The Two Worlds of CAD
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Posted in: CAD
Well maybe there are more than two worlds of CAD, but we function in two and they are very similar and very different. For us the two worlds are what I would call “engineering” and “graphics”.
Our CAD work in engineering as file construction, editing and imaging of phototools and masks for manufacture of printed circuit boards, photo-chem parts, precision screens and metal finishing.
Our CAD graphics as creation of design files of barcodes which our customers merge into consumer package designs, book jackets and other formats.
You’d think these two worlds are more alike than different—and you’d be wrong. Engineering imagers express resolution in terms of fractional mils; graphics imagers express resolution as DPI. The imaging devices are even named differently: engineering files are imaged on a photoplotter, graphics files are imaged on an imagesetter. And the files that drive them are built on software applications that are virtually incompatible cross-platform.
Perhaps these differences are more glaring to us because barcode imaging is very close to an engineering application within the graphics environment. Unlike pretty images of smiling consumer faces on packages of delicious food products, barcodes either work or not based on dimensional and spectral attributes. It’s a fascinating blend of technologies: the attractive package sells the product but the barcode performs the actual transaction.
It has been a fascinating thing to observe how these two worlds interact. In the early days of barcoding, package printers were including barcodes more rapidly than retailers were ready to scan them. It took several years for the two to catch up with each other. As a result, during the several years when relatively few barcodes were actually being scanned, a false sense of confidence arose that the barcodes would actually work. When store scanning systems caught up, poor barcode quality was a rude awakening. To this very day barcode quality is an ongoing struggle.
Meanwhile, engineering imaging has all but left the continent along with the manufacture of pretty much everything that uses phototools and masks. Printed circuit manufacture is a shadow of its former self and with the global economic downturn, it’s not doing so well in its new Chinese environs either.
Will it ever return? Where are we headed? What’s next? I’d love to hear from anyone with something more useful than a complaint.
