If you have a computer that you can use, you can create a model of anything. That's the future of CAD, and it's also the future of computing.
You means anyone. You don't, any longer, have to be weirdly smart to figure this out.
It's not that the interface is going to become weirdly smart. Fact is, today's interface is weirdly dumb. Oh well, that's not really important. If I try to explain that, it gets complicated. Listen, today's interface tries to help you, even though you're dumb. But dumb can't be helped. But, in actual fact, you aren't dumb. Today's interface is dumb because it's designed for dumb people. People aren't dumb, so designing an interface for dumb people is dumb, and it results in a dumb interface.
CAD is math. Computer Aided. And computers compute, and computation is math.
Another dumb assumption behind today's CAD is the assumption that what you want to model - CAD is modeling - is very specific, and quite or very limited. Limited. What is that? It's meaningless. It's dumb. Why is CAD designed around a limited, dumb concept? Well, people are dumb. They're easily bamboozled. I'm not saying it's the fault of malicious tricksters. People bamboozle themselves. They just get bamboozled. Nobody did it, it just happened. Here's why today's CAD is limited: it's natural to want to model something big. For instance, you might want to model a huge palace, even several of them. No problem. But you're going to use a computer to do that, and the computer you are going to use is quite small. You can fold it up and put it in you brief case. It's just weird that you can use something so small to model something as big as a huge palace. Today's CAD will let you do it, but it's a weird thing for you to want to do, to model something huge using something small, so today's CAD, which isn't used to the idea, will only let you do it if you absolutely insist. You have to be really smart, to do that, to absolutely insist.
In case you think I'm just making that up, here's a variation on the theme: In all probability you will want to model things that are fairly complicated, even very complicated. Well, it's just not right, is it, that modeling something very complicated would be very simple, and very easy? Modeling something very complicated should be very complicated to do, and difficult to do. Well, CAD could make it very easy and simple to model something very complicated, but that wouldn't be right, so we make the interface very difficult. Then only very, very smart people can use it. This restores order to the universe. Now, as it properly should be, it's very difficult to model complicated things, and only very, very smart people can do it.
The mathematics of CAD is completely limitless. Basically, in CAD, you've got your model, which is a data construct, a file, a string of symbols, in fact, a string of Bits, though they are usually grouped to form letters and numbers and punctuations marks and mathematical operators. How big can the CAD model be? One Googol miles. There, I just described the size of something, and it's incredibly large. It's trillions of times the size of our visible universe. And I did it with three short words.
Do you see where I'm going with this? A CAD model is basically a list of descriptions of thing, and those descriptions are basically pretty compact. There are sort of limits on the size of a CAD model. If you describe a large enough number of things, the model will become as large as your hard drive. That's the kind of limit there is on the size of a CAD model. It's really not a limit on the size of what you can describe, it's a limit on the number of details you can include. According to my calculations, you could describe one billion objects the size of the smallest things in the universe, each precisely positioned in a space the size of the universe, in a one Terabyte file. Lots of detail, and lots of space, and a pretty moderate amount of data.
Where I'm going with this is, first, that, to say that CAD is not as limited as we think. And the other place I'm going with it is to say that CAD is not as complicated as we think. In CAD, we describe objects, using a kind of language - sort of a mathematical kind of language, which might make it sound complicated, but let's investigate a little.
You would begin a model by describing a point. It's standard practice to describe a point by listing its x, y, and z coordinates. This is usually done using a kind of shorthand, but we could do it using more conventional language. Your CAD file, which is a bit like a novel, could begin as follows: The x coordinate of the first point is eight thousand miles. The y coordinate is zero miles. The z coordinate is one thousand miles. If you're good at puzzles, you might be able to guess what I'm describing. Note that each coordinate consists of a number and a unit of measure. But, you know that.
There is, of course, a great deal more to say. Is this really a better way to approach CAD? Do we really need a better way to approach CAD? Does every one really need CAD? Isn't it really, actually, only something professionals need? What is everyone going to do with it? What am I going to do with your donations?
I'll answer the last of those questions. I'm going to offer a ten thousand dollar prize to whoever submits to me a meaningful business plan. A meaningful business plan is a document - it's in writing, maybe with pictures - that describes certain things. What kind of team will be required? How will that team be compensated? Who will assemble the team? What kind of hardware will be required? What will it cost, per month, to maintain it? People will have accounts. They'll log on and build their models. Advertising will appear on their screens. Who will put together the advertizing? How will this be capitalized? Who will handle the capitalization of it? How will the activities of the business translate into shareholder value?
This can also be abstracted one level. How does a business plan like that get put together? Who does that kind of work? What kind of stories can be told about that kind of undertaking, about people who have done that already, and how they did it?
http://www.microchip.com/
