ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the main threads of research supporting interactive computer-aided design (CAD) and similar applications. It presents a historical review of the display, hardware and software technologies. It considers CAD in its broadest sense, ultimately being concerned with the full representation of a building and the products that comprise it, whether used during design, construction planning, operation or management. From its beginning (1970–1975), CAD software was developed in an evolutionary manner, with only a limited analytic or formal base. A CAD system is a very large computer program, written in a programming language such as C or C++, whose size can range from 30,000 lines of program code to several million lines. Solid modeling technology allows people to create and edit shape directly on the computer, providing an effective alternative to working with 3D physical models. In general-purpose geometric modelers, these parameters are evaluated and a set of surfaces corresponding to the resulting shape is generated.
