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Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings
30

Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

(OP)
Does anyone know what percentage in time a design is reduced in hours based on design being done using a 3D Cad system (Solidworks)? Instead of hand drawings.

Need some numbers to help justify purchasing software for company.

Thanks, in advanced.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Designmr: I know the design time is improved by a big percentage, but do not know what the verified by timeing is. I feel also the accuracy of your design improves by Designing in 3D, Plus being parametric, any adjustments that need to be made are Really easy.When I bought Solid Works I also signed up for the instruction (begining)Classes.I found out that the way you design with AutoCad, for example, is quite different, due to the parametric abitities of Solid Works.You will find that getting used to a "new" way of doing anything does have some lead time to get up to your capabilitys with the new system. I found out that just "un learning" AutoCad and adapting to the new system was best for reducing your lead time to maximum efficency. Wish you luck and good salesmanship of SolidWorks.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

How does one go about quantifying that? The amount of time saved will depend on the complexity of the design, the skill of the drafter (hand or software), the level of detail needed.
I would say that if you're still doing things by hand, you're losing money compared to using software. Your best bet is to go to the SolidWorks website and look at all the various success stories.  

Jeff Mirisola
Director of Engineering
M9 Defense
My Blog

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Be sure to factor in time lost due to sabotage by Luddites.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

(OP)
thanks for the replies people.  I've used 3D software for years, after starting off on the board I know personally how much time I can save.  But when you have to show the upper management that have never did this kind of work, they usually want graphs and something in writing.  I am Googling to see, but that is time consuming, thanks again.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Check with your reseller. They'll have charts and graphs and stats and other high quality bs.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

I looked at the thread date, at first I thought it was from the 90s.
lol

Have your management look at what your customers are using. If they are still on the board, then maybe you're OK.
I don't know of too many companies that are still doing hand drawings.

Chris
SolidWorks 11
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

2

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

(OP)
Again great replies people.  You are right you would think all companies (epecially large ones) should have some kind of knowledge already about cost, but no, not this one.  

Appreciate the replies as always.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

How much time will you save by not having to go back to 1975 every time you need to make a part?

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

And. . . what is the cost of the 1.21 GW to power the flux capacitor to help you get there?

- - -Updraft

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

(OP)
I did board drawings when I first started, I remember how long it took just to move a view to make room for another view, or adding one note between a long list of notes.  Alot of erasing and re-drawing, then if you did it in ink, UGH.  Some take it for granted, I surely do not...

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

It's also not about how long it takes to make hand drawings.  The maintenance is much higher.  Instead of printing and email from practically anyway, your staff will always be cursed with having to find the real file and *MAIL* copies to vendors and customers.  I would think the labor of doing that for just one time with one project more than covers the cost of the original purchase cost and yearly subscription.

Matt Lorono, CSWP
Product Definition Specialist, DS SolidWorks Corp
Personal sites:
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources & SolidWorks Legion

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Quote (designmr):


Does anyone know what percentage in time a design is reduced in hours based on design being done using a 3D Cad system (Solidworks)? Instead of hand drawings.

   Most of my design time is spent starting at the drafting board or computer screen.  3D CAD will not save much of this.  This is a dangerous discussion that will end by making you look like an idiot.

   The advantage of 3D CAD is quality.  You have way more effective communications with co-workers about what you are doing.  You have better communications with your sales departments, your customers, and your fabricators.

   In the end, if your 3D CAD is implemented intelligently, you will get to easily re-use existing designs, and then you will have time.  

   Where do you go to find people who can work on a drafting board?

               JHG

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

drawoh,

People close to retiring would be a good source for drafting board types, but I doubt many would even contemplate going back. I had a great time while on the board, but after being spoiled by 3D modelling, I could not do it again. I just wouldn't have the patience.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

I don't have any statistics for you other than nearly every college or university program that I am aware of made this switch (for good) towards the end of the last century after experimenting with dual enviroments for 15 years or so.

At the time many argued that you couldn't teach the basics on CAD that the drawing board was required.  Pure nonsense. In any case the customers determined the final outcome. Any reputable program switched to CAD.

