Mechanical engineering companies are increasingly reliant on CAD CAM services. CAD CAM refers to computer aided design and manufacture, i.e. the design and production of mechanically engineered products using computer software.
With mechanically engineered hardware commonly incorporating embedded firmware, fibre optics and printed circuit boards, the distinction between mechanical design and electronic engineering has become very blurred, which is why the term mechatronics was coined. Also known as multidisciplinary design optimization, or MDO, it describes how far we’ve come in the last few years.
In the 1980s, engineering students laboriously sketched out designs using old-fashioned technical drawing and drafting tools. While this skill is still a useful one to learn, it has largely been superseded by CAD drawing software.
Mechanical CAD has revolutionized the engineering world; the design is no longer limited to contours and measurements on paper. Linked to other computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools, complex analysis can be performed on proposed designs, which can be animated, shown in 3D and even placed under real-life simulations. Advanced analytical algorithms in fields like computational fluid dynamics and fatigue analysis allow engineers to explore new possibilities in design. With ever more advanced software appearing, engineers are coming up with innovative solutions to what would once have been insurmountable design problems.
However, all these new developments have to be learned, and many of those engineers who qualified in the 1980s are finding things moving just a bit too fast for them, which is why we at Enventure Technologies offer a full range of manufacturing support solutions, from initial concepts to realisation of final designs.
