Engineers and Drafters 1

[asixth]

Hi guys,

I have only been a design engineer for a very short time, but I have already noticed some practices that are proving very ineffective.

I perform a design, I have a clear idea in my head what detailed structural drawings should look like. I do a lot of sketches, mark-up other drawings (mech, elec, arch) and give them to my drafters to produce CAD drawings, but they look like crap and are riddled with errors. I have noticed I spend most my day looking over drawings, just to hand them back to the drafters requesting changes.

Question: Has the time come for me to perform my own drafting?

I feel with the usability of the modern CAD package that I can create my own drawings, error-free, how I want them to look and I feel I can meet my deadlines by taking this approach.

What is the general consensus on this idea? Is anyone out there drafting their own designs?

 

[nicam]

I have the same problem, however it is easy for someone who has been staring at the screen for hours to not pick up on mistakes.

I used to draft and I know how it's like.

btw you can't produce a drawing error-free, some else will always find something wrong with it.

 

[NS4U]

i'm sure over on "draft-tips.com" there is a drafter complaining about how the engineer isn't clear enough on markups, or something like that.

you're a new engineer, maybe the best thing for you to do is ask the drafter what YOU can do better so these things get picked up. Instead of wanting to go runoff and do it yourself, ya know?

And there's a reason why CAD programs cost a ton of money... because they have a million different settings and things which make them easier to use, efficient, and put out a high quality finished product. Unless you are master at these programs, using drafters are still a significantly more efficient process than doing it yourself. Not to mention, most drafters (maybe not in your case because you're newer) cost less per hour than engineers, so doing the drafting yourself would hurt the budget and force you to have to finish earlier.

 

[Rafat125]

i couldn't agree more; the problem with the drafter still persists unless they are very skilled. if they dont know what a section will look like, what line will be dotted etc. its really a big problem for the engineers making them to understand it. they have other complex things to do.

 

[hokie66]

Draftsmen are rare these day, most of the trained CAD operators are just computer guys. The exception are those who learned to draw with pencil and paper. The quality of drawings has been going steadily downhill since the introduction of CAD drafting.

 

[B16A2]

We've gone the way of the younger engineers doing the drafting. Cant seem to find good structural cad techs out there.

You should make the EOR and your dept manager aware of this issue if it's really out of hand. If they dont do anything about it you should reconsider working there, because eventually something is going to come back to bite.

 

[hokie66]

Going the way of the younger engineers doing the drafting sounds very familiar. It was the standard way of doing things in 1970. Not only did it train the young engineers, but also the young engineers trained the drafters so that they could get off the board.

 

[DMcGrath]

How about getting the drafters out of the office for half a day for a bit of "real world" training? Rather than looking at lines on the screen all day every day, show them what they are drawing in the real world, how it goes together, and why it is important.

 

[civeng80]

Draftsmen are not what they used to be these days. I still think its possible to produce great drawings on reasonable time limits on CAD. It just doesn't seem to happen very often.

I always try to do my own designs (structural computations) and do the drafting on CAD and then I build my own buildings too and by the time Im on the building site I know everything there is to know, layout dimensions are basically burnt in my brain.


But I guess Im fortunate that Im in that sort of business.

 

[JedClampett]

Boy, we rant about this a lot in my office. The CAD Techs come out of their trade schools knowing how to push a mouse, but very little about setting up drawings and less about discipline (structural, etc.) work. I remember back in the old days (I know; here he goes again!) how draftsmen were trained. It took years. Lettering, linework, layout, details, using leroys, etc., etc. A lot of people got bored and washed out. And they didn't get paid that much. But for a high school graduate it was pretty good, inside work, with no heavy lifting.
Until schools or industry invests the time to train CAD techs, we'll get the same poor results as mentioned above. In our office the problem is no training program or standards with expectation of perfect results from day one and constant improvement.

 

[tngolfer]

DMcGrath hit the nail on the head. Whenever our drafters go out into the field and see some steel guy putting together a moment connection or how small a 4x4 tube really is when it's 15 feet tall, they can picture something more than some lines indicating a beam with a leader calling out a full-pen weld. They have been amazed every time they go out.

My two cents: If you start drafting you are going to have similar mistakes. Who will be looking over your shoulder to check your work? Our office has drafters that draft and engineers that design. I like it because the drafter back-checks his/her work and then the engineer back-checks the work. A minimum of two sets of eyes look over each drawing. We also have a senior drafter that the drafters can go to for questions.

Also, we engineers went to school to design, not draft. It doesn't make sense from a business perspective to do something you can pay someone else to do for much less.

