Advantages of CAD Drafting over Manual Drafting

Computer Aided Design (CAD) has been a real breakthrough in the AEC industry by becoming the primary source of communicating design intent. Before the advent of CAD, the only source for draftsmen was pencil and paper for drawing sketches. The traditional method of manual drafting is iterative and time-consuming. However, now there has been a paradigm shift from traditional manual drafting to cad design and drafting.

The top 5 advantages of CAD Drafting over Manual Drafting are:

Better Quality Designs

The CAD software provides great tools for design professions that will help in carrying out design and analysis of a proposed design. These tools also help in producing designs with high accuracies like in Shop Drawings and the scope for errors is much lower when compared to hand drawing. The higher accuracy will lead to better designs and these better designs help in manufacturing faster. Manual design not only takes more time but the errors caused will delay the process in overall.

Easy Saving and Sharing

All the designs and drawings created with the help of CAD can be easily saved for future use and reference. With unique features, creating a design once is enough and there is no need to redesign it again. These saved drawings can also be printed whenever required. Some components from the drawing can also be standardized for future uses. Another advantage is that these drawings can be stored easily like in the hard drive, USB pen drive or cloud. On the downside, the digital data can be corrupted if not protected safely which eventually puts all the work under danger.

 Replication of Designs

With CAD software, you can create as many copies of a design as you like. This is a huge advantage over manual drafting. If designs need to be shared with multiple departments, for example, or handed over to another product designer, being able to replicate your designs exactly is vitally important.

3D Views

Another advantage that CAD has over manual drafting is the ability to look at your drawings in 3D. While you can try to make 3D drawings, they typically will not be as realistic as what you can see on CAD. When you use CAD, you can bring your drawings to life and help your clients see what they will be getting from a project. It helps with the visualization process and makes your drawings appear more realistic.

CAD Designs can be Modified Quickly.

Modifying a CAD design for, say, the second generation of a product, can be done quickly and easily. What’s more, all your modifications can be tracked and saved in the file. That means a lower chance of modifications being lost or forgotten. Lost or unnoticed modifications can create huge costs and time disadvantages for companies, so any method that reduced the chance of this happening is something worth considering.

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