Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
(OP)
I graduated in May 2010 with a mechanical engineering degree and have been actively job searching. I want to get into HVAC and sustainable design, and work for an engineering firm. I have not had an internship and am not proficient in AutoCAD, but I have a high GPA. Should I take a couple of weeks to teach myself AutoCAD to improve my resume? Any tips or suggestions are appreciated.





RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Other than your time, are there any cost or other negative implications?
If so then you need to look at the trade off, but it certainly sounds like a reasonable idea.
As well as how to use the CAD system, learn what you should be doing with it, old fashioned drafting skills (beyond neat hand writing and using a T square etc.). Find out what the industry standards are for drawing in your field of interest and learn them too.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
It's really easy to use and be effective. But, to be an expert in CAD isn't as easy, but in most circumstances it isn't necessary either.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
But I am not designing rocket ships either.
Want something simpler - try TurboCad. I swear I could teach my secretary (if I had one) in about an hour....
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
The more you know and can do, the more opportunities.
"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
I think the point is not 'what software should I pick to do my drawing on' or 'what is the easiest CAD system to learn' it's more of 'AutoCAD appears to be the defacto industry standard, will learning it make me more employable.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Teach yourself a solid modeling CAD app (SolidWorks, CATIA, etc) will help stand out more on your resume IMO.
Chris
SolidWorks 10 SP4.0
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Draftsight is a free AutoCAD clone. Learn it and AutoCAD proficiency is only a step away.
Perhaps you're thinking of one of the difficult programs to learn. I taught myself AutoCrayon while working as a 3rd shift machinist. I got my first AutoCAD drafting job shortly afterward, and was up to speed in the drafting pool workflow within two weeks.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Knowing AutoCAD will not hurt your resume. Showing that you took the initiative to learn it will not hurt either.
Your real problem will be finding a good course. The original AutoCAD course I took was very close to a waste of time. This was almost twenty years ago, so computer instructors have had some time to improve.
All of the good computer courses I have taken have been taught by software vendors, and they have cost around $1500 to $2000 Canadian.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
As a recent graduate, you may also be eligible for training at no or low cost through a Federal program called the Workforce Investment Act. You can get more information at a local governmental agency which varies from place to place. I'd try googling your city or state and 'WIA' to start.
As far as programs, Autocad is good, but I've noticed many employers looking for Solid Works and Revit proficiency. Good luck to you!
"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
While you have an engineering degree, unless you have experience with laying out the systems and such, there will be CAD proficient designers with no engineering degree who will still have sufficient HVAC engineering knowledge (layout and fitting and can do ordinary calculations) and will be able to put it on to a piece of paper as well. So you would be behind the eight ball starting out.
I would most definitely learn Cadd. But I would be leary of direct Autodesk assistance - they tend to not have industry specific instructors who can help you with HVAC issues. They will be able to teach you how to get into it, navigate the software, i.e. open files, saving, drawing lines, etc. - but when you ask them how to draw a duct or a pipe and use some of AMEP inherent design features, they will not be able to tell you how to do it. I know this from experience. If you want to go that route, find an Autodesk certified training company who works with the MEP industry. They tend to have actual designers who have experience in using AMEP in the consulting industry.
Also, you might look for a company that is willing to bring you on board as a designer (starting out) and give you the Autocad training free of charge and also help you learn how to use your ME degree in the industry. My company does that all the time and I am sure others do as well.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
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RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
WIA has been squeezed dry by the current recession in my area.
As for teaching yourself CAD, I saw my temp job coming to an end, the office had Solidworks essentials books all over the place from a CAD transition, and SW had a free non-commercial version at the time. 1 summer later, I had a SW design job.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Having a student card entitles you to significant discounts on software of all kinds. I purchased Autocad Inventor while taking a CAD class at a local community college for under $200. I remember the retail price was in the thousands, but you need academic proof, like a student ID number and a course enrollment.
I'm lucky (or unlucky depending on your perspective) to be living in one of the three economically depressed cities in the US determined to be worthy of additional subsidy. At least that's what they said during the WIA qualification classes in 'how to write a resume', 'how to network' and 'how to conduct yourself during and interview' that I took to qualify for the benefit extension.
