These are just a few of the many acronyms you find in the world of thermoforming and manufacturing. Computer aided design (CAD) is used to create digital designs and models of products that will later be produced. Jamestown Plastics’ primary CAD design and modeling software is Solidworks. Computer aided manufacturing (CAM) is the process and software where the CAD model is used to program toolpaths to machine a part that exactly matches the CAD model. In the thermoforming process this is most frequently used to manufacture the tooling (molds, plug assists, fixturing) that produce the finished product.CAM programming is also used for many of our heavy gauge CNC trimming operations. CNC or CNC machining stands for computer numerical control and is a programming language output from the CAM process that a machine’s controllercan read and interpret into a series of machine moves that machine, trim, drill, turn or grind the product to a finished part.