CAD/CAM Library of Parts and Assemblies for Engineering Curricula

Most often instructors and students are forced to search through a wide range of scattered resources, such as textbooks, archival journals, conference proceedings, Websites, and industry catalogs to identify parts/assemblies that demonstrate the CAD/CAM concepts of their interest. This long and tedious process is both a major impediment to student learning and a time-consuming distraction to effective teaching of CAD/CAM concepts. To address issues, this paper presents the concept of a CAD/CAM library of parts/assemblies of products for use in CAD/CAM related courses, to enhance student learning and critical thinking, and to increase the effectiveness of CAD/CAM teaching. The addition of pedagogical features to the CAD/CAM library will make it even more effective and useful. For every part/assembly, the CAD/CAM library has to provide not only geometric models with dimensions, but also has to include construction planning strategy, step-by-step creation procedure, modeling questions, and hands-on exercises that facilitate effective teaching and enhance student learning. In addition, the library has to offer its models in multiple formats so that they can be run on most of the commercial CAD systems. The library may have far-reaching impact on non-CAD/CAM areas, such as psychology and physics that require cognitive and 3D visualization studies. The paper presents the results and observation of using CAD/CAM library concept in teaching a CAD/CAM and design courses.