[8note]

virtual cad did something major compared to drafting - you switched from only being able to represent certain views of an object, to having a stored full representation of the object.

you could sculpt a model à la ILM for star wars or the architecture models, but the only way to have a copy of the object was to make one.

the virtual cad also brought in the ability to do analysis with FEA and get approximately smooth undestandings of the stress and strain on the piece, rather than manually calculating the critical points and stress raisers for doing analysis