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Are you the engineer and the drafter?
2

Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Are you the engineer and the drafter?

(OP)
For those of you who work as a one man team or for very small firms (in particular structural guys/gals), do you perform CAD drafting for your work or do you sub that out? Or maybe you don't use CAD at all?

Just curious as to your approach. I have previously worked for a large firm and had dedicated drafters for our projects. There were not many opportunities to learn CAD as it relates to project documents so there was a lot of "on your own" learning that had to be done if you wanted to learn.

Thanks.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Drafting involves making so many mouse and k/b operations for every friggin line, and requires memorizing so many commands and knowledge about how best to layer objects, etc (so you really can't draft efficiently unless you do it full time)....it makes zero sense for engrs to draft.

However it is necessary to know how to make slight revisions and to print or plot.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I know enough CAD to be dangerous. Honestly, though, I can hand-draft so much faster than I can draft on CAD, that I usually just use it to measure or plot. My work rarely needs electronic files, and if it does, I give all my info to the architect and let them do the drafting!

I think it's worth knowing at least the basics. Our local community college has CAD classes, cheap and at night. DraftSight is a great 2D program, and best of all, it's FREE. There's a whole forum on here for it.

Good luck!

Oh and hey - thanks for the recognition that we're not all guys. It's appreciated.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I don't know about structural, per se, but MEs and EEs in my company do all their own CAD; we have no drafters at all. One particular issue is where various subsystems have to fit into an assembly; having to tell someone to "fix this, fix that" and then find hours later that it's still not fixed is bad. Most drafters don't have sufficient knowledge to do the engineering of a part that is wrong or doesn't fit. In the old days, sending the drafter off to do CAD allowed the engineer to think, but not having the actual and latest design in front of you is bound to decrease your productivity on that end.

TTFN
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RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Last year I got a great reminder of why I do my own CAD. I had a project that the client wanted another Engineering company to do document control and the drawings I had done didn't match their document control format. I sent all of my non-compliant drawings to their drafting department to be "fixed". Everyone thought that they would just grab the model and copy it into a compliant layout space (AutoCAD). These "professional draftsmen" did not know what the layout space was for and put all their headers and dimensions on my model space. That wasn't horrible, but it cost $80k for them to "fix" drawings that I had done for $18k. Then I started on the red line to get the conversions back to the functions I originally drew. Add a valve back in? 3 days, 2 draftsmen and a supervisor, $5k. Doesn't matter that the reason the valve is not there is that their draftsman deleted it because he couldn't see why it was there--he was "helping". At the end of the day these guys started with a set of drawings that I would have been happy to build the job from and turned them into a mess that I will always be nervous about for $200k (not to mention $25k of my time in the re-re-re-re-red-line process).

It is a lot more cost effective to go from the Engineer's mind straight to CAD than to try to shove your ideas through the biases of a third party.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I sub my drafting out to others. I know enough to make the necessary changes to the drawings when they come in. I have so many clients that want drawings in 2 weeks an then delay in getting me a contract for a week but still want the project on the same date. Rarely I will attempt to draft a project. Usually if the project is small and there just isn't enough money in the project to have someone else to do the work.

I know this is odd for many structural engineering companies. I know a lot of companies where the engineers do their own drafting. I interviewed at a company where they want me to do my own drafting. I agreed but in the end they ended up going in a different direction and I have been working for myself ever since.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Interesting-

I think if the work involves detail-oriented fitting together of components that non-engineering drafters don't understand then the Engineer obviously should do the drafting.

In my line of work (building and residential structural), it seems to be the opposite.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

SteelPE,

Back when drafting was done with pencil and eraser and paper, emphasis on eraser, drafting was never done by the Engineer...in fact as an employee, I was told it was prohibited by Company rules.

Oh yes I have done a few tiny jobs recently by pencil and paper, that was quicker than CAD for me.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

One reason I didn't apply to one particular company was that the engineers (EEs) weren't allowed to use the oscilloscopes in the lab; they had to be operated by technicians, and the engineers would be standing over their shoulders and ask the technician to "poke here", "now there", "no, not there." This is after 3 yrs of doing my own poking and in control of my destiny, and I couldn't even being to imagine how to direct someone else to do that poking.

TTFN
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RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I'm enjoying these discussions. Back in 1969 MTU revised the 'mechanical drafting class' to 'Engineering Communications' because "Engineers no longer do drafting".

My first duties in my first engineering job at a small consulting firm was to draft precast concrete shop drawings. Having only had 2 semesters of drafting in high school, primarily related to our wood shop projects, my productivity After the first week, they made me a "checker" so that I could learn how I should have been doing the drafting.

In my second job with a heavy industrial design-build contractor, the engineers were often made to draft on Saturday as our overtime was billed at straight time and the drafter's were billed at time and a half. Only when clients agreed to pay the added charges were the drafters scheduled for overtime. I know; the fact that we billed that time at a higher rate seemed ridiculous as the overhead fixed costs were based on a 40 hour work week. And the engineer's rates and efficiency probably ended up costing more in the long run.

In the other 5 jobs I had after that, I drafted at all but one place. They had a rule about Engineers not drafting, and it took a special request to even get CAD on my computer so as to be able to access drawings that were being worked on in our other offices without having to bother the one structural drafter in the office I worked in. They made my CAD seat Read Only.

I don't profess to being a proficient CAD drafter, but at the end of projects when all that is left is picking up red marks, everyone was expected to help get the drawings out.

gjc

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

. . . my productivity sucked. After . . .

gjc

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

You didn't know how to draft so they got you to check other peoples drawings to see if they'd been drawn properly? Am I the only one that sees the deliberate flaw to this plan?

