Drawing Office CAD System and Data Transfer Capability Summary.

The CAD system in the Drawing Office consists of 9, high specification, workstations linked via a Windows NT hubbed network to a server.

The CAD software packages available include AutoCAD LT97, AutoCAD R14 and AutoCAD Mechanical Desktop3.Using these packages, drawings and data could be imported and exported using several widely supported formats – e.g. DXF, DWG, ACIS IGES, STEP and Metafile. In particular, IGES and STEP could be used to import and export drawings and data to/from Pro-Engineer based systems.

Copies of drawings created in one of the above formats can be despatched to and received from customers (or suppliers) using either 3.5" floppy disk or DAT tape and posted, or sent as email attachments. Documents other than drawings can of course be transferred using the same methods. Transfer of drawings using a direct phone connection, via either one of two PC’s fitted with a modem, is also possible.

As a user of CAD since 1985, the drawing office has established a broad experience of the use and application of CAD, as well as building up a database of over 9,000 drawings.

The CAD system has an A0 inkjet plotter and A4 and A3 laser printers, connected via a print server as network devices. Each CAD workstation also has installed Microsoft Office, providing word processing, spreadsheet, etc capabilities.