What is CAD?

CAD if often defined in a variety of ways and includes a large range of activities. Very broadly it
can be said to be the integration of computer science (or software) techniques in engineering
design. At one end when we talk of modeling, iIt encompasses the following:Use of computers
(hardware & software) for designing products

 Numerical method, optimizations etc.

 2D/3D drafting
 3D modeling for visualization
 Modeling curves, surfaces, solids, mechanism, assemblies, etc.

The models thus developed are first visualized on display monitors using avariety of techniques
including wire frame displa, shaded image display, hidden surface removed display and so on.
Once the designer is satisfied, these models are then used for various types of analysis /
applications. thus, at the other end it includes a number of analysis activities. These could be:

 Stress (or deflection) analysis, i.e. numerical methods meant for estimating the behaviour
of an artifact with respect to these parameters. It includes tools like the Finite Element
Method (FEM).
 Simulation of actual use
 Optimization
 Other applications like
o CAD/CAM integration
o Process planning

These are activities which normally use models developed using one or more of the techniques
mentioned above. These activities are often included in other umbrellas like CAM or CAE. A
term often used is CAx to include this broad set of activities. They all use CAD models and often
the kind of application they have to be used ina determines the kind of amodel to be developed.
Hence, in this course  I cover them under the umbrella of CAD. In this course we will strive to
give an overview of modelling techniques followed by some applications, specifically CAM.

Thus there are three aspects to CAD.

 Modeling
 Display/ Visualization
 Applications
 

MODELING  

Modelling typically includes a set of activities like

 Defining objects
  Defining relation between objects
 Defining properties of objects
 Defining the orientations of the objects in suitable co-ordinate systems
 Modification of existing definition (editing)

The figure below explains what a typical CAD model would need to define, what kind of entities
need to be defined and what relationships exist between them.

At the highest level we have the volume which is defined by (or "delimited by") a set of surfaces.
These surfaces can be either planar or curved / warped. A planar surface can be bounded by a set
of curves. A curved surface can be seen as a net of curves. These curves are typically a
succession of curve segemnts which define the complete the curve. The curve segment is defined
using a set of end points / control points which govern the nature of the curve. Thus a relation
ship is defined between entities at each level.

Once such a relationship is defined, a geometric model of the artifact is available. In any design
there might be manysuch artifacts. One then has to define properties of each of these artifacts
and define a relationship between them. The properties and the relationships needed are
dependant on the application the model is to be used for subsequently. But one common
application that all models have to go through is visualization of the model (s).

DISPLAY / VISUALIZATION 
 

Displaying the model requires the following:

 Mapping objects onto screen coordinates: Models are typically made in a model
coordinate system. this could be the world coordinate system, or a coordinate system
local to the object. these coordinate systems are typically three dimensional in nature. To
display the object on a 2D screen, the object coordinates need to be mapped on to the 2D
coordinate system of the screen. This requires two steps:
o Viewing transformations: The coordinates of the object are transformed in a
manner as if one is looking at the object through the screen. This coordinate
system is referred to as the viewing coordinate system.
o Projections: The object in the viewing coordinate system is then projected onto
the two dimensional plane of the screen.
 Surface display or shading / rendering: In displaying the objects on the screen one often
likes to get a shaded display of the object and get a good feel of the three dimensional
shape of the object. This requires special techniques to render the surface based on its
shape, lighting conditions and its texture.
 Hidden line removal when multiple surfaces are displayed: In order to get a proper feel of
the three dimensional shape of an object, one often desires that the lines / surfaces which
are not visible should not be displayed. this is referred to as hidden line / surface removal.
Once a model is visualized on the screen and approved by the conceptual designer, it has to go
through a number of analysis. Some of the kinds of usage this model might have to go through
are the following:

 Estimating stresses / strains / deflections in the objects under various static loading
conditions
 Estimating the same under dynamic loading conditions
 Visualizing how a set of objects connected together would move when subject to external
loading. This leads to a whole set of activities under simulation. These activities would
vary depend upon the application the object is to be subject to.
 Optimizing the objects for
 Developing 2D engineering drawings of the object
 Developing a process plan of the object
 Manufacturing the object using NC / CNC machines and generating the programs for
these machines so as to manufacture these objects.