Now the fight is to make the final push to 3D-to-2D as the default design practice.  (as opposed to using 2D CAD as an electronic drafting board)  With the advances in simulation and analysis along with CNC CAD/CAM, in addition to the obvious vizualization benefits - many are using 3D as an engineering analysis and documentation tool.  Digital prototyping.
 

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Speaking of not going back to the board, I wouldn't go back to 2D CAD!  I worked for a consulting firm in 1998 and had a customer that wanted the "work done in ACAD."  I shot him a price for that and then shot him a much lower one where only the deliverable was DWG files.  He asked what the difference was and I explained to him the benefit of doing the work in SWX vs. 2D and that I could still save the drawings in a format he could use.  He was thrilled and even looked into buying SWX for his firm.

The ability to rapidly develop a design in parametric 3D systems blows the doors off trying to design using anything less.  From an assembly you can edit a part to get the design to do what you want.  If you really know what you are doing then generating a good drawing is incredibly fast, plus you never have to worry about the accuracy of the object lines.  Making sections, alternate views, showing/not showing hidden lines in a drawing, etc. is so easy.

The current job I have I got partly because of eDrawings!  I was able to show how easy it is to communicate with others with this simple and free 3D tool.  They hired me as the director of engineering when they were originally just looking for a mid-level design engineer.  My first assignment was to buy four seats of SWX.  Three months later the tightwad owner said we had already exceeded his expectations with what we were able to do with it.  THAT is quite a testimonial!

- - -Updraft

- - -Updraft

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Quote (CorBlimeyLimey):


People close to retiring would be a good source for drafting board types, but I doubt many would even contemplate going back. I had a great time while on the board, but after being spoiled by 3D modelling, I could not do it again. I just wouldn't have the patience.

   I would find it fun.  The only downside I could see would be explaining to people why management wants to maintain the old pencil on paper drawings.  Finding a blueprint machine could be fun.  Ammonia is now classified as hazardous.   

               JHG

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

drawoh,

Your last comment evokes an image of Lloyd Bridges saying "I picked the wrong day to give-up making blueprints."

- - -Updraft

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Ahhh...
The days of changing/smelling the ammonia and it burning the paper-cuts on the fingers.

Chris
SolidWorks 11
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

(OP)
Blue print machines.  Heck I worked at Hughes Aircraft way back from 1973 to 1991, before CAD, sometimes we had to do "SUN PRINTS", yep, lay that drawing in the sun...I still have my old tools (templates, pencils, etc), not sure why....

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

And I used to walk uphill going to and coming home from school, even in the snow!  (Consequently there was also a downhill side.)

Do you remember the days of Constructive Geometry?  It was amazingly clever stuff, but I'm so glad I have SWX for all that now.

Designmr, what about making sepias?  They were a pain to work with.

- - -Updraft

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Showing our age? wink
I started with Constructive Geometry.
I worked with sepias. I hated the chemical (eradicator?) for making changes.
I still have all my templates/tools in a box stored away in the garage. I gave some tools to my son while in engineering school.

Worked at a company ~16 years ago that did hand drawings, microfilmed them, then re-microfilmed every change, signature, etc. Was a PITA!

CAD makes life much easier in a lot of ways...until the computer locks up or crashes!

Chris
SolidWorks 11
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

""Worked at a company ~16 years ago that did hand drawings, microfilmed them, then re-microfilmed every change, signature, etc. Was a PITA!  """


Ctopher, now you are bringing back painful memories.

 By the way does anybody want a used microfiche viewer?

I started as a board drafter where we microfilmed, later went to Auto Cad then Cadkey.
 I later discovered parametric with Solidworks and then Alibre.
Would I go back? Well maybe to Solidworks.
 Would I do a hand drawing? Possibly on an A sized sheet for a small simple part, then to save it I would still have to scan it so it did not get lost. But I am willing to bet that the time would be a wash and with the solid modeling program, you can print as many copies as you like.
B.E.  

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them.  Old professor

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

(OP)
Ctopher, I remember "Descriptive Geometry", hated it.

