ABSTRACT
As described in Chapter 2, advances in the research and development of available software for computer-aided design for architecture and building have been mainly in the field of computer-aided graphics. The software suppliers, aware of their markets, have been developing graphics systems that provide the user with both working and presentation capabilities that are attractive to architects and their clients and now almost impossible to resist! The majority of architects, who in the 1970s and 1980s generally resisted the computer as a potential design tool, would nowadays not see themselves as true professionals without having some sort of CAD graphics system as a major piece of their working equipment. Even the many one-man bands that make up quite a high proportion of the architectural profession would now not be without the ‘Mac’. Most architects now use CAD graphics systems in their day-to-day work, essentially for the following two reasons:-
to create a 3D representation and presentation image of their building form proposals; and to create a 2D representation and presentation images of the floor/ceiling/roof plans, internal cross-sections, internal/external elevations, and assembly details of the building elements that divide, support and enclose the building forms.
