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Besides myself, an electronic design engineer,  two of our modelers are also talented electronic technicians.  This gives PMD a BIG advantage over most all the other model building companies out there.  When it comes to the wiring and animation part of the construction, you will definitely see the difference.  With the full resources of CIRCUITRON at our disposal, virtually any kind of control and signaling systems can be implemented.  If we don't already stock the circuitry necessary, we can custom-build it.  You will be amazed at the results!  As you check with other model-building firms, you will quickly realize that most of them avoid electronics entirely (because they are not comfortable with it) or utilize very simple circuitry to implement only rudimentary control and signals.  The level of detail provided by this approach is very limited, and this is one area where I am not afraid to get up and "toot our own horn".  You will find that a PMD constructed layout will have all color coded wiring, neatly bundled and ty-wrapped per electronic control industry standards.  A complete wire run list and schematic diagrams of all custom electronics will be provided at completion.

Please do not be misled by some of the wild claims you may read about Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM).  The operative word here is Aided.  CAD is just a tool, in many ways not significantly different from the draftsman's table, scales and drafting equipment.  It is, without a doubt, more precise than the best draftsman out there.  It is not necessarily as quick.  And, no amount of precision will make up for sloppy technique or lack of insight.  Designing model railroad layouts is far more art than technical skill, and the CAD system does little to improve the operator's artistic ability.

With all that said, we use Computer Aided Design for virtually all our projects.  The biggest advantage it provides is the ability to quickly make changes to a completed set of plans without having to re-draw everything.  For that reason, I wouldn't give it up for anything.  We have five computer systems in operation here at Circuitron / PMD.  We run our CAD systems (we use 3 distinct systems for different parts of the project) on a 900 Mhz Pentium™ class computer with gobs of memory.  A second Pentium™ machine with somewhat less power serves for those times when more than one person is designing.  We have a mid-sized and large format plotter as well as an 17" x 22" color printer for check plots.  We use a third, somewhat older machine to run much of our graphics generation for custom sign-making, etc.  We use CorelDraw version 9 for most of this.  Combined with our 1200 dot per inch laser printer, our newly acquired 1200 dpi Color Laser printer and our 2400 dpi resin transfer printer, we are capable of manufacturing custom signage and decals in black and white or color with extremely fine type in any of the hundreds of fonts Corel provides.  A fourth system is used for billing, time tracking, estimating, etc., and the last is a venerable old 486 machine used to control our new 3 axis CNC (computer numerically controlled) milling machine and our soon to be purchased 3 axis, 4' x 8' CNC router.  We now have the ability to design and program a part on the computer when there is no commercial equivalent available and then use the CNC equipment to machine it out of wood, plastic or plaster.  Multiple identical pieces are easy to generate this way and perfectly sized custom retaining walls, columns, bridge abutments, etc. are a snap.  The CNC router will allow easy profiling of all curved plywood sub-roadbed pieces cut to a precision of 1/100 of an inch.  The computers are being networked for easy file transfer, printing and archive backup.

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