.below) and portable, laptop computers (fig.below). These nonemissive devices
produce a picture by passing polarized light from the surrounding or from an internal
light source through a liquid- crystal material that can be aligned to either block or
transmit the light.

The term liquid crystal refers to the fact that these compounds have a crystalline
arrangement of molecules, yet they flow like a liquid . Flat-panel displays commonly
use nematic (threadlike) liquid-crystal compounds that tend to keep the long axes of
the rod-shaped molecules aligned. A flat-panel display can then be constructed with a
nematic liquid crystal, as demonstrated in fig. below. Two glass plates, each
containing a light polarizer at right angles to the other palate, sandwich the liquid-
crystal material. Rows of horizontal transparent conductors are built into one glass
plate, and columns of vertical conductors are put into the other plate. The intersection
of two conductors defines a pixel position. Normally, the molecules are aligned as
shown in the on stateof fig.below. Polarized light passing through the material is
twisted so that it witll pass through the opposite polarizer. The light is reflected back
to the viewer. To turn off the pixel, we apply voltage to the two intersecting
conductors to align the molecules so that the light is not twisted. This type of flat-
panel device is referred to as a passive matrix LCD. Picture definition are stored in a
 refresh buffer, and the screen is refreshed at the rate of 60 frames per second, as in the
emissive devices. Back lighting is also commonly applied using solid-state electronic
devices, so that the system is not completely dependent on outside light sources.
Colors can be displayed by using different materials or dyes and by placing a triad of
color pixels at each screen location. Another method for constructing LCDs is to place
a transistor at each pixel location, using thin-film transistor technology.

The transistors are used to control the voltage at pixel locations and to prevent charge
from gradually leaking out of the liquid-crystal cells. These devices are called active-
matrix displays.

INPUT DEVICES

Various devices are available for data input on graphics workstations. Most systems
have a keyboard and one or more additional devices specially designed for interactive
input. These include a mouse, trackball, spaceball, joystick, digitizers, dials, and
button boxes. Some other input devices used in particular applications are data gloves,
touch panels, image scanners, and voice systems.

Keyboards
An alphanumeric keyboard on a graphics system is used primarily as device for
entering text strings. The keyboard is an efficient device for inputting such nongraphic
data as picture labels associated with a graphics display. Keyboards can also be
provided with features to facilitate entry of screen coordinates, menu selections, or
graphics functions.

Mouse
A mouse is small hand-held box used to position the screen cursor. Wheels or rollers
on the bottom of the mouse can be used to record the amount and direction of
movement. Another method for detecting mouse motion is with an optical sensor,. For
these systems, the mouse is moved over a special mouse pad that has a grid of
horizontal and vertical lines. The optical sensor detects movement across the lines in
the grid.
Since a mouse can be picked up and put down at another position without change in
cursor movement, it is used for making relative changes in the position of the screen
cursor. One, two, or three buttons are usually included on the top of the mouse for
signaling the execution of some operation, such as recording cursor position or
invoking a function.

Joysticks
A joystick consists of a small, vertical lever (called the stick) mounted on a base that
is used to steer the screen cursor around. Most joysticks select screen positions with
actual stick movement; others respond to pressure on the stick. Figure below shows a
movable joystick. Some joysticks are mounted on a keyboard; others function as
stand-alone units.
Digitizers
A common device for drawing, painting, or interactively selecting coordinate
positions on an object is a digitizer. These devices can be used to input coordinate
values in either a two-dimensional or a three-dimensional space. Typically, a digitizer
is used to scan over a drawing or object and to input a set of discrete coordinate
positions, which can be joined with straight-line segments to approximate the curve or
surface shapes.