I remember the eradicator, plus, having to use "Ajax" or some cleaner to remove large areas of ink on mylar or the "Dry Cleaning Eraser Pad (Scum Bag)"...

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Initial design of a part by hand or in 3D CAD is not much different in time. The real time savings come when you revise that part. The automatic updating of drawing views from the model change make that step almost seamless.
There are secondary benefits in design integrity and assembly file mating.
 

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Talk to whoever you're thinking of buying the software from (VAR or whoever) it's in their interest to help you come up with this information.  I've had SW VAR and direct folk trying to persuade me to switch to SW and they had info comparing it to various other CAD packages etc. so they may have something for your situation.

A good thing about CAD (especially 3D) is the ease of changing things.

A bad thing about CAD (especially 3D) is the ease of changing things.  (You can spend a lot of time tweaking things that you just would have probably left as originally drawn otherwise.)

Posting guidelines FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm? (probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

The type of statistics that bean counters ask for to "justify" everything are mostly ridiculous in nature. Suffice it to say that manufacturing and prototyping mistakes from unforeseen fit-up issues will pay for the CAD program by themselves.

The old saying, "You don't know what you don't know" applies here. There are so many design issues that cannot be seen in standard two dimensional orthographic drawings and must be proven in manufacturing. The amount of time wasted going "back to the drawing board" kills companies and is never documented in the true production costs.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

2
Real advantage of paper drawings was eventually you wore the corners off the drawing and had to release the project.

--
Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2011 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro, Nvidia Quaddro FX580

 

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Quote:

The amount of time wasted going "back to the drawing board" ... and is never documented in the true production costs.

And is often never documented at all.

The shop-floor people figure out how to make it work - regardless of the drawing - and make it right (in the works of Mike Holmes).

They store all this information in their head and somehow the documentation never gets updated.

Along comes a big truck as they pull out of the driveway...crash and all that intellectual property is gone in an instant.

Full 3D/2D digital documentation helps ensure continuity in opperations of a company.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

rollupswx,

   I am sorry.  I do not see your point!

   The shop builds it.  They modify it and make it work.  Then, they go on to the next job.  Why would 3D make them more likely to tell drafting something?

   People on drafting boards tended to come out of technical schools, where they learned at least something about shop operations.  I suspect that a lot of modern day CAD operators have not a clue of what it takes to fabricate their parts.  There is minimal communication between the shop and the CAD office.

   3D CAD is an awesome tool in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, but it is not the least bit idiot resistant.  

               JHG

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

I guess my missing point is that the (3D) designer should find the problems (or at least more of them) before they get to the shop floor.  It costs far less to make changes at the design stage.

Having spent 8 years of my life out on the shop floor as a machinist, the benefits of designing in 3D seem rather obvious to me.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings


"""And is often never documented at all.

The shop-floor people figure out how to make it work - regardless of the drawing - and make it right (in the works of Mike Holmes).

They store all this information in their head and somehow the documentation never gets updated."""

This happened with a major aircraft component manufacturer who subcontracted to build fuselages for another aircraft manufacturer.
The fuselage ribs were rolled to a z shape on a multiroll machine, then stretch formed to the correct curvature.
 The company decided to get rid of the multiroll machine and outsource the rolling job.
 The new rolled parts came in correct to the drawing, but would not stretch form to the correct dimensions.
 I and a supervisor went to the foreman's desk at the point where the roll former stood, literally hours before the desk was to be carted away.
 Inside we found a set of marked up prints that were at least 20 years old, detailing dimensions allowing for the reduction in size from the stretching operation.
 As hot as the FAA was on people not using marked up prints on the production floor, this one had dropped through the cracks.
And is a classic example of feedback from the shop floor not getting to the drawing office.
B.E.

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them.  Old professor

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

I would do a side by side presentation in front of management. Draw the same part. Make the same change. And see what they think.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

That assumes the OP has management which is/are capable of thought ... which seems unlikely if they are not already aware of the benefits.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

"I guess my missing point is that the (3D) designer should find the problems (or at least more of them) before they get to the shop floor."