"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
I'd been using Cadkey for 10 years, which most people had never heard of. to be employable, I got a Solidworks personal edition CD from the local VAR, and went thru all of the tutorials, and then modeled up some items I had laying around. I was careful not to say "profecient" or "expert" at Solidworks on my resume. I said something like "familiar", or something similar.
While working that job, I also got my hands on Pro-E and taught myself during lunch hours (They had multiple CAD systems). When one contract was up, I was moved onto another contract where I used Pro-E. I gained some work experience with it, and have ended up using it in all my jobs since.
So... in the end.. YES it's worth teaching yourself, but a good point was made about attending a class and making connections... This world is all about who you know... Networking is very valuable!!
David
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
The manager wanted to pay me six dollars an hour less than my asking rate (at that time nearly 20 years ago was $48/hour, he wanted to pay me $42/hour). When I took their incoming AutoCad test (yes they had one) I had not scored in the highest speed category and he felt justified in offering the lower rate.
Rather than argue I saw this as an opportunity. I accepted the contract offer because he stated if I could reach the highest speed category within 30 days he would bump my rate to the requested $48/hour. He also mentioned the local community college had a good AutoCad instructor just starting a class.
I took the hint and registered fo the class, which because it was at a community college and I was a resident of the state was dirt cheap. I also took on every AutoCad task I could at work so I was getting practice every day and two nights a week at the school.
I easily hit the highest speed category within 30 days and got the raise and worked that contract for over two years at my desired rate.
My point is this: I perfer engineering to Cad work any day, but at least at most of the places I have worked (both contract and direct) engineers are expected to do their own Cad work as well. Teaching myself AutoCad, and jumping at an opportunity to sharpen my skills has always opened more doors that I would have had open without AutoCad skills.
I have since taught myself SolidWorks as well, and had more opportunities open up where I work now as a direct employee.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
In the building industry for better or worse BIM is the new buzzword and trend. Take a community college course in REVIT. It could put you in a much better place competatively.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
That being said, I learned more about AutoCad in one month of employment than I did in just playing around with it in school.
Learning some type of CAD package is much more valuable than your GPA. A practical skill trumps impressive grades.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
As others have said here, check out the community colleges for CAD courses. Also check local high schools for ROP courses in CAD. Very often you can enroll in these for no cost.
A solid modeling program called Alibre is available on the internet for free for 30 days, after which it will turn into a limited function free program called Alibre Express.
It is very similar to Solidworks, in its interface, and proficiency in that will get you in the door of a lot of companies using Solidworks or Pro-E. Also some corporations are now using Alibre Professional as their in house CAD program.
B.E.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
If you're just doing simple 2D drawings you can probably learn it on your own. Keep in mind if you're not going to use CAD on a regular basis it's easy to forget.
Don't get the notion - that a lot of young engineers have - that drawing is beneath you. How do you think drawings get developed? Drafters can't read your mind.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Teach yourself AutoCrayon. THEN go take a class and totally own it. Perhaps then you will make connections while you are at the top of the game.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
As a professional it's up to you to bring skills to a job.
Also, how do you feel about going home on time when there is a last minute correction to be made.
Absent cad skills, you risk falling victim to cumbersome Redline processes with backlogs, and cocky drafting people trying to justify growth of their department or more OT.
It's just as fast for me to make the corrections in the file than it is to work up a redline and run it through drafting and wait. Even then, if the drafting person doesn't check their work, you repeat the cycle and wait longer.
If drafting is under another branch of the organization, someone else may control how much of your weekend you get.
I think of our drafting department as Jurassic Park.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Perhaps we can start a new thread about the role or necessity of CAD opperators?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Our drafting dep't. is called Sleepy Valley.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
I am guessing the plan is to hire "CAD Drafters" at the lower rates of these new job descriptions, and over time we experienced engineers will be tasked to train them in engineering because "they will want to have upward mobility too". Then sometime down the road the company will be able to have mostly low paid but supposedly "trained" individuals and can stop hiring genuine engineers at the going rate.
I hope I am wrong.
My industry is aviation where we don't often have genuine engineers anyway since we all work under the auspices of a DER rather than a Professional Engineer. Thus we often use individuals with experience only rather than an engineering degree plus experience. (For full disclosure that includes me, 36 years experience, no engineering degree.)
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
CAD has become increasingly more complex these days and a lot of firms need to use these features to complete projects quicker. I have one client that took a 3month night course and sends us drawings. Those drawings are horrible since he lacks a great deal of basic drafting skills.
