CAD Drafting 1

[SteelPE]

I have a project where I need some help from another engineering company. I asked them to submit a proposal for their portion of the work and I was kind of shocked to see how much they wanted to do their work. While going over the numbers we got to drafting in which they were charging consulting engineering rates to do CAD drafting. Since 1/2 of the project is CAD work this was a large portion of the bill. Their reasoning was that their staff engineers do the drafting so that's why they charge so much. I asked why they didn't get someone to do CAD for them and they said that it wasn't efficient for them because they would spend as much time teaching the CAD guy the project as they would drafting it themselves.

Is it normal to charge full consulting engineering rates when doing drafting when you have staff engineers performing the task?

 

[IRstuff]

While I'm not in the same industry, we have no CAD operators, so we would bill out at engineering rates to do drawings. They can, of course, propose whatever they want; it's up to you whether you'll accept their charges or not.

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[SteelPE]

I understand that they can propose what they want. I am just wondering if charging consulting rates for drafting is normal.

I have a guy that does my CAD. While it is a PITA to coordinate everything I find it is better to have him handle the CAD stuff so I can concentrate on the engineering. I usually add 25% to his bill to cover my EO insurance which is based upon gross billings.

 

[strucguy]

SteelPE -

Are you okay if they were charging more hours with reduced CAD rates? I would just look at their lump sum fee and see it's reasonable for the task given.

 

[MiketheEngineer]

We have tried CAS drafters. But by the time you tell them what to do, review their work a couple of times - we found that just letting the engineers do the work to be way more efficient. And drafters want a salay not much less than a new engineer. And I haven't found one that could/would learn our business. They just want to draw straight lines - ALL day long!!??

 

[brandonbw]

I have always found that an engineer doing their own drafting was many times more efficient than a pure drafter. I would watch a project manager like that hand work to a drafter, review the work, mark it up. Go back and forth a few times, and then the project manager would end up doing the drafting. It got so bad that he just started doing all the work himself and seemed much more relaxed.

Though a lot of smaller companies have long term drafters who picked up how to design and do the calculations. And then I worked at a company that had one team that had an engineer who didn't draft, with some lazy drafters and the project went up in flames.

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer

http://bwengr.com

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http://bwstructuralengineer.com

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http://bwcivilengineer.com

 

[IRstuff]

For my industry, yes, senior engineer doing CAD charges out at the same rate as him doing "engineering"

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[GregLocock]

The obvious reason to do it that way is that you aren't 'just' drafting, you are also thinking about the design, looking for things that don't look right, and stopping to do quick calcs, along the way. I'm not saying CAD guys don't do all those things but I'll happily put you in contact with some that don't. And they charge just as much as the ones that do...



Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[ztengguy]

We used to bill out the drafter at a higher rate, for the person, and then the software and equipment.

 

[JedClampett]

Ah, the eternal question.
In our company, the engineers engineer and CAD puts the stuff on paper (or in the server). As a matter of fact, the engineers don't even have Microstation (our CAD platform) on the computers. And we have a different rate for CAD.
The probelm we saw, was that while the engineers might be adding value as they CAD things up, they didn't keep the skills or training required to keep up with the CAD software. Plus, it was hard for them to let go. Nothing was ever perfect enough.
I'm sure some of you will disagree and disagree violently, that they're not as good at CAD as a CAD operator, and I'm sure there's the exception.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Until we stop looking at CAD as something which needs an 'operator' we will have this problem. CAD is a tool, pure and simple.

32 years ago I was offered a job at a very large company that had just started to use CAD and they were wondering how they could get it to pay off, but they were in this "Engineers sit their offices and hand their work to the CAD operators and then after it's plotted they check the work as if it had never been anything more than ink on paper" mode. Now I had been using CAD in an engineering role for 3 years and I was 'recruited' in part because they knew how our company was using CAD successfully (we were NC machining parts modeled on CAD using a single CAD/CAM integrated system and this was in the late 70's). During the interview I was asked what would I do to address their problems and I suggested that they may have to eventually fire the operators and move the CAD terminals into the engineers offices, and while they still offered me a job it was explained that what they really wanted me to do was figure out to improve the efficiency of the current workflow but without assuming that the engineers needed to learn how to use the software since that would be 'below' them. I was expected to solve the efficiency problem without changing the roles of the people involved. Needless to say, I didn't take the job as I knew it was only going to frustrate me.

And interesting side note, as the result of a couple or acquisitions and mergers, that company is now a client of our company and their engineers are now using our software. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) none of the people I interfaced with back then are still with the company or at least not as part the groups that I now deal with.

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.

 

[CheckerHater]

CAD stopped to be simply “drafting” software several years ago. Modern versions have modules for things like Finite Element Analysis, allowing not only to predict strength of the part, but model flow of the fluid in the valve or hot plastic filling the mould, and several other applications. CAD is well-established engineers’ tool.
Engineers who are still looking down on CAD in 2013 are not real engineers. They are doomed anyway. Nobody will save them – the times of professional pencil operators are over.
End when it comes to lack of skill and training, engineers nowadays are taking several “well-rounding” classes anyway. Replace couple of them with one semester course of CAD / drafting and one semester of GD&T and the problem will disappear in no time.