CAD (computer assisted drafting) and CAM (computer assisted machining) has been around a long time, and it continues to get more sophisticated every day. My son-in-law spent several years doing CAD/CAM work on Remington firearms in their Huntsville Alabama plant. He's a little lost in my shop, where all the equipment has manual micrometer dials and no computers to tinker with, though! Anybody with a few brain cells to rub together and a part to measure can reverse-engineer things- - - - -back in the late 1940's that's how the Russians developed their first heavy bomber- - - -they found a B-29 that had crash-landed after a mission over Japan and copied it.
Jerry
