Engineers and Crappy Drafting 7

[LONDONDERRY]

Why are mechanical engineers such bad drafters. I've been a Mechanical engineer since mid-90's and before that a drafter since the late 80's degreed in both. Every company I've have ever been at I've never come across an ME that understands drafting / CAD standards. I seen such crappy drafting work or CAD file managment that I can make a career just going from company to company and cleaning up messes. Its sobad some times that ME's could care less about producing drawings they could be proud of or its below then to do drafting to begin with.

 

[TWJR]

I read a little of the thread 404 listed above, in which TheTick mentioned to one guy that his drawings were bad because he never read them. While I'm not the best drafter there has ever been, I believe my drawings are better than a lot out there because of one thing - I was an end user for a lot of years. Worked for several companies, had to work from drawings made by many, many people, and came to recognize a good drawing from a bad one. I didn't know standards very well during that time, but it's easy to see the difference between a clear, aesthetically pleasing drawing and one that's confusing and hard to understand. Now I know standards a lot better (although am still learning), but at the same time am able to put myself in the shoes of the end user, having been there myself. It's not that my drawings get no redlines during checking, since I'm certainly not perfect, but I often get compliments from the manufacturing floor as to the clarity of my drawings. I just tell them thanks, but it's because I've been in your shoes.

 

[LONDONDERRY]

You think our posts are bad
The reason I posted this threaded to begin with is I started a new job. The company had a hiring freeze because of a few mergers, the previous ME quit and the company hasn't had one in a couple of years. The hiring freeze let up and well here I am the sole ME .

So now that I'm here the company wants to make changes to their existing products. The problem I'm having is the CAD data is a total mess, there is limited detail drawings across all product lines. I was told by other s/w engineers that the person I replaced never really made 2d drawings and only sent the 3d file out for fab. The 2d drawings I do find are shameful with no dimension, material call out, or over and under toleranced call out for no good reason. And nowhere! is there any assembly drawing.

In my opinion, engineers that don't have good practical drafting expeience over tolerance features to cover their butts incase parts don't fit together during prototype assembly.