Different field(s) but I've been doing my own drafting my whole career. Occasionally get to delegate something which by the time I mark up the drawing, they make the requested changes + add a new mistake or two (repeat ad infinitum) usually takes longer.

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RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

"I don't profess to being a proficient CAD drafter, but at the end of projects when all that is left is picking up red marks, everyone was expected to help get the drawings out."

Now I remember why I don't like to draw my own engineering - it must be psychological conditioning.

Back in pencil and paper days, when engineers were prohibited to draft, we engrs all elbows and a******* at drafting tables at 3:00AM in the morning with the drafting staff trying to meet the deadline, and there were no managers or bosses to see what was going on.

Plus, the drafters were earning 1.5 x hourly rate and we engineers were earning $zero$, being salaried professionals.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I draft and engineer my projects.

I produce my CDs with Revit. As a young engineer with 5 years experience, my jobs are much more efficiently delivered as one person per job if possible. I don't have to block out details for a drafter. I don't have to hand sketch details for a drafter. I put the buildings together, to scale, once. I learn how things will fit. I think about constructibility. I can easily transfer my drafting views in Revit from job to job when they are similar and revise accordingly. I see arch'l changes to the building daily and when walls have moved. Instead of making presentation a two step process, I make it one.

If you are not efficient with CAD or Revit, I could understand why you wouldn't want to draft, but with my generation, we started in CAD. I can bust out a detail in Revit as fast as I can draft by hand. While that's partly due to my struggles with sketching, I'd put myself up against any engineer along with his drafter and see who can be more efficient.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Gerry,

Yes, I see more and more engineers doing drafting 100% or supplementing the drafting staff, but I still don't understand how you can "gird" yourselves to do your engineering job 100% dedicated, with the additional chore of having to draft.

The above would not apply if you are a one-person shop and your drafting hours are billable, and you have that motivation.

I don't understand, if, on the other hand, you were an employee and had to put in substantial non-compensated hours.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I was thinking more about the different scenarios. Gerry on one hand presents logical argument in favor of drafting, and I was analyzing why the opposite was true for me.

Then I got to wondering, what if I was young and CAD-proficient? It still would be a problem, because the people who draft off my redlines work are in-house employees of my client, and they take at least twice the time to draw a project as I do to engineer it, and they are absolute proficient in their efforts. In other words, if I did my own drafting and my client's drafters did only their company's archi drafting, I would have time to produce only half the jobs, and would have to bill at 2-3 times my current rate. Overall, it would probably be a wash because the client would probably have to lay off a drafter.

I think that as a one-man shop, it still makes more sense for me to do engrg only.

So the "answer" to the OP is highly dependent on the situation.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I come from the mechanical side where I've been involved with industries referred to 'discrete manufacturing' meaning that you produced things that were machines that made things (I worked 14 year where we built capital machinery for the food and chemical industries) or that you could drive or fly or operate or that you could pick-up and carry. In other words, we didn't engineer buildings, highways, process plants, etc. In my 47 year of engineering, 14 years in R&D and 33 years working for a CAD vendor, at least in our industries, Engineers and designers did their own work first on the boards and later using CAD and even when there were dedicated 'drafters' the original layouts and now 3D CAD models were alwasys the responsibility of the designers and Engineers. And where there were no 'drafters' you did your own Drawings (in my 14 years of real-world work, I'd been in both situations where I've had drafters working for me and other times I did that work myself, but when I started to use CAD, I never used a dedicated drafter again).

Now, at least in our industry (and I use that term with respect to the customers who are using our software), the trend is to move away from fully dimensioned and annotated, 2D Drawings with orthographic projected views and toward what is known as PMI, for 'Product and Manufacturing Information', which is added directly to the 3D CAD models and which provides the means to convey the non-geometric information about a part or product to the downstream organizations as 3D viewable models (not necessarily the original CAD model but a lightweight 3D representation which now represents the electronic document or specification). Of course any operations such as analysis and manufacturing would be done using the actual CAD models but for many people in an organization a 3D lightweight representation that they can view and manipulate on a computer screen is all they really need along with access to any documents associated with a part file or assembly model as is provide by modern PDM, or 'Product Data Management', systems. Al of these systems, the CAD, CAE, CAM and PDM, makes up what is now referred to as PLM, or 'Product Lifecyle Management'.

For an overview of PLM, please go to:

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/plm/in...

And for a look at PMI, which is more on topic for this thread and the questions originally asked, at least as we're seeing it evolve in the 'discrete manufacturing' sectors, please go to:

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/produc...


Now for some off-topic discussion:

mtu1972, does that 'MTU' stand for Michigan Tech (AKA da Tech)? If so, I graduated from MTU in 1971 with a BSME. And yes I to had to take something like that 'Engineering Communications' class, which included such things a working with collateral materials like overhead slides, hand sketching illustrations, flip-charts and posters and doing stand-up presentations (which were video taped and which were later 'peer reviewed'), etc. Looking back on my 6 years at the 'da Tech (I changed majors) I think that particular class was perhaps one of the most valuable (along with the one semester of typing I had back in high school) when you consider how, at least in my case, the workplace has evolved. And for the record, I never had a formal 'drafting' class, either in high school or college, just one term of something called 'Engineering Graphics' where you learned, among other things, how to draw ellipses, calculate the true length of a line, draw a two and three point perspective image, etc. but nothing that would be recognized as traditional mechanical drawing. However, I did co-op for 4 years working as a Draftsman so what I did learn was all OJT, and since I eventually went to work for the same company when I graduated, at least I had been 'trained' to do it their way and not how it was done in some textbook winky smile

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I both draft and engineer simultaneously. I don't think I can ever go back to the back-and-forth required when working with a drafter. The product I use for control panel design allows me to select parts on the fly from manufacturer's catalogs, has intelligent icons (for example, parent-child relationships for coils and contacts and checks to see if contact quantities are exceeded), a lot of pre-made PLC I/O diagrams, can produce BOMs, autonumber components and wires, check for unconnected wires, do panel layouts with included device footprints, etc. I can now design a custom control panel in about 1/4 the time it used to take me going back and forth with a drafter and the end result is more accurate.

xnuke
"Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life." Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.
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RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Kenat - I'm sure they did it as a training element for me. The Sr. Drafter and the boss probably both looked at every drawing I reviewed.