I agree. But common sense isn't taught anymore. wink

Chris
SolidWorks 11
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Quote:

I agree. But common sense isn't taught anymore.

Nonsense. I think historically there is always perception that "it was better in the old days".  There are good teachers and poor teachers.  There are good students and poor students.
Always have been.  Always will be.

We will see amazing things come from our current crop just as we saw amazing things come from previous generations.

We will also see compete idiocy.

I think we might be getting too far off track of the original topic.  I understand that the OP needs facts and figures, but my experience is that no amount of "proof" will sway many people who have their mind set in stone.

Can "common sense" actually be taught?

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

"I agree. But common sense isn't taught anymore."

The other side is that many companies run on such a rushed schedule that engineers and designers are not given proper time to exercise "common sense" on many design projects. When things are rushed, mistakes are bound to happen, and then all fingers point back to engineering. What a warped world we live in...

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

What about recruiting?  Where does one find a new crop of board drafters?

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

NTME is right on!

I would create an example to be drawn by hand and also done on CAD.

If it's too long to do it live maybe a video of each method would be enough.

Make sure each side start from scratch (For cad have a fresh install without any adapted template or other tools)

Have them do changes.

Also there are a couples of points that comes to my mind.

I guess you don't do much sheetmetal (It would be easy to find example giving a clear advantage to cad.)

If you need to do laser cutting or other numerical operation then you need .dxf or .dwg, It's easy to see the benefits of cad just with that.

Ten years ago it's was difficult to find vendor with cad model but today pretty much everything you need to purchase is modeled in CAD. It's a real time saver.

Also a demonstration of an assembly on CAD with movings parts, exploded views, render, etc. should be very convincing. (If you need those functionalities of course)

It really all depends on what is your current workflow and why is it still in use today, then I'm sure you will find VARs who will be able to match the strong points of the draft boards with CAD while giving up a lot of the downsides.

Then of course there is the implementation and the learning curve from your staff but then again I'm sure the VARs can give you some success story for support.

Patrick
 

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

"I agree. But common sense isn't taught anymore"

I didn't mean only in schools, I meant in general.

Most 'frafters' and 'designers' that I have talked to usually only have AutoCAD experience from a trade school or similar. They none or very little hand drawing experience or training.
If you want someone that knows how to do hand drawings, they have already progressed into the 3D CAD era, or have retired.
Hand drawings (drafting) is pretty much a dead art. If someone does not know 3D CAD these days, they are out of work or switch professions. There are very few companies that have manual drafting anymore. I predict that will go away soon.

Chris
SolidWorks 11
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Here's the real world:

I have worked in board drafting environments where we had design/drafting checkers. That was in the days where you were actually allowed time to properly check designs before manufacturing and the bean counters pounded the table with their ridiculous demands. This did not eliminate all mistakes getting to the shop floor, but sure decreased their numbers.

Nowadays, you have a designer/engineer/checker all-in-one role because the bean counters have deemed it necessary to meet the increasingly greedy demands of the president and stockholders. You and I both know that a person who engineers, drafts, and checks his/her own projects is an accident waiting to happen. But the greedy capitalists do not get it. So, on goes the downward spiral until the overly stressed engineer/designer/drafter/checker burns out and is dismissed for being an "incompetent oaf". Phone calls are placed to recruiters, and a new victim, er.. employee is brought in.

And on goes the vicious cycle as the engineering game of musical chairs continues on its way. The greedy stockholders and their knee jerk puppet under-managers never catch any blame and continue to be rewarded.

3D CAD has only made this whole cycle worse. How many have gone into companies where the 3D CAD data is garbage, largely due to the previous guy not having proper time to tie up loose ends on his projects? Geometry that is not dimensionally correct, improper use of GD&T, parameters that are either non-existent for the downstream data users, or are severely in error, etc.

In most organizations, they have seen the investment in 3D along with the hardware and network upgrades that go along with it as "necessary evils" and engineers as expendable.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

(OP)
tz101, CHECKERS, wow, been decades (literally) since I worked at a company with a checker.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

designmr, I just got the answer from Deep Thought.

