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What is Computer Aided Design / Drafting (CAD)?


Who says you get to have only one career in your life? As the Program Chair for Arapahoe Community College’s (ACC) Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) department, Rebecca Terpstra has a few careers under her belt. In that respect, she believes she has a great deal in common with her students, beyond the topics that she teaches.To get more news about computer drafting and design, you can visit shine news official website.

“My background is actually a lot like some of our students,” says Rebecca. “We have a good third of our students who are coming to ACC when they are already well into their first, second, third, or even fourth career. Maybe they burned out with what they were doing or perhaps they wanted to do something more creative. That was my path as well.”
Rebecca discovered CAD as an adult learner while pursuing a new career as an interior designer. But she made a few detours along the way.

“I started out as a violinist,” says Rebecca. “I started playing the violin at the very early age of 2, and I did that until my late 20s. Then I thought I needed to do something that will make money, so I started doing some accounting. I'm not sure how I got into it — but I was doing accounting for engineering firms. I did that for a while and I thought, 'OK, I don't like this, maybe I need to go back and do something creative.’ So I went to ACC and enrolled in their interior design program.”

Initially, Rebecca was worried that her creative talents in music might not translate into the skills required for the interior design industry, but she quickly found her calling in computer aided design.

“I started my first CAD course and I simply fell in love with it,” recalls Rebecca. “I found something that I was really good at. I was so good at it that my instructor at the time asked me to come intern for her. So I started working for her while I was still in school.”

Following graduation, Rebecca worked in residential and commercial interior design before starting her own consulting firm. As well as doing CAD and 3D models for architects and interior designers, she also runs training workshops at industry events for Trimble — the publishers of SketchUp, a 3D modeling software program.

“I'm now in my sixth year of teaching at ACC,” says Rebecca. “I was hired to teach SketchUp but when the chair of the interior design department heard that I was going to be teaching, she said ‘Come teach for me too.' So I teach in both the CAD and interior design departments. I guess teaching would be my fourth career!”
What is CAD?
Rebecca explains that computer-aided drafting (also known as computer assisted drafting and computer aided design) is a type of software that assists with the design process in all types of industries.

“With CAD software, you create and analyze something before you spend money on it,” says Rebecca. “It helps you visualize how an object is going to be in a space, or how it is going to look after it is produced. So you can create things that are as close to real-life as possible at varying scales — whether it’s to scale, a smaller scale, or larger scale — and you can edit them easily in the software.”

According to Rebecca, there are many different types of industry-specific CAD drafting software, capable of producing two-dimensional and three-dimensional designs.