Industrial Archeology - designers and engineers preserve history using CAD to recreate products that no longer exist

March 7, 2006 Museums and history buffs have begun using CAD software for an exciting new application - breathing life into centuries past. "Industrial archeology" is the study and re-creation of machines, parts, vehicles, and buildings that may have vanished, been destroyed, gone obsolete, or perhaps never existed at all. The practice combines art, history, craftsmanship, and, in a new twist, computer-aided design. Industrial archeologists like Californian William L. Gould use SolidWorks software as an efficient, mechanically faithful way to illustrate, in three dimensions and myriad individual components, a piece of lost history. Gould’s (pictured) full-color 3D CAD model of the 1879 Mason Bogie steam locomotive, is rendered in SolidWorks and PhotoWorks software, and exists only as a 3D CAD model with hundreds of discrete parts. It is available as a fine art lithographic print or a set of plans in exacting detail.

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