Having given the overview of the kind of activties that can come under the umbrella of CAD the
uses these CAD models can be put to, I know highlight what aspects of these would be covered
in this course. Needless to say, all these activities would be well beyond the scope of one single
course. Therefore this course, which is targeted to give an overview of CAD and its applications
would include the following:

 An overview of the hardware systems used in CAD

 2D and 3D transformations used to shift between coordinate systems
 Projection transformation used to get the object in screen coordinate systems
 Modeling of curves and surfaces
 Modeling of solids\

REFRESH CATHODE-RAY TUBES

[Link] illustrates the basic operation of a CRT. A beam of electrons (cathode rays),
emitted by an electron gun, passes through focusing and deflection systems that direct the
beam towards specified position on the phosphor-coated screen. The phosphor then emits a
small spot of light at each position contacted by the electron beam. Because the light
emitted by the phosphor fades very rapidly, some method is needed for maintaining the
screen picture. One way to keep the phosphor glowing is to redraw the picture repeatedly
by quickly directing the electron beam back over the same points. This type of display is
called a refresh CRT.

The primary components of an electron gun in a CRT are the heated metal cathode and a
control grid ([Link]). Heat is supplied to the cathode by directing a current through a
coil of wire, called the filament, inside the cylindrical cathode structure. This causes
electrons to be “boiled off” the hot cathode surface. In the vacuum inside the CRT
 envelope, negatively charged electrons are then accelerated toward the phosphor coating by
a high positive voltage. The accelerating voltage can be generated with a positively charged
metal coating on the in side of the CRT envelope near the phosphor screen, or an
accelerating anode can be used, a in fig below . Sometimes the electron gun is built to
contain the accelerating anode and focusing system within the same unit.

Spots of light are produced on the screen by the transfer of the CRT beam energy to the
phosphor. When the electrons in the beam collide wit the phosphor coating , they are
stopped and there are stopped and their kinetic energy is absorbed by the phosphor. Part of
the beam energy s converted by friction into heat energy, and the remainder causes electron
in the phosphor atoms to move up to higher quantum-energy levels. After a short time, the
“excited” phosphor electrons begin dropping back to their stable ground state, giving up
their extra energy as small quantum’s of light energy. What we see on the screen is the
combined effect of all the electrons light emissions: a glowing spot that quickly fades after
all the excited phosphor electrons have returned to their ground energy level. The
frequency ( or color ) of the light emitted by the phosphor is proportional to the energy
difference between the excited quantum state and the ground state.

Different kinds of phosphor are available for use in a CRT. Besides color, a major
difference between phosphors is their persistence: how long they continue to emit light
( that is, have excited electrons returning to the ground state ) after the CRT beam is
removed. Persistence is defined as the time it take the emitted light from the screen to
decay to one-tenth of its original intensity. Lower-persistence phosphors require higher
refresh rates to maintain a picture on the screen without flicker. A phosphor with low
persistence is useful for animation ; a high-persistence phosphor is useful for displaying
highly complex, static pictures. Although some phosphor have a persistence greater than 1
second, graphics monitor are usually constructed with a persistence in the range from 10 to
60 microseconds.

INPUT DEVICES

Various devices are available for data input on graphics workstations. Most systems have
a keyboard and one or more additional devices specially designed for interactive input.
These include a mouse, trackball, spaceball, joystick, digitizers, dials, and button boxes.
Some other input devices used in particular applications are data gloves, touch panels,
image scanners, and voice systems.

Keyboards
 An alphanumeric keyboard on a graphics system is used primarily as device for entering
text strings. The keyboard is an efficient device for inputting such nongraphic data as
picture labels associated with a graphics display. Keyboards can also be provided with
features to facilitate entry of screen coordinates, menu selections, or graphics functions.

Mouse
A mouse is small hand-held box used to position the screen cursor. Wheels or rollers on
the bottom of the mouse can be used to record the amount and direction of movement.
Another method for detecting mouse motion is with an optical sensor,. For these systems,
the mouse is moved over a special mouse pad that has a grid of horizontal and vertical
lines. The optical sensor detects movement across the lines in the grid.
Since a mouse can be picked up and put down at another position without change in
cursor movement, it is used for making relative changes in the position of the screen
cursor. One, two, or three buttons are usually included on the top of the mouse for
signaling the execution of some operation, such as recording cursor position or invoking
a function. 

Joysticks
A joystick consists of a small, vertical lever (called the stick) mounted on a base that is
used to steer the screen cursor around. Most joysticks select screen positions with actual
stick movement; others respond to pressure on the stick. Figure below shows a movable
joystick. Some joysticks are mounted on a keyboard; others function as stand-alone units.