It's 42

Hard to believe 7-1/2 million years have gone by since you first posted the question.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

"tz101, CHECKERS, wow, been decades (literally) since I worked at a company with a checker. "

Just worked at a company that used checkers a couple years ago. The design was done on Pro/E workstations and the checkers would plot out E size prints to check with, along with the help of pulling exported .dxf copies of the Pro/E drawings up on their workstations to take electronic measurements with.

I also worked as a design checker at Caterpillar in the 1990's when that company still had some sense about it.

Design checkers really are a necessity that most companies think they can do without. Little do they know the true costs incurred.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

I agree that design (and drawing) checkers really are a necessity.
But, unfortunately some companies cut them out because of cost.
It's ignorance within management.

Chris
SolidWorks 11
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

I generally don't even need 2D drawings for most of what I do (plastic part design, die-cast stuff, commonly swoopy geometry) other than to call out materials, texture, color, and other part data.  So once I've got the 3D part, I'm finished (apart from throwing the 3D part into a quick 2D drawing and adding the various call-outs).

But if you do need 2D drawings, consider this.  You've often got a minimum of three views, and up to six views, plus sections, plus details, etc. etc. etc.  Edit one dimension, and you've got to go through every view to make sure your edit is propagated through everything properly.  But if my 2D views are taken from (and linked to) my 3D model, as with SolidWorks, I make the edit to my model and my drawing views are generally up-to-date (ALL of them) with the exception of maybe having to nudge dimensions around to their optimal positions.  The huge savings of time in this case is in editing.  But I find that to be generally true of almost every project anyway.

OT:  Howdy, everyone.  Looks like it's been a while since I've posted here.

 

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
A people governed by fear cannot value freedom.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Theophilus,

When I laid out something complicated on a drafting board, I drew an arrangement drawing with station numbers. At some point, the scale drawing would break down, but you would still have good numbers.

ASME Y14.5-2009 still allows you to show off non-scale dimensions by underlining them.

JHG

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Quote:

How many have gone into companies where the 3D CAD data is garbage, largely due to the previous guy not having proper time to tie up loose ends on his projects?

My impression is that only about 10% of MCAD users actually know how to use the software, so more time won't help the situation (much).
Note that I am including all users, including "trained" users in my estimate. I come across a lot of users who just don't seem to have an apptitude for this stuff and additional training won't do much to improve the situation.
What do the rest of you think of my estimate?

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Any nostalgia I might have for board drawing is offset by the hundreds of bad hand drawings I have seen.

batHonesty may be the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.bat
http://www.EsoxRepublic.com-SolidWorks API VB programming help

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

(OP)

Well, I see there are ALOT of old time board people here. I can't believe I use to do board drawings in the first place.

Adding a new note between notes 6 and 7, and you had 3 colums of notes. Nothing like trying to squeeze the height and squeeze the width of the notes so you didn't have to redo them all. Ah computer notes, so EASY to add a note...

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Boy, we are really floging a dead horse on this post!! Also an old timer. And I do remember the"bad" old daze!! Lets get on with today.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

(OP)
ArtL, I never would have thought there would have been this many comments....thumbsup2

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Designer Especially about yesterday!!! I wonder how many of the posters know Eisenhower is not president any more????

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

Quote (ArtL)

Boy, we are really floging a dead horse on this post!! Also an old timer. And I do remember the"bad" old daze!! Lets get on with today.

Quote (ArtL)

Especially about yesterday!!! I wonder how many of the posters know Eisenhower is not president any more????

Art, this thread is titled "Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings" so you have to expect some mention of board drafting, whether you like it or not. Most of the comments were not reminiscing about "the good old days", just stating factual comparisons.

If that somehow offended you, then maybe you should have read the thread title in its entirety before clicking on the link.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

With all the talk of common sense on this thread the one question that seems to be missing is what exactly do you intend to use it for?

If it is simply to create drawings like you might see in a catalogue for bolts where dimension A= X etc then I doubt 3D CAD is any quicker or worth the investment, if it is complex 3D modelling or mechanisms with many changes then it is a no brainer.