Brad
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Speaking kind of from the other end of the spectrum, I am primarily a drafter, in charge of one of the drafting teams that we have here, and I see a lot of variance. (Not an engineer, never went to school for engineering.... learned autocad, and that's been that.)
There are engineers that look down on me, or treat me like dirt because I haven't had the training and classroom experience to "make myself worth something and get my stamp" (yes, actually had something like that said directly to me) but, when it all hits the fan on deadlines, some of those are the same guys puckering up for me to get their drawings done so they can send them out the door, because they never learned the "tools of the lower masses"
Some of the registered engineers that we have in-house can maneuver through autocad, to get simple dimensions or add straight lines or text, but that's about it.
We also have engineers that are pretty adept at mid level autocad activities (no or little 3d, familiar with xclips, dynamic blocks, etc, but little to no experience setting them up)
Then, we have drafters, that can muddle their way through but know less than some of the engineers.
Last, we have a few that are pretty adept in most levels of autocad, including 3d, and can get it to dance to about any tune.
Best projects are those with the capable drafters, and engineers that know autocad pretty well.
Worst projects, and always profit loss jobs, are those that have the lower level drafters and engineers that don't know it either.
Could all that be corrected? Sure... but politics......
Anyway, all that boils down to say, learn as much of it as you can. Even if you don't use it often, when you can teach the "drafters" that should know better new tricks... one more reason to make yourself indispensable. (assuming the company looks at performance instead of "who knows the dirt politics")
Beyond that, as mentioned above, I would also HIGHLY recommend some type of board drafting class, if you've never had one. As I explain it to people here, running autocad is not drafting. Drafting is a way to convey information in a logical, legible manner, and board drafting makes you think more for that, with sheet layout, which views to draw, etc. With that, it's not quite as easy as saveas and change a note.
Autocad is a tool to use to convey that information, but I believe definitely worth learning. (Minus the whole 3d modeling that... that's an entirely different world.)
If not autocad, depending on your field, then Revit, Inventor, Solidworks, Catia, etc. The more you know, the more youhave to offer.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
They also have 2-year associate degree programs in drafting. I think there, you take a course on drawing houses, one on machine drafting, etc., so they're trying to teach you how to draw the subject material in question as opposed to just the software.
My experience is that the 32-hour course was a good introduction to the subject, but doesn't begin to make you a master of it, either. (If you were proficient at other equally advanced CAD programs, that might be a different matter.) Even now, ten or twelve years later, I'm still learning stuff as I go.
I can't say if it would help to learn it, but sure wouldn't hurt, either.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
One question: - first a comment. I am surprised at your statement. I guess I supposed that modern day grads learned a rudimentary amount of CAD. When I graduated back in the slide rule days, we learned board drafting, and after entry into the engineering world, there wasn't anything a drafter could do on a board that I couldn't do. They could do it with better quality and speed, because it was their day job, but they all knew I could tape a sheet to a board and produce a drawing if I needed to, or take an eraser and make a change to their drawing.
I still have all the drafting tools, and several younger engineers that are VERY CAD literate have given me some admiring looks when shown sketches that I drafted up in pencil. I took it that they didn't know how to do that.
So my question is, what if any type of drafting did you get with a ME education?
Right now, I don't know any type of CAD. They knew that when they hired me, and while I will have several CAD drafters working for me at any given time, I can't do much more than open the drawings and look at layers and print them. I don't want to know any more than that. What I know all these young bucks and gals that can do CAD don't know, and I am considered a valuable asset to the company; but it is experience, not CAD skills that earns that for me.
rmw
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
"secretaries" that did your memos for you
"drafters" that did your drawings for you
"techs" that did your measurements for you
Ostensbily, a new hire that is familiar with some sort of CAD, not necessarily Autocad, will be viewed with some level of favor, since it's obvious you won't need someone else to do your drawings, compared with someone with no CAD experience. However, most starting MEs presumably would be detailing a senior engineer's rough drawings, although that's not always the case.
I wouldn't get terribly excited about in-depth Autocad knowledge, since my company, for example, is standardized on Pro/E, while others might be standardized on SolidWorks. If you want to widen your appeal, then you might actually be better off knowing a little about several different CAD packages, rather than a lot about just one package.
