1980s: How it all started

I was first introduced to Computer Aided design, CAD, in the late eighties by Frank Placido at Paisley College.  I vividly remember him showing me how you could draw a single tooth and array it around a circle to form a wheel. That day changed my life.

Some visitors to this site may remember a lecture I gave at the Science Museum on William Hardy’s spring pallet escapement and how I used a sequence of CAD slides to explain the escapement.  That was a breakthrough from the way it was done before, but I knew I needed to make the pictures move.  A year or so later I discovered the software I have been using—and indeed helping to develop—ever since.