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Poll about CAD knowledge
7

Poll about CAD knowledge

Poll about CAD knowledge

(OP)
How many people here work at a firm in which they need to know how to use CAD themselves.  I have know idea how to draw a straight line in CAD, but many engineering companies say you must be proficient in CAD in part of their job descriptions.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I work at a very small firm where the engineers do about 75% of their own drafting.  We are all experts at 2D CAD, and have a very detailed, almost artful drawing style.  I actually take some pride in putting together my own set of plans from concept to engineering to plot.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

Here, engineers do all the drafting.  AutoCAD for civil projects, Microstation for transportation projects.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

We need to know ACAD and knowing MS helps.  We don't necessarily have to be tech's ourselves in addition to being engineers but we should be useful and able with CAD.  

At other firms I've done all my own drafting and had to be as proficient as necessary to draw my own stuff.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

(OP)
Am I less marketable having all design experience and absolutely ZERO CAD knowledge?  I would love to know how to do CAD, but don't want to invest the time to learn (how to do it efficiently and effectively) when I have so many engineering things to learn and read about.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

It's my feeling that in today's world you are less marketable not knowing CAD.  If you didn't gain insight from College when pursuing your BS degree (nearly all US universities have a mandatory engineering drawing class) then you should enroll in a local community college (or 2 year technical school)  to pick up a simple three month class.  You'll be surprised at what you can learn to do in that time and will be more marketable to boot.

Right now most Civil engineers work on cadd since all the alignment and profile functions lent themselves well to CAD work.  I see the day coming when engineers will also do the same for structural details.

Regards,
Qshake
pipe
Eng-Tips Forums:Real Solutions for Real Problems Really Quick.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

StructuralEIT, move to California.  I can't speak for general practices of "structural" engineering firms in other states but here structural engineers do mainly engineering and most small to mid size firms have CAD department that handle around 95% of CAD work.

Engineers here typically do not have licensed copy of AutoCAD.  Usually they have AutoCAD file viewers with mark-up capability.  It doesn't make business sense to buy the AutoCAD that will be used by engineers only 5% of the time.

If you have zero CAD knowledge, it will be good for your career to learn the basics.  You will not be as fast or as good as the guys who are trained to do CAD work.  In the days before CAD, drafters did the drafting and engineers did engineering.  From time to time, engineers drew details by themselves to sticky-back them on the tracings.  It will be good to have at least that ability today with CAD.

Personally, I also have zero CAD knowledge though I made attempts to learn 15 years ago.  At this stage in my career, I don't need CAD knowledge to survive.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

Don't get too proficient at it though.  We had a case where an EIT got so proficient at CAD that everyone, including other departments, wanted him to draft for them.  He eventually had to leave the company to pursue his engineering career.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I took CAD course at the university with the intent to make me more marketable.  My first job did not require any CAD of me.  My second one it helped me get the job.  On the beginning I did quite a bit of CAD.  My boss was intending to learn CAD himself too.  Over time it became clear that one can not be a master of everything and I did maybe 2 hours of CAD a year the last six years.  In any case you should know how to access drawings, get dimensions and plot as a bear minimum.  In the beginning of my self employement I did more CAD again.  Now I used CAD sub contractors.

Eric McDonald, PE
McDonald Structural Engineering, PLLC

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I took an "AutoCAD for Professionals" class at a local junior college.  It was 8 hours a Saturday for 4 weeks.  That pretty much gets you going on the 2-drafting.  It takes a long time to get completely up to speed, though.  I think our AutoCAD supplier also offers similar classes.

A lot of the junior college regular drafting classes are also teaching what a blueprint is, what it means, and then teaching different industries:  Construction, electronics, etc.  If you're in engineering already, you should know what the drawings mean and what they look like, and don't need to know the out-of-industry stuff.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I've been using CAD for about 20 years.  Lots of hand drafting too in the old days.  I don't do all of my own CAD work now and am not as familiar with the latest AutoCAD as I was ten years ago.  But I know enough to get things done.  Learn to copy, paste, edit.  Makes things go fast when you need to go fast.  I can plot and set up sheets when I have to, but it's slower when I do it than when my cad tech does it.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I do all of my own CAD work and am in charge of interpreting and enforcing CAD standards...

But it's not CAD, it's CAE...

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

It varies greatly in Dallas - some places say "no drafting by engineers", some say "do your own", and where I am now I should do my own in self-defense, but there is one draftsman for four engineers.

I do all of my own IN PENCIL on engineering pads... way back when, the university classes were EDG (engineering design graphics) and we used a drafting machine.