You should also be sufficiently familiar with ASME Y14 symbology and tolerancing, as well as some basic best practices with regard to datum selection and how parts are actually made on CNC machines. I've seen some bad practices where the designer assumed that disparate pads would be parallel, based on offsets from a datum, without specifying a parallelism tolerance; we had to send them back for lapping.
So, understanding of tolerancing would seem to be a really good skill to have and to show off.
Bear in mind that stating "familiarity" with any specific topic may draw questions from an interviewer, so make sure that you really are "familiar" with the things you put on your resume. Nothing more embarassing to have to admit that your "familiarity" with a CAD package amounts to having seen someone else use the program. I've had several interviewees that failed that basic test.
TTFN
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RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
I never got the hang of ink - I still have a ruling pen - even with a Rapidograph pen. I still have drafting equipment - T-square, adjustable triangles, dividers, compass, Ames lettering guide, French curve, protractor (or as one young engineer asked me a few years ago: "do you have one of those things that measures angles?")
In the early 90's I taught myself Autocad from a book. My boss didn't mind giving people the disks if they wanted to study at home. He didn't consider it piracy so long as it was for learning and not moonlighting. Of course, I was sent to field job and when I returned a few years later the office was using Microstation. Intergraph did a good job of selling their product to the state DOT's. In the 90's Microstation was a difficult program to learn. I eventually got the hang of it for what I needed - reviewing drawings and making minor edits.
Presently, I don't any CAD programs on my computer. I was told I don't need them as a project manager. I sometimes wonder about the need for CAD operators. For the past 10 years, where I was, the younger engineers have been doing their own drawings. We had some CAD people to assist those of use who aren't very proficient, but our CAD people weren't that good. Most didn't have any real manual drafting skills. They didn't have an eye for presentation or if something was wrong they wouldn't notice.
Now, after being sold again, the CAD people in the department I was assigned to are pretty sharp and produce quality work for the most part. However, I really don't know if the majority of engineers in our department do their own drawings.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Also, if you get the chance to learn about other CAD packages, that too may be very helpful.
The really important skill is largely independent of the software package being used : the ability to produce clear, easily-understood, complete drawings with sufficient detail to enable the reader to fully understand what you intend to communicate. If you can demonstrate that you can do this, then your needing to learn how to use a new cad package should be much less of an issue.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
I wouldn't worry about an engineer being stuck at CADD thus wasting an engineering education. I would worry about being an engineer without CADD - that might lead to unemployment.
As IRSTUFF pointed out the industry has done away with a number of positions that were at one time valuable and that one could make a career of: word processer/typist, drafting techncian, and technologist.
For many years when I first came into the industry we had a pool of typist and later word processors that developed engineering specifications based on mark-ups provided by the engineers. It's probably been 15 years since that group was eliminated. Now engineers do their own specifications, with a simple "save as" and run through some mark-ups. Turns out this is just as economical than having the engineer re-read and red-up the hardcopy. Now they're expected to read and mark-up at the same time.
We also had a separate drafting department with a manager. Though for structural work we still have detailers/technicians, we don't have a drafting manager as it falls under engineering now. Our civil group no longer has technicians for drafting as the thier roadway programs do pretty much everything the engineer needs.
Times are changing! Hop on and enjoy the ride!
Regards,
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RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
Find out what the industry drawing standard for what you do is and get to know it, as well as learning what is perceived as the most common CAD program in that field.
If I understand what you mean by HVAC correctly, then ASME Y14.5M-1994 probably isn't the correct spec.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
if you can grab somthing on BIM, do that too.
Needless to say that without ANY CAD, no one will hire you in the HVAC industry that you're trying to target.
To be productive as an HVAC engineer, and be trusted with a project, you need a minimum of 5-years, and before those 5-years get here, someone needs to pay you, and you need to justify your paycheck. CAD WILL justify your paycheck.
No one will hire you to sit around and wait for you to learn the trade.
For Inormation, some people are being taught Revit and BIM in HIGH SCHOOL, and here you're entering the market as an engineer with no internship? and no CAD? where have you been man? you need to look for intership positions.
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
RE: Should I teach myself AutoCAD to improve resume?
I took a three-weekends-in-a-row crash course in AutoCAD at the local community college and it was the best thing I ever did for my career. Ended up using it right away on several projects. Should have done it years ago.