We all know programming is as popular as ever, no matter what your profession is, programming can be useful to make difficult and tedious tasks easier and automate processes that would take a very long time to do manually. There are countless languages that you can learn depending on what you want to work with, and many different fields that you can specialize in, and the job market for programming jobs is growing rapidly with no sign of stopping any time soon.
This is why programming has been introduced and taught to kids so they can benefit from all those opportunities and become the new generation of programmers. But there's another field that is also growing without stopping that isn't talked as much as programming, but that we consider as equally as important, which is CAD.
CAD stands for Computer-Aided Design and it's an easier way of creating 2D designs or 3D models of products and objects in a precise way and allowing the visualization of the design before they can be created and produced in real life. CAD is used for creating things such as buildings, highways, cars, planes, phones, and much more.
We consider CAD as important as coding because it allows people to be creative and create objects and designs that can be printed or built to solve real-life problems. Another reason why CAD is as important as programming is that it is used in most engineering fields, and the demand for engineers has never stopped growing, especially in the United States.
After the product or object has been designed through CAD, it must be created to be used and applied in the real world, this is possible thanks to 3D printing, which allows making the object precisely as it was designed in the CAD software, using one of the many durable and resistant materials available for this process, such as plastic, resins, carbon fiber, metals, wax, and many more.
3D printing has become increasingly popular in the manufacturing industry, manufacturing companies all over the world use 3D printing to create their prototypes as well as their finished products. Most of the 3D printing processes they use rely on CAD, as they have to design the product digitally using a computer and CAD software.
3D Printing relies on CAD because it is through the CAD software where the design file that contains the specific instructions for the building of the product are made, which include the measurements, location, and where and how much material should be put in place to create an exact copy. Without the CAD file, the 3D printer wouldn't have the instructions and wouldn't be able to build the product by itself.
For these reasons, we believe that 3D printing is a great way to introduce CAD to kids and making them interested in studying and pursuing a career in this field. There are many CAD tools specially designed for kids like Tinkercad that can be used in the classroom or in the home that allows kids to easily design their ideas into 3D models which can be printed using a 3D printer, giving them a way to see their creations in real life and how they can solve real problems by thinking creatively and imagining objects that could fix them.
3D Printing has seen a huge rise in popularity and more and more people nowadays have access to 3D printers and can build things easily by themselves. For example, the sales for 3D printers have risen 80% in the last few years and this trend doesn't seem to be changing, also the availability of 3D files and websites where you can download models instead of creating them from scratch is bigger than before.
Introducing kids to both programming and CAD is a wonderful way of unlocking their potential and giving them tools that can help them stand out and be successful in their adult life.