I do know CAD, but not AutoCAD (Vectorworks is my favorite, but whatever floats your boat.)  The first version fo AtuoCAD I used was about V0.93 which was eventually updated to V1.06a or some such.

An engineer's time should typically be more expensive than that of a draftsperson. (Although a good draftsman should be properly paid, since they make you look good.)

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

2
I'll speak as someone who has been on both ends of a drawing.

I've done my own cad work - I've taken the basic, intermediate, and advanced classes at the local CC.  Nice classes, 2 nights a week for 10 or 12 weeks, etc.  Also took Pro-E just to learn what it does.  I think that has been very helpful throughout my career.

I also had 4 years of hand drafting in high school, before CAD.  I think learning those basics - what an isometric view is, how to project lines, how dimensions should be called out, etc. - should be mandatory for certain disciplines, especially structural engineering.  

I've worked in estimating and I've worked with installers and I've seen bad drawings.  The more you know about how things fit together (or don't...) and how to convey that on paper to another human, the better you become as an engineer.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

A big advangage of being able to do a little bit in cad is your ability to check the cad tech's work.  At the company I work for correct geometry and dimensions is very important.

In the past when I was checking projects through hand calculations and did not agree with the cad tech, often there was not a way to resolve the problem.  The tech would insist that the drawing was correct.  So I would go recheck my work.  Often I was forced to have the cad tech overide dimensions to correct the drawing.

Now that I know a little cad, if I don't agree with the tech I will pull the drawing up to resolve the issue.  If I find a mistake I give it back to the tech and instruct the tech to redraw it.

Another advantage of knowing a little cad is that you can't be held hostage by the cad techs.  At a large company this is not problem generally because of the size of their cad staff.  If the company has only one cad tech and that tech is gone often times the project has to sit until the tech is back in the office. It is hard to explain to a client that he or she  will not get his or her drawings until the tech gets back from France next week.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

our structural engineers do not do CAD in our office.  It i tough enugh keeping up with the ever changing code requirements.  I let our CAD guys, who are extremely proficient, do all the line work.  

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

Hmmm...well - a confession.

I have drafted ink on linen.  I have over 28 years experience in structural engineering.  And I do CAD (or as DaveVikingPE says - CAE).

But I don't do it all the time.

Here's some observations:

1.  A good engineer can learn cadd and do it well enough without techs and still continue to be a great engineer.
2.  However, techs are good to have around to assist and create drawings rapidly.
3.  A good tech is one who understands the basics of engineering and knows what the heck they are drawing (real objects and not just a bunch of lines).
4.  A good tech strives to learn from the experienced engineers and is not threatened by the young ones and even tries to help them learn without feeling threatened.
5.  A bad tech gets enamoured with the software and becomes an "expert" in CADD - thereby becoming a worthless engineering tech.
6.  The great mystery in life:  can an engineer whip out a CADD detail, completely noted and finished, faster and cheaper than he can sketch it out and have the tech put it into CADD?

(sorry - I'm in a colorful mood)

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I think it depends where you work - where I am now, I do all my own CAD drafting.

I have worked for some large consultancies however where you do no drafting, which is carried out by exclusively by Technicians.  These guys typically find out what you are good at, and make you do the same task repetitiously.

I dont think this is a good approach, as the knowlege of some of the graduates I worked with suffered bacuase thay did'nt have a very good appreciation of 'buildability' which is developed by drafting work.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

(OP)
valleyboy-
Do you have to do the drafting to understand buildability?  I mean you are still reviewing the details to make sure they make sense, right?  How does drawing it in CAD, help you understand the constructability?  I sketch it by hand and hand it off to CAD, then check it after they draw it.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I think it depends greatly on what you are doing. If you are doinging comltly new structures, you may not have as much need for it. I do a lot of construction and temporary work, so i find it useful for interfacing with existing conditions and working with survey data. It is a tool and a very useful one at that, but it does not make you a more competent engineer. I would suggest getting a copy of Autocad LT and have someone help get you started and fool around with it. Like most programs, once you get into it and discover the logic behind the basic steps, the rest of it unravels pretty quickly. You may not be making finished drawings right off the bat, but you can see how a tricky joint might fit together.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

3
I don't see how you can afford to pay engineering salaries for drafting. It seems to me that the only way to justify is if you can't find a decent cad operator. This is becoming a bigger problem in my market. I just passed on hiring an engineer because hepreferred to do his own drafting and I have in-house drafting capability.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

