CAD work 3

[mepelectricalguy]

Do most of the engineers on this board do their own CAD work? The company I currently work for is small, and thus we are quite busy and I am stuck doing all of my own CAD drawing work (new building design, not manufacturing). Is this typical? They are very against hiring CAD technicians, which I think is a much more cost efficient way of producing documents. It is quite boring to spend 30-40% of my time drawing in CAD as opposed to working on the overall engineering of the project. Past companies I've worked for all had CAD techs and designers so the engineers never did their own CAD. We have all PE engineers doing their own CAD drawings.

 

[ewh]

Sounds like a waste of resources to me.

 

[whyun]

Advantage of engineers doing their own CAD is there is no guesswork and no "misinterpretation". Major disadvantage is, like you said, it is not cost effective.

If engineers did their own CAD work, it can save time going back and fourth with mark-ups.

In structural engineering firms, engineers doing CAD is not the norm. Almost all companies I know of have staff of CAD drafters. The difference is in the engineer-to-drafter ratio.

 

[Beggar]

We're very, very small and we do not presently have a CAD guy. We did for awhile but things got tight and he was considered more expendable than the engineers.

Of course, now we're down to one engineer ...

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[Ashereng]

I think engineers should CAD once in a while. This way, they know how their directions/changes/edits/adds affect the schedule as the drawings go through drafting.

I am an engineer. I know how to CAD. I do draft on some jobs. CADDING/drafting should not be "beneath" an engineer to do.

I also have a lot more "cred" with the drafters because they have seen me draft.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[KENAT]

I started in a small place, there was no distinction between engineers and drafter, we were all Design Engineers and all had to use CAD. The only 'engineers' who didn't were the chief stress engineer (OK the only one) and the project managers.

That said we also did pm, quotes, SOW, trials, manufacturing liason......

I'm inclined to agree with Whyun in his logic. Big problemm is a lot pure engineers I've come across can't turn out a decent drawing even if they can use CAD while some drafters don't have quite the level of skill/knowledge to take very rough schemes/sketches and transform them into workable designs.

Horses for courses I guess.

 

[ewh]

I have to take exception with "Advantage of engineers doing their own CAD is there is no guesswork and no "misinterpretation"". While I can't address the civil/arch side, on the mechanical side often the only people who can interpret an engineers drawings are himself and those he works directly with. This is fine until you actually have to follow a standard which has the intent of allowing a complex part drawing to be interpreted the same way regardless of location of manufacture.
As far as "If engineers did their own CAD work, it can save time going back and fourth with mark-ups" I guess this would be true because there is no one else to check them for mistakes but fellow engineers who make the same ones themselves.
I fully appreciate working with engineers who have the knowledge and experience of creating good drawings, but they are becoming more rare every day. They simply don't have the time to get PROPER drafting experience. They are forced to get the drawing out the door and the part made, drawing mistakes be damned.

 

[BJC]

If your doing cad your'e not doing engineering. You will evolve downward to being a designer. OK if that's what you want, but it's not worth as much. You could have saved a lot of money and time by going to a junior college.
I look at it the same way a female engineer would if she was ask to do all the typing.

 

[HVACctrl]

I have seen it both ways. the thing I like the most is engineers doing some initial, conceptual stuff and the drafters doing all the cleanup, finishing, etc....

It all depends on the scenario and I've been in different ends of the spectrum.

I hate having to draw things up from scrath by hand. I hate writing by hand. I like doing everything on the computer using spreadsheets etc... Often I find it easier to begin concepts by CAD and letting the drafters run with the finish work. Other times, it might be easier to print out a similar design from the past and mark it up for the drafters to fix.

It all depends on the scenario, but that is a dilimma we have to think about as engineers.

Ed

http://www.engineerboards.com

 

[ajack1]

Surely it depends on the amount of time you spend doing CAD work. If it is a lot of hours a week then yes it would be better to either employ someone to do this or outsource, if it is only a few hours then probably not.

The same applies to writing letters, making the coffee, arranging appointments, booking flights, booking the conference rooms and ensuring they are clean, in fact just about everything.

The other option is you have an army of employees running around after you and probably another manager to oversee all these extra employees, hardly cost efficient either. Wearing many hats seems to be the norm these days.

 

[weh3]

I have worked in various environments where the range of expectation ran the gamut:

1. One place where engineers were not allowed or expected to CADD, because they were paid to be engineers, not CADD techs;
2. One place where engineers were expected to do any CADD necessary;
3. One place where engineers were nominally not required to do CADD, but everyone understood that the markup process needed short-circuiting in a pinch.

There are parts of the job where a specialist is needed, such as the initial setup of a job in its directories, xrefs, and backgrounds. If that is done to company standards, it is easier for the engineers to do CADD and not have to worry about file management.

Finally, I have never met a CADD tech specially trained to do electrical drafting. I have known techs who were self-taught, techs who knew CAD but knew nothing about electrical design, and I have known electricians who knew CAD. All things considered, I prefer the latter. In general I don't like setting up drawings or creating drawing elements; there are those who do--I would just as soon leave the raw drafting to them and the mods to me.

 

[whyun]

Engineers spend their time to determine the type, magnitudes, and direction of external forces on an element and figure out the most reasonable size (economically, geometrically, etc) that can sustain those forces. Once the size is determined, a drafter puts it on CAD.

New and inexperienced engineers, though they might be able to perform calculations, can learn a whole lot from veteran drafters who can teach them how things are put together.

Before personal computers, engineers did their own drafting. There were tracers and there were drafters. You had to earn the title "drafter".

At this day and age, engineers should possess at least basic CAD skills to edit CAD drawings. But it makes business sense to leave the main CAD work to those who are trained in CAD. Much faster (and cheaper) than engineers.

 

[ewh]

I am familiar with the pecking order described by whyun, where in a drafting department the lowest position was a junior detail drafter (tracer), followed by detail drafter, designer and senior designer as the top (except of course for the checker, who had the final say). When (and where) I first started, the only drafting that engineers would do would be large design layouts (in 4h lead), to be fleshed out by the drafting department.

 

[drawoh]

This discussion depends a lot on the kind of engineering you do.

I am a technologist mechanical designer and I do all my own drawings. I would be uncomfortable having someone else do my fabrication drawings because my dimensions and tolerances are based on design requirements that I understand. I am much happier farming out sub-assemblies with simple, well-defined interfaces, and let the other designer figure those out, completely.

If I do engineering calculations and analysis, I am working on stuff where I control the assembly, parts list, and fabrication drawings. All this information connects together.

Back in my drawing board and 2D CAD days, I spent maybe 5-10% of my time on fabrication drawings. The task was not worth farming out.

On 3D CAD (SolidWorks), I start the fabrication drawings immediately, so that I can feed in the critical dimensions as I work them out. It creates a useful, alternate view of what I am doing. Again, I would object strongly to farming it out.

In my field, I do not understand the concept of a specialized drafter. If you are going to get any of your own work done, you have to walk away and let them work. You have to trust them while you are not watching them. They require some level of engineering expertise.

JHG