Abstract
Production of engineering drawings have
evolved from manual to Computer Aided Design (CAD),
primarily for the speed and accuracy presented by CAD.
Unlike modelling and simulation packages that are equipped
with building blocks, CAD packages are generally supplied
with no pre-drawn symbols. From best practices in industrial
engineering and working for companies that make use of
CAD systems, evidently a lot of time is spent in repetitive tasks
in the development of engineering drawings. An industrial
engineering approach was adopted in this research where
programming was used as a separate process from any
specific application to an organization through the creation of
a catalogue of almost 500 commonly used engineering
symbols and storing them in a database, coupled with an addon
facility for AutoCAD for easy retrieval, aimed at avoiding
these repetitive tasks, hence facilitating the rapid production
of drawings to improve productivity and efficiency when
using CAD systems.