BASIC TRANSFORMATION

Animation are produced by moving the 'camera' or the objects in a scene along animation paths.
Changes in orientation, size and shape are accomplished with geometric transformations that
alter the coordinate descriptions of the objects. The basic geometric transformations are
translation, rotation, and scaling. Other transformations that are often applied to objects include
reflection and shear.

Use of transformations in CAD

In mathematics, "Transformation" is the elementary term used for a variety of operation such as
rotation, translation, scaling, reflection, shearing etc. CAD is used throughout the engineering
process from conceptual design and layout, through detailed engineering and analysis of
components to definition of manufacturing methods. Every aspect of modeling in CAD is
dependent on the transformation to view model from different directions we need to perform
rotation operation. To move an object to a different location translation operation is done.
Similarly Scaling operation is done to resize the object.
Coordinate Systems

In CAD three types of coordinate systems are needed in order to input, store and display model
geometry and graphics. These are the Model Coordinate System (MCS), the World Coordinate
System (WCS) and the Screen Coordinate System (SCS).
Model Coordinate System
 The MCS is defined as the reference space of the model with respect to which all the model
geometrical data is stored. The origin of MCS can be arbitrary chosen by the user.
World Coordinate System
As discussed above every object have its own MCS relative to which its geometrical data is
stored. Incase of multiple objects in the same working space then there is need of a World
Coordinate System which relates each MCS to each other with respect to the orientation of the
WCS. It can be seen by the picture shown below.
Screen Coordinate System
In contrast to the MCS and WCS the Screen Coordinate System is defined as a two dimensional
device-dependent coordinate system whose origin is usually located at the lower left corner of
the graphics display as shown in the picture below. A transformation operation from MCS
coordinates to SCS coordinates is performed by the software before displaying the model views
and graphics.

Viewing Transformations

As discussed that the objects are modeled in WCS, before these object descriptions can be
projected  to the view plane, they must be transferred to viewing coordinate system. The view
plane or the projection plane, is set up perpendicular to the viewing zv axis. The World
coordinate positions in the scene are transformed to viewing  coordinates, then viewing
coordinates are projected onto the view plane.
The transformation sequence to align WCS with Viewing Coordinate System is.
1. Translate the view reference point to the origin of the world coordinate system.
2. Apply rotations to align xv, yv, and zv with the world xw, yw and zw axes, respectively.

TRANSLATION

A translation is applied to an object by repositioning it along a straight line path from one
coordinate location to another. We translate a two-dimensional point by adding translation
distances, tx and ty, to the original coordinate position (x,y) to move the point to a new
position (x',y')

The translation distance pair (tx, ty) is called translation vector or shift vector
 
Matrix representation of translation
This allows us to write the two-dimensional translation equations in the matrix form:

A two-dimensional rotation is applied to an object by repositioning it along a circular path in

the x-y plane. When we generate a rotation we get a rotation angle (θ) and the position about
which the object is rotated (xr , yr) this is known as rotation point or pivot point. The
transformation can also be described as a rotation about rotation axis that is perpendicular to x-
yplane and passes through the pivot point. Positive values for the rotation angle define counter-
clockwise rotations about the pivot point and the negative values rotate objects in the clockwise
direction.

   r  - constant distance of the point from the origin.

                Φ  - original angular position of the point from the horizontal
                θ   - rotation angle

we can express the transformation by the following equations

we know the coordinate of x and y in polar form

on expanding and equating we get

The same equations we can write in matrix form as

Where the rotation matrix R is

Hence it is

SCALING
Scaling is a kind of transformation in which the size of an object is changed. Remember the
change is size does no mean any change in shape. This kind of transformation can be carried out
for polygons by multiplying each coordinate of the polygon by the scaling factor. Sx and Sy which
in turn produces new coordinate of (x,y) as (x',y'). The equation would look like

or

here S represents the scaling matrix. 

NOTE: If the values of scaling factor are greater than 1 then the object is enlarged and if it is less
that 1 it reduces the size of the object. Keeping value as 1 does not changes the object.
 
Uniform Scaling: To achieve uniform scaling the values of scaling factor must be kept equal.
Differential Scaling: Unequal or Differential scaling is produce incases when values for scaling
factor are not equal.