JohnRBaker - Yes Mich Tech. BSCE in 1972. One of the 3 Civils (out of 105) that took the Structures option.


I did some hand drafting, early on, and then was given formal training when transitioning into CAD (late '80's). Some small projects were engineered and drafted by the engineers, but any larger project had CAD Designers assigned to better coordinate our Civil/Structural/Architectural drawings with the other disciplines (Mechanical and Electrical) and to help maintain the project schedules.

We were just transitioning into Revit when I retired so I never got any real insight as to the inner workings.

gjc

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

We have a full compliment of CAD monkeys (I'm being too kind). So our company's policy is to have engineers engineer and CAD people do the final presentation. There is some friction, as some of the engineers (mostly electrical) want to do their own CAD work, so when we changed CAD platforms, they didn't give it to the engineers. Problem solved!
When I started some of the engineers wanted to do their own CAD work. After observing, I noted three problems with that:
1) The obvious extra responsibilities of having to engineer the project, do the calculations, specifications and then do the drawings. All at the engineers rate.
2) The drawings always eventually get handed off to CAD for assembly and final touch up. And since an engineer had done the work, the CAD staff takes a hands off approach and won't fix any obvious presentation items, like line weights. It's their little way of protesting. So the drawings don't have a consistent look.
3) The engineers can't possibly keep up with client standards, updates, etc.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Speaking from a position of 'ignorance', at least with respect to the engineering of what I assume are architectural 'structures' (although some of the machines I've worked on were as big as a small house), I assume that when someone like JedClampett says CAD, you're taking almost strictly about the production of Drawings, either as part a response to a RFQ (Request For Quotation) or for fabricating the parts that are going to a job site as well as the 'erection' drawings for the actual job site. Am I correct? If so, I can understand how there might confusion when asking a mixed audience a question like was posed by the OP. In the 'discrete manufacturing' industry, as I've already allude in an earlier post, if anyone even proposed using a change in the "CAD platform" as an opportunity to keep the Engineers from doing their own CAD work, there would have been a mutiny, at least in all the organizations that I'm familiar with. It amazing how this almost ubiquitous tool, CAD, has evolved along such different lines. And speaking of 'Electrical Engineers', or to be more specific 'Electronic Engineers', from the experiences that I've had with them (and being that I started Engineering school as a EE), it would be nearly impossible for them to do their jobs without the benefit of CAD systems designed for their specific use, since for them, the CAD models are their 'work output', and in many respects, this fast becoming the case in the 'discrete manufacturing' world as well with the advent of integrated CAE and CAM as well as other applications such as visualization and rendering.

Anyway, I'm glad I'm where CAD is considered an 'Engineering' tool and not just a means of producing 'paper', not that our industry never experienced a 'phase' like that, just that it started to end about 25 years ago with the introduction of more powerful computers and advanced software tools which made the development and usage of interactive 3D solid modeling both practical and efficient.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

How do you 'engineer' without drawing things?

From my mechanical point of view...
General tasks involve:
1) Sizing things. Gearboxes. Motors. Structural elements.
Yeah, you do the "sizing" of things like gear-ratios and horsepower requirements on a napkin or whatever, but it still has to fit into the overall design. How do you know what the overall design looks like without poking around the assembly drawings?
2) Fitting bits together / making sure they don't try to occupy the same place in space+time. See item #1.

Even when it's time to make the manufacturing drawings, that still implies things like tolerances and GD&T. How would a dedicated drafter have a clue what is required here? He won't know the "intent" of the parts.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

My point exactly imcjoek.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

In all fairness, I suspect the structural world is a different... uh...world.
I'd suspect the heat-transfer and thermodynamics types probably spend more time on calculations as well.

But these are just theories to me. I don't work there, so I can't say for sure.

That might make an interesting thread in itself. What is a "typical" day for a variety of engineers? What do they actually *do*? The answers would probably be all over the map.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Our experienced CAD guys do define the GDT strategies, and do understand the manufacturing. Many of them started as toolroom apprentices. I am very happy to let them do the CAD, and make a very significant contribution to the final design.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Quote (GregLocock)


Our experienced CAD guys do define the GDT strategies, and do understand the manufacturing. Many of them started as toolroom apprentices. I am very happy to let them do the CAD, and make a very significant contribution to the final design.

As noted by imcjoek, there probably is a big difference between structural engineering and design of machinery. I work in optics. My primary design problem usually is fitting all the stuff into the space available. I am very good at 3D sketches, but in my world, the skill rarely has proved useful. I go for my scale drafting tool, be it a drafting board, 2D CAD or 3D CAD.

I prefer to do my own fabrication drawings. I understand how each part has to work. I know what tolerances have to be assigned. I am fast. It is claimed elsewhere on Eng-Tips that fabrication drawings mostly are crap. Much of this may be a disconnect between the designer and drafter.

