The short story i’ve heard it explained was that prior to the 1960’s when logarithm tables were the only option, if what you were calculating was not in the table, you rounded the measurements up so that the material or whatever was stronger, and you knew it would really hold the weight to be certain. Depending on how much rounding up happened during the design, this created lots of redundancy and strength, but was more expensive since you generally had to use more materials. With CAD, you could more easily model and calculate all the loads and optimize the design and material costs for the expected lifetime of the product, building, or whatever. This saved money and was preferred by bean counters, and resulted in designs lasting just enough, rather than older designs which sometimes seemed indestructible.
The short story i’ve heard it explained was that prior to the 1960’s when logarithm tables were the only option, if what you were calculating was not in the table, you rounded the measurements up so that the material or whatever was stronger, and you knew it would really hold the weight to be certain. Depending on how much rounding up happened during the design, this created lots of redundancy and strength, but was more expensive since you generally had to use more materials. With CAD, you could more easily model and calculate all the loads and optimize the design and material costs for the expected lifetime of the product, building, or whatever. This saved money and was preferred by bean counters, and resulted in designs lasting just enough, rather than older designs which sometimes seemed indestructible.