Capturing Design Developments with CAD

Children and Young People's Service NIAS
Northamptonshire County Council

For the year 2005-06, the CAD/CAM in Schools regional support centres were asked to work with local schools to observe and collect case studies of good practice for uploading onto the website, highlighting the use of the software as a design tool in Key Stages 3 to 5.

Background

The research paper The Application of Computer Aided Design and Manufacture in School-based Design by Alistair S Fraser and Tony Hodgson from Loughborough University, presented at the D&T Association International Research conference 2006, highlights the significant and positive impact that CAD/CAM is having on the activities undertaken in D&T education. Findings show that CAD/CAM allows students to make and manufacture items that would have not been possible either by conventional means or within the time constraints of a modern curriculum.

Despite this, the paper suggests that the impact of computer aided design and the role that it can play in the activity of designing is an area of potential not very well established or often recognised.

Ofsted, for example, has acknowledged that CAD holds inherent capabilities for the detailed development of design ideas, but feels that it does not provide an effective means of supporting conceptual designing and creative activity like that of pencil and paper.

Clearly, drawing is still a key skill that students must learn in order to model ideas when designing, and is invaluable for capturing initial ideas, but students also need to learn how to use a range of modelling tools, each with their individual advantages and disadvantages. So it would seem just as necessary to learn how to model in CAD as much as how to use other modelling media like card, clay, foam etc.