--
JHG

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

"It is claimed elsewhere on Eng-Tips that fabrication drawings mostly are crap. Much of this may be a disconnect between the designer and drafter."


I heard that for eternity regarding struct. shops dwgs. The rebar, steel stair fab,, on and on.

It was only a humorous reference to the poor "cosmetic" appearance of the dwgs. For the most part, the shop dwgs had very few errors, and were comically referred to as "slop drawings". I wouldn't take it personally.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Worked in company's where I was prohibited from drafting and now work in one that has no drafting. With the drafters, I ended up re-drafting many of my own projects when I tried to change and note only to have found it had been exploded to single line text or single characters. Similar results when I put a note on my markup to draw something and then (after waiting days for the markup to get done) found that my note itself that was intended for the drafter made it onto the drawing itself.

My new company has shunned drafting in favor of BIM (Revit). Engineers now produce the drawings but those drawings are generated almost entirely from coordinating between our analysis software. I'm sure others will disagree, but this is a MUCH more efficient way of doing jobs. All I know is 1) I don't suffer from headaches at end of jobs related purely to "fixing drafting", 2) many of our projects are profitable at this new company and it was 50/50 at the last one when all the hours were added up.

PE, SE
Eastern United States

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

kyle,

I had bad experiences also when I was an employee and I was at the mercy of incompetent drafting technicians.

I guess I look at the this in the opposite way now because I am only a one man shop and the clients I work for do the structural drafting themselves, from my redlines. They are very good, and there are few headaches (although I have dropped 2 clients because they were incompetent).

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Quote:

Drafting involves making so many mouse and k/b operations for every friggin line, and requires memorizing so many commands and knowledge about how best to layer objects, etc (so you really can't draft efficiently unless you do it full time)....it makes zero sense for engrs to draft.

This may be true in structural, but my experience in site engineering is that it's much more cost effective to have engineers that do know how to draft, since it takes just as much time for them to redline plans as it would for them to fix the dang plans and be done with it. Most good site shops have a blend of PEs who can draft and EITs who are good draftsmen learning to design as they work.

Unfortunately, drafting is being less and less emphasized by ABET programs, and vocational programs are being dropped in high schools because politicians are full of crap and pushing everyone into college preparatory programs that don't prepare for actual work.

I was fortunate enough to begin learning AutoCAD when I was in junior high, and to have intern jobs at it in high school, and that has served me very well in my professional career. Kids these days eyes glass over when you start talking about pen plotters and "Paper Space." :)

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East - http://www.campbellcivil.com

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I have a one-person structural office and I do my own drafting. There have been a few times over the years when my workload demanded that I get outside help, but generally it works for me to do it myself.

Having a drafter would help doing general layout and laying in an architect's background drawings. With others' drawings, there's sometimes a lot of time necessary to make their drawings work.

On the other hand, the precision of CAD helps me in detailing. I use CAD to draw elevations to scale and establish top of steel on tricky geometries. I am also able to turn things around for my clients quickly.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I still don't understand how you get quick turn-around. I perceive the actual engineering calculations to be very quick, assuming you have good computer methods to begin with.

But ACAD seems to me as being a long, tedious process, even for experienced people.

I guess I am expecting results very quickly, and ACAD frustrates me.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I can't speak for kipfoot, but I think the fields of structural engineering and site engineering are apples and oranges when it comes to drafting. In site engineering, or related disciplines such as transportation or site hydrology, all your calculations are based on information drawn from the design, and any design changes from your calculations have to be drawn in the plan. The process is iterative, and the plans and models are linked in important ways. Passing that back and forth from an engineer to a drafter costs you more time in cross-talk than it takes to just draw the dang thing yourself.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East - http://www.campbellcivil.com

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

beej67 - brilliant

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Structural Engineer in a three-man home office run shop. We draft our own (by hand). Clients are welcome to have comnputer drafted, or we can oiutsource for a fee. We'll redline twice without added fees; After that it is a case of "the city will accept our originals, so working errors into our details which we must then work to have removed cannot be at our cost."

We are very competitive in our pricing and are not looking for work, so if clients don't like it, the feeling is quickly mutual and the problem goes away.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Brings back fond memories.

Scum-X

Vinyl erasers.

Mechanical lead holders

Ducks, etc.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Brings back memories of being told to keep sleeves rolled down or wear protectors, to stop sweaty marks staining the drawing. then using scum X to remove sweaty stains.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Drawing with ink on mylar (over a 9H lead guide line) - to accuracy of 1/50" (requires 20/20)

Lab-calibrated metal straight-edges and scales.

Copper stylus on scribe-coat, lying prone on the drafting tables all lined up - oh joy.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

AELLC (Structural)

Copper stylus on scribe-coat, lying prone on the drafting tables all lined up - oh joy.

That sounds more like Lofting than drafting.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Lofting - that is correct. There were control points set up with some sort of surveying instrument. I only did that for a couple of weeks when I was on loan. At least it was easier on my eyes.

LOL - I just remembered all the nail polish to correct mistakes on that stuff. The modern CAAD jocks have no idea.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

beej67...I think you just described both structural and land development perfectly. I have done both and the workflow is the same in each discipline.

PE, SE
Eastern United States

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

(OP)
I did not expect such a big response to my question! Good to hear the different experiences and points of views.

Thanks!

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Quote:

beej67 - brilliant

Thanks.