(OP)
Michfan-
I am not talking about not knowing how to draw a detail.  I draw details all the time, but I hand them off to CAD after I draw them by hand.  I certainly know how to communicate what I want, but I don't see how that relates to actually USING CAD.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I like to do some of the CAD layout and design if I can.  I find that it can be relaxing after several weeks of grinding through the analytic stuff with structural software, design spreadsheets, programming, report writing, etc., to be able to work on a layout puzzle of sorts.  In my opinion I'm as fast and make better drawings than about 80% of the techs I've worked with in the past, and maybe this has something to do with the fact that I have done as many drawings as I have.  I should mention that I work in manufacturing which is probably a different environment than consulting.

I agree with the comment made by michfan that learning drafting by hand teaches a better understanding of the basics.

Regards,
-Mike

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I don't know anymore CAD than knowing how to open an existing drawing and magnify a detail so I can read it.  And I'm not even very good at that.  I discourage my engineers that work from me from using CAD.  I find that engineers using CAD tend to overly detail (fine tune) work for my money.  I'd rather pay a competent CAD technician to work off of hand sketches and redlines of existing drawings.  We have too many layering rules and X-references to have engineers do that and do good engineering efficiently.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

StructuralEIT,
My point was that young engineers nowadays usually have some CAD experience because hand drafting isn't widely used any longer.  How much that experience helps them in their day-to-day engineering work would depend on how well they learned and understand the process of DESIGN, not just drawing.  Simply knowing how to draw lines in CAD won't necessarily give you the experience you need in learning how to design correctly.  You can be an expert at CAD and know all the shortcuts and be lightning-fast, but if you don't understand the basics of a good design, just knowing how to draw in CAD won't make you a good designer.

But I think the reason a lot of companies want you proficient in CAD is two-fold: (1) you have the technical ability to understand a cad drawing when it is sent to you; how to open it, manipulate it, turn layers on and off, incorporate it into your work, plot it, etc. -- especially in smaller companies without a dedicated CAD staff, and (2) it shows you PROBABLY have some DESIGN experience.  If you took classes to learn AutoCAD or another program, you likely have some design sense, or are on your way to acquiring it, and hopefully it's good sense and not non-sense.  You may not actually even use AutoCAD in the position you are applying for, but if you have the ability to use it, it adds to your overall "value" to the company.  (And they can always make you a CAD monkey if things get slow...)  

I'm at an age where I learned on a drafting board through middle and high school, and CAD was just starting when I hit my college years.  I used a drafting board all through my classes for my architecture degree, but used more CAD by the time I went for my CE degree.  I really value the hand-drafting experience, as much as I value knowing AutoCAD, and I'm fairly proficient at both.  Just being able to draw something in CAD doesn't mean it will work in the real world.

I get plans across my desk nearly every day that aren't worth the paper they are printed on.  HVAC running OUTSIDE the roof structure, incorrect details referencing other incorrect or even missing details, etc.  Dimensions that don't actually go to anything, that's always nice.  Whether these were drawn by an engineer with poor CAD skills, or a CAD tech with poor engineering skills, I'll never know - but either way, it reflects poorly on that company, and no owner or manager wants people to think their company isn't the best.

Personally, I wouldn't care whether you are proficient in CAD and can do your own sketches, or if you hand sketch and give it to a CAD tech, as long as your design really WORKS in the real world.  But, if I were a boss looking to hire, and I had the choice between someone who was proficient in CAD or someone who had no experience with it, all other factors equal, I'd go with the CAD experience.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

(OP)
Michfan-
This is your quote.
"How much that experience helps them in their day-to-day engineering work would depend on how well they learned and understand the process of DESIGN, not just drawing.  Simply knowing how to draw lines in CAD won't necessarily give you the experience you need in learning how to design correctly.  You can be an expert at CAD and know all the shortcuts and be lightning-fast, but if you don't understand the basics of a good design, just knowing how to draw in CAD won't make you a good designer."

Are you saying that designing and drawing are virtually one in the same?  In my experience, designing is sizing the members, welds, etc... as well as making sure the detail will perform as desired (e.g. that a "pin" connection will allow sufficient rotation to make this assumption).  None of this designing (by my definition), requires any CAD knowledge at all.  
I am not disputing your assertion that CAD knowledge is good, that is the whole reason I started this thread - to get everyone's opinion on the matter.  What I am questioning is the idea of knowing CAD making you a better engineer or how drawing a detail that an engineer (possibly yourself) came up with means that you are a designer.  I'm just not following the logic.