Just because a car is faster and can do many things a bicycle cannot does not mean that a bicycle is not the best means of transport in certain circumstances, it entirely depends on what you want to use it for.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

I don't know if this will help the discussion, but I think it's relevant. I graduated in 2008 with a degree in ME from UC San Diego. Hand drawings aren't even part of the curriculum anymore. We had three CAD/design classes in Pro-E, Autodesk, and Solidworks respectively. They did go over how to read/construct orthographic views & interpret them, but I have never had to use a drafting table or a T-square.

UCSD's whole pitch is that their ME curriculum is closely tied to feedback from the big engineering companies in southern CA (HP, Boeing, etc.) and what they're looking for in recent grads. The obvious conclusion is that there aren't enough companies looking for engineers who still know how to draft by hand to make it worth the students' or professors' time.

Honestly, even taking my educational bias into account, I have a hard time believing that anyone would think that a $5K investment to be able to see your prototypes in 3D space before dumping cash and resources into making them would be overkill...especially if your product is already complex enough to warrant paying an engineer's annual salary.

"Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems." -Scott Adams

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

I'm (almost) in the same boat as EngineerErrant. I graduated in '07 with a BSME as well. Engineering 101 taught AutoCAD and Pro/E. However, I took Engineering Graphics 1 my freshman year of HS. The first half of the semester we actually learned board drafting. The second half, we moved to AutoCAD. Even then, I remember thinking to myself how much quicker and easier it was to use AutoCAD. I continued taking engineering/CAD classes, and I ended up getting an internship my junior year, and that's when I started using SolidWorks. So within my first 3 years of being in engineering classes I learned board drafting, AutoCAD and SolidWorks from scratch. I couldn't even imagine going back to AutoCAD at this point, let alone board drafting. I also agree with EE's final point... The ability to see what your designs ACTUALLY look like before spending the time/money to make them is almost worth the investment itself.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

(OP)
Good morning.
The reason behind my question, even though yes it makes sense why would a company not already understand that $5K (or what ever cost) is not worth it. Guess some companies where the pencil pushers who control the money don't understand design and watch very closely cost spending. These type of people want to be shown exactly why engineering is spending money...To them the pretty pie charts, endless comparison graphs and printouts is what they want to see before saying go ahead and spend the money.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

EngineerErrant,

I graduated in 1982, and my on-board drafting training was minimal. I learned lettering and clean line-work, on the job.

This stuff used to be taught in technical high schools. Failing that, you find a job with someone who has the patience to let you figure it out.

JHG

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

This has been a lively, informative, and entertaining discussion. designmr, since you started this and in particular referencing your most recent reply might I suggest you provide hard numbers to the bean counters. You don't really even have to do it yourself. Simply find a design firm and ask them to quote doing a project with only board drafting vs. 3D CAD. Good luck even finding someone to quote it on the board. Take THAT to the counters!

- - -Updraft

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

designmr,
You have not said in these discussions what it is your company draws. Are they small one piece items. or is it a process plant 6 stories high with interconnected machinery on every floor.
B.E.

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

(OP)
Updraft. I actually found a web site:

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/images/content/Other/ROI_Report_SolidWorks_2006.pdf

So that satisfied my boss, who would pass it to his boss, who would, and so on and so on.....

Berkshire.
Funny this is a global Aerospace company, founded in 1883, there is a bit of old fashion thinking going on here. The company already uses, AutoCad, Solidworks, I believe even a couple seat of Solid Edge. Guess to get a couple more licenses, someone up above wants numbers.....

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

When a manager instantly says " show me some numbers so I can justify it up the chain of command " My first thought is..." hey I just told you what you NEED to know. Now get off your lazy butt - do your job - and manage. Make it a reality. If he doesn't get what it is that I'm consulting him about, then that typically furthers the thought of my asking why he's in a management position in the first place.

RE: Time savings 3D Cad Designs VS Hand drawings

designmr (Mechanical)
Based on your latest answer, you already KNOW, how long it takes to draw by hand versus CAD, since you already have Autocad and 3D parametric modeling programs in house. Can you not find solid information in house to justify another seat to the annoying bean counter?
B.E.

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor

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