In the recent years, the awareness of CAD in Indian Industries has increased. Hence, The Government can take an active role and play the role of pro active facilitator in promoting the CAD Technologies across the different parts of the country for the benefits, it offers to the Citizens. The author in the subsequent write-up discusses about the applications of CAD in Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and its relevance to the Indian Masses. Read Ahead…
Before thinking about the Future of Computer Aided Design (CAD) in India, let us understand the broad meaning of CAD. CAD encompasses a wide area of designs ranging from civil, architectural, mechanical, aerosapce, electrical, chemical, textiles, handicrafts etc. Essentially a design of an engineering component or a material which is to be used to be done manually in the earlier days, is replaced by the use of computers. Hence with the advent of computers, the human design expertise is inculcated into a set of instructions thro' a program/software which when executed in a computer system, follows the steps sequentially to come out with a required design of component or a material. Since the CAD is a wide area, we will restrict our discussion to applications of CAD in Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and its relevance to the Indian Masses.
Relevance of CAD in e-Governance
The applications of CAD can vary from the utilities like the generation of building plans and layouts in the planning departments to the designing of components in the small scale industries. The CAD can be utilised to any product development like tool and die designs, handicrafts designs, foot ware designs, textile or fashion designs, terracota, lacquerware, furniture designs etc. It can be applied to many more value added design applications, specific to the local needs of different regions of the country. The commonly used designs mentioned above can be easily created using some CAD Tools with the features like Surface Modeling or Solid Modeling. The use of CAD is not an expensive proposition and many econonically viable CAD Softwares and Tools are available for various design utilities. This will be very useful and cost effective proposition for the benefits of citizens. Hence the Government can promote and propogate the CAD Technologies across the country for the benefit of the citizens. This will serve as a good link between the Government to Citizen Inteface (G2C).
Promotion of e-CAD (Electronic- Computer Aided Design) across the District Administration is a primary step in this direction. The CAD Software can be installed at the District Centre Server and this CAD Server can be well connected to all the server/clients at the Taluk levels in that District. Later this can be extended to State Level Server and the Central Level. This can be one component of e-Governance.
The citizens can prepare the layouts and plans of the residential and industrial buildings at the Taluk level using CAD Software at the Server or the Clients provided at the individual Taluks and submits the plan for the approval as per the government regulations of the town planning departments of individual Taluks. Similary this model can be replicated to all the public utilities departments like water supply, sanitary department etc. Figure 1 clearly shows the network of e-CAD for public utilities departments. This network can be modified to suit the requirements of the citizens.
K.S Nagesh Technical Director, NIC, HQ ksnagesh@nic.in
Figure 1:- Network of e-CAD for the Public utilities departments
The overall data of all the Taluks is stored in a repository at Taluk as well as District Level. The District Administration will have all the access to the data of all the Taluks in the that District. The Economical CAD Softwares can be utilised for this purpose. This will greatly reduce the wastage of the time by the citizens for the approvals of their industrial and residential layouts. It is appreciated here, that the government has agreed in principle, for the approval of the layouts, plans, etc of residential and industrial construction units across the web.
Figure 2:- Network of Industries and Educational Institutions for e-CAD
The e-CAD explained above pertains to the specific civil engineering applications. In a similar way, e-CAD can be propogated in Indian Industries by conducting CAD Industry Workshops and Seminars at different industrial belts across the country.
The CAD Workshops at the District -Taluk Nodal Level (DTNL)
The awareness of the CAD Utilitiy in the small scale industries located at industrial belts across the country should be increased by conducting periodical Trainings and Workshops on the usage of CAD Softwares. Citizens should be convinced about the effectiveness of CAD and its advantages to their design and production units. The actual skilled artisans, skilled workers working on the designing of various components like machine tool design, handicrafts designs, textiles, pottery, terracota, laquerware, furniture design etc can really make use of the Computer Aided Facility at an economical cost. They can come out with designs using the CAD Softwares suitable to their requirements. The basic idea is to satisfy the design requirements of various sectors like tool and die designs, textile/fashion design, handicrfats designs etc. at the different regional centres with governance control at the district level. The Educational Institutions of high reputations like IITS's (Indian Institute of Technology) and NIT's (National Institute of Technology) can be selected as Nodal Centres for the e-CAD Program. The CAD Workshops can be conducted at the Nodal Centres with the participation of industrial units. The Figure 2 clearly shows the DTNL network for the implemetation of e-CAD program.
CAD for the Common Man There is strong pereception among the rural masses that CAD is Urban centric and is an expense solution for the day to day requirements of their designs. But the attitude of the people in the rural sector, is slowly changing because of the advent of very economical desktops, and the associated CAD Softwares. CAD should be used as a utility tool in rural industrial sector. The common man should get a perception that the usage of the CAD Softwares for their design requirements is much simpler, efficient and economical then the manual designs. This can be achieved in the coming decades with the promotion of CAD Technologes across the country by conducting various CAD trainings/workshops and seminars and awareness programmes like CAD documentary films across the nook and corner of the country. The CAD Technolgies should be widely promoted in Educational Institutions, so that the students will gradually will learn the Technologies and contribute in a bigger way for its utilization in social sector.