Automating mechanical design: Software for desktop computers replaces trial and error in modeling and analysis, and sometimes serves as the front-end database for computer-based manufacturing

Until fairly recently mechanical engineers designing new products worked in a largely manual environment. They developed a limited number of product concepts, documented them, and then produced a series of hardware prototypes for testing. It was a trial-and-error methodology, in which successive generations of prototypes were designed, built, tested, broken, analyzed, and redesigned. Mechanical computer-aided engineering (MCAE) is changing that approach.