Fig 1: Scope of CAD/CAM and CIM CAD/CAM signifies an integration of design and manufacturing activities with the aid of computers. The conventional method of manufacturing a product which involves two separate procedures – designing the product and process planning – is a time consuming one and also involved duplication of effort by design and manufacturing personnel. These conventional methods are replaced by CAD/CAM. The direct link between product design and manufacturing is established with the help of CAD/CAM. While considering ideal CAD/CAM system, it takes the specific design of the product because it remains in the database and is converted into a
process plan for manufacturing a product. CAD/CAM system automatically converts design of a product into a process plan. On a numerically controlled machine tool, a large portion of the processing can be completed. CAD/CAM automatically generates NC part programming. Using telecommunication network, NC program is directly downloaded to the machine tool in CAD/CAM system. Thus under CAD/CAM system, computer implements all the functions such as Product design, NC programming and Physical Production.
Computer Integrated Manufacturing CIM sums up all of the manufacturing functions of CAD/CAM along with