This is your other quote
"But I think the reason a lot of companies want you proficient in CAD is two-fold: (1) you have the technical ability to understand a cad drawing when it is sent to you; how to open it, manipulate it, turn layers on and off, incorporate it into your work, plot it, etc. -- especially in smaller companies without a dedicated CAD staff, and (2) it shows you PROBABLY have some DESIGN experience.  If you took classes to learn AutoCAD or another program, you likely have some design sense, or are on your way to acquiring it, and hopefully it's good sense and not non-sense."

Again, what does being proficient in CAD have to do with design experience?  The CAD guys draw EXACTLY what you give them.  They are not designing connections.  You don't give them a beam and say, "pinned-pinned" and let the CAD guy design the connection - You, as the engineer, design the connection.  Again, I am not following the logic.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I have a good knowledge of cad, so there are times when I can do a framing layout faster than having my cad tech do something.  My cad tech has over 30 years of structural drafting experience.  Sometimes, I can do a cad detail faster than he does from a sketch.  Sometimes, I can modify an existing detail as easily as redlining it.  However, I don't do alot of cad work because I prefer to engineer rather than draw on the computer.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

StructuralEIT, I think Michfan and others are trying to convey the concept that it is important to have basic CAD knowledge and skills, not necessarily be an "expert" at it.  The extent of your CAD knowledge will depend on your particular company's business practices, but at least some knowledge is not a bad thing.

There's something else important to remember and consider about drawings:  Most of the time, your final product is a drawing.  That's all anyone ever sees or cares about.  Not only are the drawings important now for proper construction, but 2 years from now when the client looks back and maybe wants to rehire you, and 10 years from now when an owner needs to modify the structure you designed.  Having as much knowledge as possible about what information the drawings contain, and how they were created will only make you a better engineer, later a better engineering manager, later a better engineering firm owner, etc.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

StructuralEIT, I understand (hopefully) the intent of your question to be: "If I design, detail, and hand-sketch my requirements for the construction drawings to be done by a drafter in CAD, how does it make me a better engineer to learn CAD?"

After 20+ years of drafting, originally with pencil on vellum, now using AutoCAD and MicroStation, it's my opinion that if you do your hand skecthes to scale and as quickly as you could learn to do them in CAD there would be no real gain in design engineering ability. The key is that in detailing complex structures, it becomes really helpful to get a sense of actual scale and proportion which is sometimes lost in a schematic sketch.

I've found that what works best for me is to do the main structure layout and details in CAD and then ship them to the drafter, with red-lined notes, to finish. The degree of detail that I'd have to provide on a hand sketch and time in explaination in order to get the same final results would take far too much time.

That's my 2-cents.

-Jack

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I am an interloper here, having had no civil experience.  I do have considerable CAD and board drawing experience, however.  In other industries, michfan is quite correct in her reasoning of drafting experience aiding in design capabilities.  Machined parts and assemblies rely on accurate and reasonable tolerancing in order to work correctly.  Having your drawings repeatedly come back to you all marked up in red tends to refine your ability to reason out how to best apply dimensioning and tolerancing schemes, which in turn is a stepping stone to being a good designer.  Board experience is valuable because of the effort required to repeatedly re-dimension something and still produce a good drawing.  It teaches one to plan ahead and try to reflect how that part is going to be made, as well as a sense of pride in the finished product.  CAD jockeys with no board experience have not had that learning experience.  Re-dimensioning or redrawing to them is much simpler (which is the point of CAD), and they often seem to miss out on that analytical part of their work.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

"Are you saying that designing and drawing are virtually one in the same?  In my experience, designing is sizing the members, welds, etc... as well as making sure the detail will perform as desired (e.g. that a "pin" connection will allow sufficient rotation to make this assumption).  None of this designing (by my definition), requires any CAD knowledge at all."

Thought about this for a while and my answer is to some extent designing and drawing are one in the same. Drawings are the medium through we communicate our design. Before cad, plans were artfully drawn and were clear and consise. Now we have thick rolls of stanard details, modified to meet the site conditions. I find plans are getting less clear as more engineers allow drafters to do it all. Supose you were a brillent composer, who could create great symphonies of music, but did not know how to write them down. So every day you go to your music scribe and hum while he jots it down. He might capture the overall melody, but do you think he can completely capture the music in your mind? The same is true of drafting and designing. We need to be able to be able to draw well enough to capture the music, not just hum.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

That is what red pencils are for. I don't understand this debate. An engineer should be able to visualize what they are designing. If they can't there may be a problem. I don't need a 3d drawing or something to show me what something looks like. If I give a draftsman a detail in rough sketch format they had better be able to turn this into a scaled copy of my sketch. If not then I need to either train or replace them. Can't afford to pay engineers salary to do drafting. Also good engineers are hard to find and I don't want them using their time drawing.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

(OP)
ron9876-
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!  I started this thread as a simple poll to find out how many engineers do their own CAD work and it has somehow turned into a debate as to whether engineers should know how to do CAD work.  

