<![CDATA[<P>91The Military Engineer l No. 662
Historical Perspective
By Nicholai Kolesnikoff
A
milestone in the history of ar-
chitecture and engineering has
been reached. Improvements
in the technology and the cost of com-
puter aided design and drafting (CADD)
systems are beginning to restructure our
profession. Just as the computer caused
fundamental changes in other services
industries such as travel, publishing,
banking, and merchandising, the low-
cost, high-powered CADD systems are
revolutionizing architecture and engi-
neering practices.
Yesterday
The design process has remained
more or less the same for centuries. It
has supported an iterative view of de-
sign: sketch and draft, re?ne and re-
draft, and then decide and draft in ?nal
form, always beginning the drafting
from scratch. An architect or engineer
(A/E) expressed his ideas in sketches on
blank paper. These sketches were trans-
formed into drawings suitable for pre-
sentation to the client, again beginning
on blank sheets. The process continued
through many reiterations until the A/E
and client agreed on a design.
Stagnation in the design process
was often overshadowed by advances
in production technology. T-squares
and triangles gave way to parallel rules
and drafting machines. New erasable
materials were developed and overlay
techniques for details and backgrounds
became popular. Reproduction technol-
ogy advanced. Finally, computer aided
drafting caused draftsmen to return
to school to learn how to control cur-
sors on CRTs with menus and mouses.
Draftsmen have become operators.
But even the introduction of automa-
tion did not immediately change the ac-
tual design process. The preparation of
working drawings began with a hand-
off from the A/E to a production team
which simply started with blank screens
Computer Aided Design
Breaks Through
Adapted from:
The Military Engineer
Vol. 76, No. 497
January-February 1984
Editors Note: The following is selected material from Computer Aided Design
Breaks Through, which ?rst appeared in the November-December 1984 issue of The
Military Engineer.
As the articles in this issues Design & Construction feature demonstrate, the preva-
lence of building information modeling (BIM) in the A/E/C industry has perhaps
never been higher. Yet as more designers, constructors and maintainers take advan-
tage of these three- and four-dimensional modeling tools, others struggle to keep
pace. As illustrated by this article, written by industry leader Nicholai Kolesnikoff, the
same was true during the early days of one of BIMs predecessors—computer-aided
design and drafting.
For the purpose of this historical piece, the selected text is printed as published in
the November-December 1984 issue of The Military Engineer.
This perspective of a 158,000-ft2 engineering
building at Texas A&M was generated on a color
CADD terminal by architect 3D/International.</p>
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