But the truth is that there's only certain people who can do both drafting and design. The older engineers who can't type or do CAD are still holding on to the ghost of mylar drafting. (see above) And there's quite a few younger engineers who's collegiate programs unfortunately no longer teach or stress drafting principles at all, so they're largely useless as well. And larger firms since the 08 crash have decided they don't want to train any Millenials in how to do work, they just want to hire people who know what they're doing straight out of the box because they were so easy to find during the Great Recession.

So you've got this gap in talent now, where few people can fill the role that meets the best efficiency, and honestly the people who do fill that role well aren't properly compensated for their talents because they're being hired by Old Farts who don't understand the value of an engineer who can also draft.

In my (very humble and possibly wrong) opinion, the business of modern engineering is moving backwards in some ways.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East - http://www.campbellcivil.com

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I am an old fart, but I did complete a sheet of structural details by CAAD. But it took me a week, and I hated it so much because it was a struggle to draw every lime.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

^^^line^^^

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I'm an 'old fart' as well (am already drawing two previously fully-vested defined-benefit pensions which had a use-it-or-lose-it provision when I turned 65 a while back) but I was what you could call a CAD pioneer. One of those companies whose pensions I'm now collecting first invested in CAD/CAM back in 1977. And when I say CAD/CAM I mean exactly that, we used both CAD to design our manufactured parts and then used the integrated CAM software to generate the NC toolpathes which were then loaded into the NC machine tools and the parts were milled, drilled, turned, punched, burned, whatever the case might be. Note that these were parts for mechanical type products, in my case, capital machinery for the food and chemical processing industry.

Granted, not everyone has the opportunity nor even the desire to be a 'pioneer' (someone once described a 'pioneer' as "a guy lying face down in the dirt with arrows in his back" and there were times when it felt like that) but in my case it also provided a totally new career option for me. If you're lucky and you do get involved early-on with something that does take-off bigtime, as happened with CAD/CAE/CAM, at least in some industry segments, this can open some doors for you that were never even imagined when you were back in school looking ahead to what your longterm career prospects might be. So after using this new technology for three years, I was given the chance to join this new and growing industry, which I took and never looked back.

I guess the point that I was making is that for some of us, it's now hard to even imagine ourselves being in a situation where the question posed by the OP would even be relevant or with respect to the later thread where the debate about how this would be impacted by CAD can be read. Granted, there are differences, as has been previously pointed out, between how engineers work and what their roles are and how the interact with the tools available, such as CAD, depending on what industry segment you were trained for or where you happen to actually find yourself. Anyway, I hope that the view offered by the few 'mechanical' practitioners here have not confused anyone or that our opinions were seen as totally inappropriate.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
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RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I respect the concept of CAD immensely.

However, when it is used to generate engineering calculations at the hands of a non-engineer, then I despise it.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I agree 100%. CAD is like many other so-called 'automation' tools in that is can amplify the abilities of the person using them. Therefore you need to ask yourself, "who do I wish to 'amplify' in my organization", the entry-level guy who does not yet know the in's and out's of your business, or the fully qualified engineer who can already solve the problem with pencil and paper but who I need to be able to get jobs done faster and more consistently? This was a classic problem back when CAD was first being introduced and many people thought that they could use it to gain another 'engineer' without wasting the time of someone who acould lready do the job.

In fact this happened where I worked when we got our first CAD system. It was to be shared by three departments, one of which was the manufacturing group and since they had already been using a language-based CAM system they knew exactly what to do and they already had people who understood this albeit newer technology so their choice as who to train was a no-brainer. However, the other two department, Chemical Machinery and Food Engineering, this was all new stuff to them. In the case of Chemical Machinery the two people they were to send to that first series of classes was their chief mathematician who had been developing FORTRAN-based analysis programs and second, one of their young draftsmen. In the case of Food Engineering, where I worked, my boss was totally befuddled by what this technology could even do (he had been left out of the decision to purchase the system, but was still expected to pick-up 1/3 the cost) so he decides that he would send two of his mid-level graduate engineers, one electrical and one mechanical (me), both of whom had had close to 10 years experience. The boss figured that between the two of us we could at least be able to see where this system could be used to do the most good since we understand pretty much all our products and procedures. Well it was a fortuitous choice since a year later we were so far ahead of where the chemical guys were with them simply making drawings and trying to use a system that was not yet where it needed to be for real-world analysis (remember we were running 3 seats of software on a 16-bit CPU with 128K of memory). While we looked at all of our different jobs and identified those that could utilize the software as is and then took the programming tools provided and customized the rest of the system to do what we needed for our specialized tasks.

That was why, after seeing what we were able to accomplish is just a few short years, I took that opportunity to move to the CAD vendor since I could see where the potential was for this technology in the future.

Yes, like any tool, when put the hands of a 'craftsman', it's amazing what can be done with it. But put it in the hands of someone who does not know what's what, it can be at best, a waste of money, and at worse, a disaster in the making.

The manufacturing industry learned that one the hard way as well when NC (Numerically Controlled) machinetools started to be installed in machine shops. Companies assumed that they would no longer need trained tool & die makers that they could hire anyone off the street and teach them to simply load the punched-tape into the machine and hit the 'Start' button and sit back and watch the machine do all the work. It took years to undo that mistake, but not before it all but destroyed the master/journeyman/apprentice system in this and other countries.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
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To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I was looking at the issue from the viewpoint of a structural engineer - what we do can easily kill one ore more people when mistake is made.

I find it outrageous when companies use non-engineers (meaning totally non-degreed people) to draw up a CAAD plan that translates into engineering calc. One small stupid mistake could cause the engineering software to totally do a GIGO operation.

