The 1980’s saw the electronics and computer revolution reaching the shores of India. A major player in this field was the Govt. of India, through its specialized agencies – the Electronics Commission and the Dept. of Electronics (DOE). DOE decided to establish national CAD Centres with four geographical regions as the focal points for promoting CAD activities in India. The centers were established, and funded jointly by DOE, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The Eastern Regional Centre of the said programme was established at Jadavpur University and started functioning in the year 1985-86. Since then the CAD Centre has been serving the requirement of the industries of Eastern Region by creating awareness in the area of CAD/CAM. The Centre has recently widened its spectrum of specialisation by including various frontier technologies.

During mid 80’s, the awareness in the field of CAD/CAM was at its infancy. Even a very few faculty members and researchers were available with some expertise in this specialised field and the situation in the industry was even worse. This fact necessitated to establish four CAD Centres in our country and the Eastern Regional Centre was decided to be housed at Jadavpur University, one of the most premier institutions in Eastern India. The main objective to set up a centre of this type was to create awareness in the field of CAD/CAM/GIS and promote activities in this new area by organizing WORKSHOPS, short-term courses and through consultancies.

The CAD Centre of Jadavpur University was equipped with a Norsk Data (ND-560CX) Supermini Computer System and the Centre started functioning in the year 1986. During the initial phase, the major thrust was to create awareness on CAD methodologies for industry personnel, researchers as well as faculty members. The computing facilities including structural analysis software and other CAD related packages were made available to the registered users. Since the time of inception, more than 5000 personnel have been trained at the Centre on different courses. A number of projects from the industry have also been successfully completed. During the last 25 years, the CAD Centre of Jadavpur University has remained the most prestigious important centre in Eastern India for promoting CAD/GIS activities.

The Centre is at present located in the second floor of the Computer Science & Engineering Department Building of Jadavpur University and spread over an area of 7000 square feet. Three modern and well-equipped laboratories serve the requirement of regular laboratory classes as well as software projects. At present, 50 numbers of Pentium-IV based PCs and a server are connected in a LAN environment. Three well-furnished and air-conditioned classrooms provide an excellent ambience for theoretical classes. The classrooms are equipped with multimedia projectors for demonstration. Software packages on CAD, GIS, DIP, Multimedia, DBMS and Programming packages are stored in the central server and accessed from any of the PCs through the LAN. The Centre has a library with latest books on CAD, CAM, GIS, Remote Sensing, DIP, Multimedia, RDBMS & other related fields and used by the course participants on regular basis inside the Centre.