DRC1-
As ron9876 points out, "that is what red pencils are for".  The drafter doesn't need to understand how the detail works, just draw it the way I show it - nothing more, nothing less.  All this talk about being a composer is nonsense.  As long as the detail is drawn (and subsequently built) the way I show it, it will behave the way it is intended to (regardless of the drafter's ability to understand it).

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I do it all myself.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

StructuralEd,
It must be nice to not make mistakes (or at least not have anyone point them out).

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

ron9876, you are correct, good engineers are hard to find.  I will argue that good drafters and good drawings are even harder to find though.  As an engineer who knows both CAD and hand drafting well, I know a bad drawing when I see it.  I know how to do it better myself, how little effort it really takes if you're good, and therefore I can tell a tech how to do it correctly.  I have respect for good techs, but no tech will ever be able to tell me that I don't know CAD, and I shouldn't tell them what or how to do it.  That's power of having true control over my final product.

Now, I personally do not advocate engineers spending the majority of their time drafting, even though my current company tends to.  However, I do believe that as EIT's, spending some time on the CAD and learning the basics of creating a drawing is beneficial.  They are paid less, are more open to learning new technology, and are in the mindset of soaking up knowledge.  Not only is CAD valuable for something as simple as calculating trib areas or grabbing dimensions, but a tremendous amount can be learned by drawings plans and details in true scale and organizing designs into a coordinated drawing set.

StructuralEIT, I think your simple question has been answered.  In my opinion, you are limiting yourself.  If you ever applied for a job at our firm, and didn't know any CAD, you wouldn't even get a first interview. We would use the back your resume to do some hand sketching though.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

Yes good drafters are hard to find for sure. First you have to find someone who can run the machine and then teach them what they are looking at. Over time I have developed a process that gives detailed info to be drawn by line makers. Sad but true. However, I never give up control of the final product.
I suppose that some limited time when you first start out of school may be good but would you substitute that training for starting the steep learning curve that transitions from school to the real world. I am also curious how much time a new grad would be willing to spend drawing instead of engineering. When I got out of school that would have been a big minus and I would be looking for a position that was looking for a full time engineer.

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

(OP)
PMR06-
Let me assure you that yuo wouldn't have my resume on any desk in your company if I knew that you required your engineers to do drafting.  It seems that virtually everyone has a differing opinion on this, and I prefer to spend my time engineering, not drafting.  As ron9876 points out, there are many things that new grads must learn when coming out of school and spening that time drawing instead of picking up valuable engineering experience is a waste in my opinion.
I only have 10 months of full time engineering experience and while I feel like I have learned a ton, I know there is so much more that I need to learn.  I take books and papers home to read on weekends to help understand any number of things better.  If I were spending my time drafting I would be so much further down on that learning curve that ron9876 references that I probably would be looking for a new job that would allow me to do more engineering.
The best example I can think of is the new 13th edition steel manual.  I learned ASD in school and we used ASD at my office until last week when we switched to LRFD using the new manual.  This is a big transition and if my employer wanted me to be drafting instead of getting up to speed on the ins and outs of the new steel code, I would be wondering what is wrong with my boss!

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I've worked at 4 places.  Two of them I've done most of my own drafting.  Two of them I've done little to no drafting.  The amount of drafting I've done has been dependent on several factors:
1.  Company/office policy on Engineers Drafting
2.  Availability of drafters to meet deadlines
3.  Competency of drafters for structural drafting
4.  Complexity of design in correlation with #2 & #3
5.  Cost-effectiveness of engineer drafting on specific projects




 

RE: Poll about CAD knowledge

I work in a small firm. We are in a market where it is hard to find good draftsmen.  We are also very often working on fast-paced projects.  Consequently, we do most of our own drafting.

We have one very talented designer that drafts and preps basic building layouts for the engineers as well. He also is in charge of double-checking constructability issues. He has a calibrated eyeball... and he hand drafted about half of the buildings we are renovating now.

We use college engineering interns for draftsmen when we can get them.

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