This opinion also applies to the prefab truss design industry, which I think is a joke.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I do not do my own CADD. It is a skill set that I never developed.
I do, however, agree that engineers who CAN do their own CADD drawings are better engineers than those who cannot (assuming they can do them correctly, that is).
I would at least like to do my own PFD / P&IDs rather than face the constant recycle of "hand mark-up, submit, backdraft, review, correct, resubmit" that drives the "drafting man-hours" to, typically, three times the "engineering man hours" that is plaguing and killing the credibility of those, like myself, who work in EPC. What is a client supposed to think when they spend $60 K for ten relatively straightforward P&IDs that average two errors per drawing? I'd be mad, too.
Somewhere, there has to be a right balance between minimizing the role of the "designer" (CADD person) to the point where you say, "Copy exactly what you see. If you see Mickey Mouse, draw Mickey Mouse, not Donald Duck." and where the designer says, "I have no idea why you drew a valve there, so I took it out because I don't think you need it.".
The only option to me for the past 30 years has been to make sure that my hand mark-ups going to the designer are such that, if they were merely copied or even photocopied, the design would be correctly communicated and technically correct, i.e., leave nothing to interpretation by the person at the CADD station. But that's old school thinking.
Part of the problem is that a lot of us older folks graduated from university before computers were available, so we were computer-illiterate, let alone CADD illiterate, when we entered the workforce and were expected to "produce".
Gone are the days when "the guy at the drafting board" could actually lay something out once, revise it once, and have the engineer stamp and issue it. The proliferation of CADD and CADD-based designers since 1983 has actually increased net INEFFICIENCY by an amount measured in orders of magnitude, rather than mere percentage. Computers have replaced talent and experience: - poorly. Meanwhile, software developers have inflated the costs of their design software such as to put it out of reach of smaller businesses, thereby perpetuating the "good tools are only for the wealthy" mentality.
Not sure what the answer is, but if it's to have engineers doing their own drawings, it starts with making CADD part of the core curriculum in universities, not just trade schools.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

IR,

Ask me what I think of 90% of Doctors, and it will be unprintable. Whole different dynamic than about Engineers.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

"I do, however, agree that engineers who CAN do their own CADD drawings are better engineers than those who cannot (assuming they can do them correctly, that is)".

I agree to disagree with the above statement. Again, different situations, different types of engineereing, diff strokes for diff folks.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

[N+1] > N where N > 0 and N = Number Of Skills Possessed By An Engineer

[N+1] = N = 0 <-- MBA Contradiction

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

"Gone are the days when "the guy at the drafting board" could actually lay something out once, revise it once, and have the engineer stamp and issue it. The proliferation of CADD and CADD-based designers since 1983 has actually increased net INEFFICIENCY by an amount measured in orders of magnitude, rather than mere percentage. Computers have replaced talent and experience: - poorly. Meanwhile, software developers have inflated the costs of their design software such as to put it out of reach of smaller businesses, thereby perpetuating the "good tools are only for the wealthy" mentality.
Not sure what the answer is, but if it's to have engineers doing their own drawings, it starts with making CADD part of the core curriculum in universities, not just trade schools."

I don't think it's that cut and dried. Designs are substantially more complicated; timelines are substantially more compressed; customers are substantially more complicated; environments are substantially more complicated. The proliferation of CAD has resulted in the ability to do things like FEA and CFD, which could not have been easily done to a paper drawing. What one sees as inefficient "churn" is a result of finding out things that would have never been found until a product was fielded and things started to fail. Coupled with inefficient problem reporting, errors would not necessarily rise to the level of visibility to anyone but a singular customer. The 1974 Camaro Z28 was difficult to maintain, with spark plugs pointing down, and the last spark plug on the driver side almost inaccessible with a socket wrench. This is something that would be painfully obvious in a CAD system, assuming the designer actually got time to look for things like that. Aerodynamically, the Z28 would have had an entire coterie of clay models run through a wind tunnel before its design would have been signed off.

There are many buildings and planes that could not have been designed using drafting board era practices. The F18 E/F is aerodynamically unstable with only its mission computer preventing total disaster; this is something that could not have been contemplated with a drafting board design. Taipei 101 and its tuned mass damper system could not have been designed nor contemplated in a drafting board environment.

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RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

"Meanwhile, software developers have inflated the costs of their design software such as to put it out of reach of smaller businesses, thereby perpetuating the "good tools are only for the wealthy" mentality."

That one is easy, one word.

Excel.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

@SNORGY: Love your math!

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

There is an important issue with CAD, particularly for mechanical design. Back in the day, drafting was a mechanical skill. You had to do good line work. You had to be neat, and you needed really good lettering. It was logical that the drafter was a skilled tradesman who did not necessarily have engineering skills.

Modern 3D CAD is a design tool. If someone cannot be trusted to make design decisions, they have no business sitting in front of it. I suspect that most 3D CAD problems come from non-design qualified people trying to operate it.

In architectural and structural design, the process may be different.

--
JHG

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

OK, I have new theory to promote.

There is one situation, such as site engineering or designing an electro-mechanical device of much complexity, where there is a clear advantage that the engineer is do the drafting - he/she is making decisions that involve fitting components together, while preserving the function in a way that only an Engineer can comprehend. Easy enough to comprehend. Especially when the drafting is unable to produce drawings correctly the first time, and requires a lot of "re-works" - that endless cycle of re-check, back-check, that drives us starkers.

Then there is the structural engineering situation - I am postulating that, if I do 20 hrs of drafting and 20 hrs of engineering each week, I will be much less an Engineer in years to come than if I was doing 40 hrs of engineering/wk.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Quote (AELLC)


...he/she is making decisions that involve fitting components together, while preserving the function in a way that only an Engineer can comprehend.

