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Computerizing Car Design: The DAC-1

Hood design sketch

Using the DAC-1 system, the automobile design process started with an artist’s sketch.

Computerizing Car Design: The DAC-1

In the late 1950s, the world’s biggest carmaker and the leading computer company joined forces to create one of the first major systems to design a consumer product.

IBM completed its Design Automated by Computer (DAC-1) software for General Motors in 1964. GM used it to develop automobiles until the late 1960s, when a new president mothballed the system and broke up the team that had worked on it.

DAC-1 used an IBM 7090 mainframe computer with a specialized graphics console. Users, drawing with a light pen, could create, rotate, and manipulate images.

Line selection

The DAC-1 lightpen was used for selecting as well as drawing.

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Engineers building car model from clay

Creating a physical model of a car was time-consuming, expensive and difficult to edit. With CAD (Computer-Aided Design), car designers could build digital models instead of physical models.

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Ford automobile designers

Before CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software, engineers designed cars by hand on paper. Making changes was tedious and expensive.

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