As per usual phenomenon of scaling an object moves closer to origin when the values of scaling
factor are less than 1. To prevent object from moving or changing its position while is scaling we
can use a point that is would be fixed to its position while scaling which is commonly referred
as fixed point (xf yf).

HOMOGENEOUS COORDINATES

We have seen that basic transformations can be expressed in matrix form. But many graphic
application involve sequences of geometric transformations. Hence we need a general form of
matrix to represent such  transformations. This can be expressed as:

Where        P and P'  - represent the row vectors.

                        T1   - is a 2 by 2 array containing multiplicative factors.
                        T2   - is a 2 element row matrix containing translation terms.

We can combine multiplicative and translational terms for 2D geometric transformations into a
single matrix representation by expanding the 2 by 2 matrix representations to 3 by 3 matrices.
This allows us to express all transformation equations as matrix multiplications, providing that
we also expand the matrix representations for coordinate positions. To express any 2D
transformations as a matrix multiplication, we represent each Cartesian coordinate
position (x,y) with the homogeneous coordinate triple (xh,yh,h),
such that

Thus, a general homogeneous coordinate representation can also be written as (h.x, h.y, h). For
2D geometric transformations, we can choose the homogeneous parameter h to any non-zero
value. Thus, there is an infinite number of equivalent homogeneous representations for each
coordinate point (x,y). A convenient choice is simply to h=1. Each 2D position is then
represented with homogeneous coordinates (x,y,1). Other values for parameter h are needed, for
eg, in matrix formulations of 3D viewing transformations.

Expressing positions in homogeneous coordinates allows us to represent all geometric

transformation equations as matrix multiplications. Coordinates are represented with three
element row vectors and transformation operations are written as 3 by 3 matrices.
For Translation, we have

or
 

Similarly for Rotation transformation, we have

or

Finally for Scaling transformation, we have

or

INTRODUCTION

A curve segment is a point bounded collection of points whose coordinates are given by
continuous, one-parameter, single-valued mathematical functions of the form.

x = x(u)      y = y(u)     z = z(u)

The parametric value of u is constrained to the interval u Є [0,1]. The curve is bounded between
two points at u=0 and the other at u=1.

Any point on the curve can be treated as a component of vector p(u). This p(u) is the vector to
the point x(u), y(u), z(u) and pu(u) is the tangent vector to the curve at the same point.

here

vector components are:

and the tangent vector is:

A simple example of parametric equation of a curve would be a set of linear parametric

equations above is gives a straight line starting at Point p(0) = [a b c] and ending at point p(1)
= [(a + l) (b + m) (c + n)] where a, b, c and l, m, n are constants. The direction cosines of the line
would be proportional to l, m, n.

AN OVERVIEW OF CNC MACHINES

Historical Perspective 

The word NC which stands for numerical control refer to control of a machine or a process using
symbolic codes consisting of characters and numerals. The word CNC came into existence in
seventies when microprocessors and microcomputers replaced integrated circuit IC based controls
used for NC machines. The development of numerical control owes much to the United States air
force. The concept of NC was proposed in the late 1940s by John Parsons who recommended a
method of automatic machine control that would guide a milling cutter to produce a curvilinear
motion in order to generate smooth profiles on the work-pieces. In 1949, the U.S Air Force
awarded Parsons a contract to develop new type of machine tool that would be able to speed up
production methods. 
Parsons sub-contracted the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop a practical
implementation of his concept. Scientists and engineers at M.I.T built a control system for a two
axis milling machine that used a perforated paper tape as the input media. This prototype was
produced by retrofitting a conventional tracer mill with numerical control servomechanisms for
the three axes of the machine. By 1955, these machines were available to industries with some
small modifications.
The machine tool builders gradually began developing their own projects to introduce commercial
NC units. Also, certain industry users, especially airframe builders, worked to devise numerical
control machines to satisfy their own particular production needs. The Air force continued its
encouragement of NC development by sponsoring additional research at MIT to design a part
programming language that could be used in controlling N.C. machines.
In a short period of time, all the major machine tool manufacturers were producing some
machines with NC, but it was not until late 1970s that computer-based NC became widely used.
NC matured as an automation technology when electronics industry developed new products. At
first, miniature electronic tubes were developed, but the controls were big, bulky, and not very
reliable. Then solid-state circuitry and eventually modular or integrated circuits were developed.
The control unit became smaller, more reliable, and less expensive