I have to say that that pretty much describes precisely why CAD has become primarily a tool for engineers in what I'll continue to refer to as the 'discrete manufacturing' industry. It also reinforces the point that drawoh made about CAD users needing to make design decisions not to mention IRstuff and his comments about how the 3D CAD models are the foundation for most of the downstream analysis and avoidance of spatial or 'packaging' problems. And we mustn't overlook that in the 'mechanical' world, the vast majority of times, these same 3D CAD models will eventually be used to plan and produce the actual instructions for cutting and forming of metal, the injection of plastic, molding of materials, or the welding of fabrications as well as the final assembly, testing and even the servicing of the final product. When, as is the case in our 'mechanical' world, so much depends on the accuracy of the model, both in terms of size and shape, but also its functional behavior, the more that it makes sense that these 3D Models be the responsibility of those individuals who actually know not only the 'what' but also the 'why' and 'how' of what is being produced, i.e. the engineering professionals, in their various disciplines, which eventually makes up the enterprise.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

John

I was looking at your website- is it saying that CAD had it roots way back in McDonnell Automation Corporation (something like that) - their facility in St Louis next to Lambert field? The same McDonnell as in Phantom F4 jets?

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

LOL, small world.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Just noticed "the vast majority of times, these same 3D CAD models will eventually be used to plan and produce the actual instructions for cutting and forming of metal" I think vast majority of times may be overstating things a little - though I suppose it depends if you are measuring discrete number of different parts or total number of parts...

Don't get me wrong, it's getting there and we're sending models alongside our drawings almost by default these days but there are still parts and vendors etc. where this isnt' the case.

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RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Yes, the history of CAD, at least as it applies to our 'mechanical' world, owes it heritage to some early public R&D money which was invested in the Aerospace segment of the industry (although to be completely honest GM was an early participant as well, but then at the time GM was a significant supplier of propeller systems for commercial turboprop-driven aircraft) via grants from the DOD and the National Academy of Science. This money, along with some cash and hardware from people like IBM and some work being done at universities, was how CAD and this idea of 3D Models representing the core 'math' which defined a product, at least from a dimensional size and shape point view, was born. From that early research several companies and/or products were spawned some of which are still around if for nothing more than providing some of the 'DNA' which can be found in the mainstream CAD/CAE/CAM products in use today, including our own products, of which NX, our high-end full-function CAX system, is but one of them. In the case of NX, if the 'website' that you were referring to was that last link in my 'signature', you will see that ITS 'DNA' goes back over 50 years, to 1963 and a now totally forgotten little company named 'United Computing', which was one of the true pioneers in bringing affordable computerized manufacturing, i.e CAM tools, to, at the time, primarily the aerospace industry, actually to the small to mid-sized suppliers to the larger aerospace OEM's which already had their own in-house developed CAM systems.

Yes, the history of CAD/CAE/CAM goes back a lot further than many people realize, something that generally is only appreciated by those of us who have been involved in it for a significant portion of that period (my personal experience with CAD will be coming-up on 37 years this August).

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Quote:

Gone are the days when "the guy at the drafting board" could actually lay something out once, revise it once, and have the engineer stamp and issue it. The proliferation of CADD and CADD-based designers since 1983 has actually increased net INEFFICIENCY by an amount measured in orders of magnitude, rather than mere percentage.

This is not true at all for civil-site, in my experience. In a properly run medium to large civil site shop, the PE of record will instruct his team of "designers" (not draftsmen, designers) in how he wants elements laid out, what he wants things to look like, etc, with some general comments on how certain constraining elements of the job are to be handled, and turns the designers loose in the CAD / CAE environment, then checks on them periodically to make sure they're all on the right course, all the while educating his designers on elements of the design they may not be familiar with. The PE reviews everything, may make more design changes himself, oversees the project to completion, stamps it, and it's done.

The designer talent for an operation like that is typically a bunch of EITs, with a few younger PEs or older draftsmen-turned-designers sprinkled in.

That's the best way to work it in my experience. If you're too small to have a pool of techs that are that sharp, then the PE has to be able to draft, and in my field that drafting has to be done in a CAD environment or you're flat dead in the water.

AELLC, you say it took you a week to do a sheet of structural details by CAD. You also said something about drawing each line individually. I don't mean any offense, as I'm sure you probably realize this, but that really just speaks to how poor your CAD skills are. :) A detail sheet from scratch for me would take a day tops. If you ever get stuck doing that again, I suggest you learn the modfiy commands (offset, copy, rotate, mirror), you learn the osnaps, and you learn the keystroke shortcuts. Everything in the AutoCAD environment is built to make drafting go faster, you just have to learn the environment.

Or, if you're an old fart, hire someone who's already learned it I guess.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East - http://www.campbellcivil.com

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Quote (KENAT)


...I think vast majority of times may be overstating things a little -

You're correct, that was a bit of a generalization, and it does vary depend on the industry segment with probably automotive and aerospace being where the most progress has been made with respect to this (at GM it's called the 'single math model' approach). However, there are other examples as well, particularly with some of the relatively newer enterprises, such as Apple for example (I made my first sales call to Apple when they had just released the Apple III and they even 'loaned' our San Jose office an early Lisa which we had no end of fun playing with at the time) which has been working the full 'art-to-part' paradigm almost from their first use of CAD (our's of course). And now with the proliferation of 3D Printing systems, another technology which has been around at lot longer than most people realize (I was the Product Manager on our first 'Rapid-Prototyping' interface module back around 1991-92), the need for an accurate 3D model is paramount.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

All I can remember, I was drafting by hand about 1970-1972, and all I can remember is seeing a lot of IBM360's in another large building, mostly churning business data for other clients.

