CAD/CAM CONTROL SENSING PHOTO MANIPULATION

1. CAD/CAM CONTROL SENSING PHOTO MANIPULATION BY NATASHA CROSS

2. CAD Cad means computer aided design, this is used by people such as graphic designers and manufacturers etc. They use the program to design an object such as a car in 2d and then they can turn it into 3d. They can also rotate the object to see how it looks from any angle. It is very powerful and specialised graphics software and helps the manufacturer to create computerised designs of objects which they will they then build. Examples of products designed using cad are cars, bridges, buildings and toasters. Objects can be designed in two dimensions e.g. height and width and then processed into a three-dimensional design. The object can then be rotated to see how it looks from any angel. Calculations can be performed e.g. calculating the space needed to drive a car in a circle. Another useful calculation is the cost of the object based upon a database of standard costs for the product’s components. Some cad software will suggest suitable materials and components to do a particular job. A good example would be the materials needed to build a greenhouse the strength of the walls needed will vary depending on the size and weight of the roof.

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4. CAM CAM stands for computer aided manufacturing. CAM describes the process of manufacturing using the computer. This does not mean that all the stages of manufacture are computer controlled. It is more often a combination of CAM and hand operations. For example the cutting and making of a particular part of a garment may be done using CAM but the finishing touches are completed by hand.

5. CAM CAM involves using a computer to control the operation of a manufacturing tool. This may be a “computerised” version of a traditional lathe or milling machine, but equally it may be a vinyl cutter, a sewing machine, a laser cutter, etc. Early systems used manual data entry of numerical data.

6. CONTROL • A control system is a system of hardware and software that’s used to control the operation of a piece of equipment. There are two main types of control system. • Dedicated control systems are basic systems that carry out a pre-programmed set of instructions, e.g. a traffic-light system where the lights change at fixed time intervals. • 2.Computer-controlled systems use a computer to control the output device, and this computer can be connected to a sensor – making the system more flexible. These are used in traffic-light systems where the time between changes needs to alter depending on the volume of traffic.

7. CONTROL Examples of control are: Greenhouses control environmental conditions In this diagram of a control system, a heater is controlled by the computer in response to readings from a temperature sensor. When the temperature falls below a certain level, the computer sends a signal to the interface board to switch on the heater. When the desired temperature is reached the heater’s switched off this is an example of a feedback loop. The water spray is controlled by a simple timer – once the timings have been programmed into the computer, the water spray will be switched on and off at regular intervals. The water spray could be controlled using a feedback loop from a humidity sensor in the soil – but this would make the system more expensive. Other things that could be controlled include opening and closing windows, and the feeding of nutrients to the plants. Fully automated systems are very expensive, so only large greenhouses will have them.

8. IMAGE MANIPULATION Graphics software is changing rapidly especially image manipulation software for digital photos but whatever the technology, the same basic principles still apply. Re-sizing a graphic is often done after the image has been exported into a word processor or desktop publishing package. It’s usually done by selecting the graphic and then dragging one of the handles outward to make the image bigger, and inwards to make it smaller. The clever bit is to keep the proportions of the image the same in other words to keep it the same shape. Otherwise the image gets distorted and it can look pretty bad. Cropping remove parts of the image you don’t want e.g. someone on the edge of the shot you want to get rid of. Cropping reduces the size of the image by removing blocks from the edges of the graphic. It’s a quick and easy way to remove bits of the image although it can only remove whole edges you can’t use it to remove something in the middle of the graphic. Fortunately most graphics software has a separate tool to do this. If you want to use an image that isn’t in you clip art library for example a sheep riding a motorbike but you have separate clip art of a sheep and a motorbike you can make a new object by grouping them together so that it looks like the sheep is riding the bike. You can also select which graphics are at the front of the image and which are a the back this is called layering Images can be rotated to make them appear upside down or flipped to appear back to front or you could make the leaning tower of bradford by rotating an image just a little bit. Images can also be re-coloured some packages will change the colour of the whole object automatically with others you have to change it manually pixel by pixel using a paint spray.

9. SENSING