One type of digitizer is the graphics tablet (also referred to as a data tablet), which is
used to input two-dimensional coordinates by activating a hand cursor or stylus at
selected positions on a flat surface. A hand cursor contains cross hairs for sighting
positions, while a stylus is a pencil-shaped device that is pointed at positions on the
tablet. Figures below show examples of desktop and floor-model tablets, using hand
cursors that are available with 2, 4, or 16 buttons. Examples of stylus input with a
tablet are shown in Figs. Below. The artists digitizing system in Fig. below uses
electromagnetic resonance to detect the three-dimensional position of the stylus. This
allows an artist to produce different brush strokes with different pressures on the
tablet surface. Tablet size varies from 12 by 12 inches for desktop models to 44 by 60
inches or larger for floor models. Graphics tablets provide a highly accurate method
for selecting coordinate positions, with an accuracy that varies from about 0.2 mm on
desktop models to about 0.05 mm or less on larger models.
Many graphics tablets are constructed with a rectangular grid of wires embedded in
the tablet surface. Electromagnetic pulses are generated in sequence along the wires,
and an electric signal is induced in a wire coil in an activated stylus or hand cursor to
record a tablet position. Depending on the technology, either signal strength, coded
pulses, or phase shifts can be used to determine the position on the tablet.
 HARD-COPY DEVICES

We can obtain hard-copy output for our images in several formats. Eg: Dot matrix
printer, laser printer & inkjet printer are commonly used.

Drafting layouts and other drawings are typically generated with ink-jet or pen
plotters. A pen plotter has one or more pens mounted on a carriage, or crossbar, that
spans a sheet of paper. Pens with varying colors and widths are used to produce a
variety of shadings and line styles. Wet-ink, ball-point, and felt-tip pens are all
possible choices for use with a pen plotter. Plotter paper can lie flat or be rolled onto a
drum or belt. Crossbars can be either moveable or stationary, while the pen moves
back and forth along the bar. Either clamps, a vacuum, or an electrostatic charge hold
the paper in position. An example of a table-top flatbed pen plotter is given in Figure
 below, and a larger, rollfeed pen plotter is shown in Fig.below

2-D Composite Transformation:-

BASIC TRANSFORMATION

Animation are produced by moving the 'camera' or the objects in a scene along animation paths. Chang
and shape are accomplished with geometric transformations that alter the coordinate descriptions of the
geometric transformations are translation, rotation, and scaling. Other transformations that are often ap
include reflection and shear.

Use of transformations in CAD

In mathematics, "Transformation" is the elementary term used for a variety of operation such as rotatio
reflection, shearing etc. CAD is used throughout the engineering process from conceptual design and lay
engineering and analysis of components to definition of manufacturing methods. Every aspect of modeli
dependent on the transformation to view model from different directions we need to perform rotation op
object to a different location translation operation is done. Similarly Scaling operation is done to resize t

Coordinate Systems

In CAD three types of coordinate systems are needed in order to input, store and display model geomet
These are the Model Coordinate System (MCS), the World Coordinate System (WCS) and the Screen Co
(SCS).
Model Coordinate System
The MCS is defined as the reference space of the model with respect to which all the model geometrica
origin of MCS can be arbitrary chosen by the user.

World Coordinate System

As discussed above every object have its own MCS relative to which its geometrical data is stored. Incas
in the same working space then there is need of a World Coordinate System which relates each MCS to
respect to the orientation of the WCS. It can be seen by the picture shown below.
Screen Coordinate System
In contrast to the MCS and WCS the Screen Coordinate System is defined as a two dimensional device-d
system whose origin is usually located at the lower left corner of the graphics display as shown in the pi
transformation operation from MCS coordinates to SCS coordinates is performed by the software before
views and graphics.

Viewing Transformations

As discussed that the objects are modeled in WCS, before these object descriptions can be projected to
must be transferred to viewing coordinate system. The view plane or the projection plane, is set up perp
viewing zv axis. The World coordinate positions in the scene are transformed to viewing coordinates, the
coordinates are projected onto the view plane.
The transformation sequence to align WCS with Viewing Coordinate System is.
1. Translate the view reference point to the origin of the world coordinate system.
2. Apply rotations to align xv, yv, and zv with the world xw, yw and zw axes, respectively.