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Photoplotting, Photo Mask Generation. Quest or Gerber output from your C.A.D. system.

Large rangę of images available. Accept data on many floppy disk formats Vfe-inch mag tape or paper tape.

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Photographic reductions, duplication, colour pattern duplication and solder mask expansion. Ground piane reversal and insertion.

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This new computer-aided modelling machinę from Roland Corporation hooks up to a PC-based CAD system and will automatically machinę a prototype from wat, plastic, wood or light metal. Further details are available from Roland on [phone].

least a fairly powerful mini, but in thc last few years personal micros have be-come so powerful that they’re now quite capable of being used for CAD as well.

Techniques have also been found whereby CAD software packages could be “scaled down”, so they would fit into smaller computers and run satisfac-torily in them. In many cases this has involved things like limiting graphics resolution and maximum drawing size, in order to fit co-ordinate aata into 16-bit data words, but for most generał ap-plications this is of no great concern. For example many of the smaller PC-based CAD packages are limited to a resolution of .001” as the smallest pixel size, and to drawings of no morę than 32.768” (832mm) square — but as you can see, this would scarcely be a problem for the vast majority of applica-tions.

From a practical point of view, the nett result of all this is that nowadays there’s a great deal of very worthwhile CAD software designed to run on ma-chines like the IBM PC/AT and its clones, in particular. And most of this software runs very well, particularly if the Computer is fitted with the optional 80287 maths co-processor chip to speed things up. (Many CAD functions in-

volve a lot of number-crunching.)

Apart from speed, an important re-    ^

quirement for the Computer itself as far as CAD is concerned is its graphics capability. Naturally CAD makes exten-sive use of graphics, and generally high resolution colour graphics at that. So    * ** ^

you need a machinę fitted with at least    ']

an extended graphics adaptor or    .

-Distributors of-

Lavenir Technology Inc.® from Gerber Photoplot. File viewer/editor M S. DOS software

“EGA” (or better still, one of the even higher resolution boards now becoming available), coupled to a suitable high-

resolution RGB colour monitor. Both - Distributors of

of these are really essential for serious Lavenir Technology Ir CAD work.    from Gerber Photoplol

lt’s also important to have. plenty of    viewer/editor M S. D

PRECISION GRAPHICS PTY. LTD.

Unit 15, 31 Waterloo Rd, North Ryde 2113

Telephone [phone]

main memory and mass storage — main memory because the CAD software programs tend to gobble up quite a bit themselves, and mass storage because

CAD is very graphics orientated, and its PRECISION GRAPH

graphics data files occupy a lot of stor-    »TV I TTI

age space. In most cases this means at    rTY. LI LI.

least 640K bytes of main memory, and a

hard disk drive with a capacity of at Unit 15, 31 Waterlo< least 20 megabytes. Ideally the disk    Nnrth RuHp211-

drive should also be of the voice-coil ac-    ^{INorth Kyde Z11%}

tuated type, which gives faster and    Telephone

morę reliable operation.

Apart from the Computer and CAD    [phone]

software package, you will also need an output device like a printer or X-Y plot-

ELECTRONICS Australia. September 1987

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