HOW HAVE CAD-CAM SYSTEMS CHANGED JAPANESE CONVENTIONAL WOODEN CONSTRUCTION IN THESE THREE DECADES?

摘要

The new house-building market in Japan can be divided into two parts. A half is occupied with detached houses built by large prefabricated house manufacturers as well as rather small local builders. The composition of the detached house-building market is: A little less than 20% occupied with prefabricated house manufacturers, a little less than 10% with North American platform construction builders, a little less than 70% with conventional wooden house builders and the rest with other kinds. While order-made houses are mainly built in each of these three categories, prefabrication and industrialization have been advanced in each category so far. In this paper the state-of-the-art of such prefabrication and industrialization especially in the field of conventional wooden house-building is made clear. The major means of industrialization of conventional wooden house-building have been the application of CAD-CAM systems for processing wooden posts and beams. In this paper, the application of CAD-CAM in such a conventional field and its effects are clarified after a historical review on its technological development and its diffusion process.