Technical drawing - Conventional to virtual

Technical drawing is very common to engineering subject. Nowadays technical drawing has become simpler with the support of computer system. Designing software like CATIA and Solidwork are being teach in many higher education institution such as UiTM Shah Alam.

Example of technical drawing. Source: Google Image

Back to old days, the technical drawing are done manually. Most of the technical schools are still using the conventional techniques so that the students are very familiar with the designing process. Some schools will also teach the students a little bit about designing with computer software like AutoCAD. Using conventional technique, students need to have a lot of stationeries such as wooden board or plastic board, T-square as the ruler, triangle square, French curve or flexible curve and the most important things is the drawing equipment such as BOFA, Maped or Rotring set.

Maped Technic Set. (Source: www.ryman.co.uk)

Conventional method. Source: Google Image

Then, after the student have mastered the conventional drawing usually the student will exposed to the simpler software suite like AutoCAD. AutoCAD is more to 2D drawing similar like conventional techniques but using a computer. Nowadays, the latest series of AutoCAD can also use to developed the drawing into 3D like the latest version of AutoCAD 2013. It is much more simpler, easier and faster compared to conventional drawing.

2D Drawing in AutoCAD 2013. Source: Google Image

AutoCAD 2013 drawing. Source: Google Image

Then, because of 3D drawing become a demand, most developers are compete to give a better 3D design suite such as CATIA and Solidwork by Dassault Systemes. This two design suite are popular in mechanical engineering course in UiTM.

CATIA 3D model. Source: Google Image

CATIA Rendering. Source: Google Image

Most of the project done in UiTM such as Design I  & II, and also in FYP project. The version that UiTM used also is not the full version of CATIA but only the Student Version. The students also did not learn all the packages inside because of the limitation of time.