However, in one of the classified areas there at McDonnell-Douglas Corp, I saw, on a CRT computer display, a 3D (stickframe) model of the engine inlets of an F4, all of which I am sure I was not on need-to-know basis on that topic.

They had 2 or 3 levels of security clearance at the time and it was some tour where they showed us only the stuff we were cleared for.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

beej67.
No offense . I have severe dyslexia and that was a significant problem. It gets worse with age too.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I took the basic intro to CAD about 15 yrs ago, but the teacher was not good. I then dinked around with it occasionally, but really only needed to view and plot for my business reasons.

The clients I deal with all do my struct drafting, and they all know my system, and they never screw up more than once.

In fact, when I get a new client, I tell them they have to use my details, my schedules and notes, or I wont do biz with them.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

Quote (AELLC)


...at McDonnell-Douglas Corp, I saw, on a CRT computer display, a 3D (stickframe) model of the engine inlets of an F4...

What you saw was most likely a terminal running CADD, MDC's internally developed 3D CAD system. It probably looked something like this with people using light-pens to make selections on the screen and a PFK (Pushbutton Function Keyboard) to make menu selections:

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I have reasonably developed ACAD and SolidWorks skills (not a master of either). I will never claim that this abilty makes me a better engineer. I will state that for me personally it makes me a more efficient engineer in that I can do two things faster than in the old days when I submitted sketches to competent drafters:

1. I can sketch out and ponder multiple designs that will be easier and more accurate to review for form, fit, function, interfacing (a BIG plus) and interference than when I did all sketches by hand. The CAD programs give me the ability to reject options more quickly and focus in on what works.

2. When creating the final product, I can make the changes much more quickly the way I envision them rather than trying to communicate them to another person via markups, paragraphs or face to face conversations.

Again, none of the above makes me a better engineer, or by itself even a profitable engineer. But the CAD products help me do a better job of getting a design finalized and transferred from my mind to a reproducible drawing.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I've worked for a couple small firms doing design drafting or design and working with a drafter, handing off the end result to the engineer/owner for review and stamping.

The highlight of my brief career was after our drafter quit and we outsourced the drafting to a semi-retired professional drafter. I'm finding it hard to describe how great it was, we sent out a thorough sketch and our expectations along with a library of past projects for reference, and we got back a complete drawing set that looked like it was done ourselves. Red lines were corrected on the first try and on top of that the same mistake was not repeated on the next project.

Some of the bad stretches included trying to train new drafting staff (to draft and our industry) while doing design, in the end putting them on make-work projects while I did the drafting myself to meet the timelines.

And somewhere in the middle falls the time I've worked without drafting support and did it all myself, this had the huge downside that you are worrying about drafting when you should be designing, and worrying about designing when you should be drafting. All with the client deadline on the horizon and leaning on both the tasks you have on your plate.

To answer your question, having good help makes the difference, and even with acceptable help I consider it a huge accomplishment to have helped change my current office from a drafting designers environment to a drafters and designers environment.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

I think you can be fast either way. I worked at a place that taught drafters how to design and were very efficient. I have worked at another where the drafters were completely awful. I prefer to do all my own drafting and help my partner out as he doesn't like to draft.

People who know how to hand draft can be more efficient when it comes time for the computer input, just need the proper training or tricks from the more experienced. I have seen very few things that can be hand drafted faster than in the computer. And that is why if someone is willing to pay I will turn a large project around in a day or so. Which we have done.

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer
http://bwengr.com

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

brandonbw (Civil/Environmental)
I was one of those guys that started out as a tin-basher, I served a 5 year apprenticeship in the design and construction of heating and ventilating systems. I then went to a different company ( one of John Bakers Competitors.) who put me in their drawing office as a detail draughtsman,primarily because on my knowledge of flat pattern lay out and how ducting fittings should look on a "real Drawing". During this time I also got into structural detailing and machine detailing. This was in the late 1960s. I had a 20 year break while I went into the aircraft industry, then came back to drafting in the USA in the 1980s At this point I found that in the USA a draftsman simply puts lead on paper and does not do any of his own calculations, so I was upgraded to Designer. I felt that I was still a draughtsman. For many years I did paper and pencil drawings, then got into Auto Cad in about 1990. For years I felt that I could get a drawing done on the board on paper faster than Cad. Then I realized one day, that although I felt that way it was not true in practice, especially when it came to doing notes and bills of materials. I then went through several different companies all with their own cad systems Cad key 99, Inventor 4, Solid works 2001 through 2006 now to Geomagic design. During these times the Cad programs have gotten better at unfolding parts for shop fabrication. I am not an engineer, I have never claimed to be one, I am a designer. I have always worked with engineers to get drawings the way they want them , or to get a drawing to something that can be manufactured on the shop floor. I have had breaks outside the industry as a business owner and employer .
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

In some respects, the people here are lucky to even have this subject to discuss. In EE-land, we used to have schematic capture and PC board layout designers. Both have essentially all but disappeared. Schematic capture is done by the EE himself, and board layout is mostly an automated process, where the only inputs are parts placement and layout constraints.

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RE: Are you the engineer and the drafter?

In my current position, I engineer and draft more complex projects, while I engineer, handball to drafting, and then redline more simple stuff.

Once I tried to engineer something complex, and then send to drafting as I was massively overburdened with work - but I took it back 2 hours later when I realised how much stuff is in my head that doesn't get put into the final product that way without 3-4 time wasting review cycles ending up costing me more time than it saves. Haven't done it again since.

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