 

[JStephen]

I mostly do my own CAD now, and formerly worked at a place where I did none of it and supervised draftsmen.

There's not a good solution, really. When you do it yourself, you may can slap the lines on there pretty quick, but then actually finishing out all the callouts and dimensions can get time-consuming. Telling draftsmen how to do it works great if you have experienced intelligent industrious artistic draftsmen; otherwise, it can be an uphill battle.

There is a learning curve when working with people as well. Learning what their strengths are, who to give what type of work to, how much needs explaining, etc.

 

[southard2]

My first engineering position was as a drafting manager. It takes about 6 months to a year to get a green drafter to the point where you don't have to tell them every single thing to do. It is worth paying up and giving raises to keep them longer. Before long they will know what they are expected to do and will start to do things correct without being told. After about two years they will start catching things for you to. That's when it gets good.

I wholeheartedly agree that all young engineers should draft for a bit. Hand drafting is also good for improving your hand writing. In the end all engineers need to be able to draft up their own hand sketches to efficiently respond to RFI's etc...

Practice is the only thing that will help you and your draftsment improve. I agree with the post earlier. There isn't a perfect set of drawings. They will be pretty good though if you try and demand perfection. On small jobs less than say 4000 square feet I will have around 2-3 red line sets. For large jobs like new school campuses I'll have up to 6-8 red line sets. You've got to check every single text line, section, and elevation and dimension. I recommend making a basic checklist to make sure you don't forget to check the basic stuff.

 

[asixth]

thanks guys, interesting discussion and plenty of thoughts

 

[jeffandmike]

Guys,

Could not agree with your comments more.

I've worked at firms where the engineers hand-sketched everything, only to hand it off to drafters to "get it into CAD".

I've also worked at firms where the engineers do all of their own drafting.

IMHO, the latter is a far superior method of producing drawings, particularly once you have a good template file set up.

Typically with drafters doing all of the drafting, many revision cycles are required. Sure a given drafter may be faster than a given engineer at initially getting the detail in CAD . . . but how about after they're done incorporating three rounds of revisions?

Engineers produce better designs when they have to do their own drafting. They think more about how it needs to go together.

Drafters can be good at running CAD programs, but are typically poor at "helping" out the engineer. A good drafter should be able to not only get the drawing right, but should also be able to identify at least some mistakes the engineer may have made and correct them (i.e. tolerance issues, constructability, availability of sections or materials, etc.)

 

[GalileoG]

I do most of my drafting on Tekla Structures. I think knowing how to draft is a valuable tool. Sometimes I wish I had more time for engineering, but finding competent draftsmen is not easy.

 

[MotorVib]

A good Drafter is hard to find. I all ways like to hear that a new drafter has been working on cars or has worked as a welder or anything with there hands that that they need to read drawings.

Back when I started in engineering I was a Drafter, and because of this I try to keep up with the CAD programs.

As for the question that started this all off doing the generial Layout will help the Drafters understand what is going on. Also if you are in the world of Soilds doing the part and assembly will also help.

Chris

"In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics." Homer Simpson

 

[BBruins]

We use the following analogy when the owner of the company gets mad because we engineers are on CAD. "When you sit down to write out a proposal, you don't start with a pen and a legal pad. You type it up yourself." You older generation guys need to stop looking at CAD as a job and more as a tool. In our office, we have inexperienced draftsman so the engineers start the drawings and get the layouts done, ie column grids, foundation plans, framing plans, framing elevations etc. and the draftsman finish them up by adding the text, dimensions, sections and details, etc. It works very well in our office.

I agree that the quality of draftsman is declining because they are not taught to draw in school, they are taught to operate a machine.

 

[MechEng2005]

There is not a lot of distinction where I work between "drafters" and "engineers". Some people that started as drafters and have enough experience do engineering work (and often seem better qualified than those of us with degrees).

I do most of my own drafting. If I am swamped I may give a part that is drawn in AutoCAD to a "drafter" (who may be an engineer that just isn't swamped at the moment) who puts in the dimensions and details as necessary.

When I started, I wanted to do everything and tried to cover it all. However, I have gotten better about being able to delegate some of the work (i.e. not fully drawing housing and non-critical parts, and just letting the drafter figure out the shape). I have found that the quality is superior when I hand it out to somebody else. Then, when I get it back and it's not exactly how I would have done it, I think about if it is better, equally good, sufficient, or needs correction. This has allowed me to see different ways of doing things besides what I would have seen by myself. Maybe part of the benefit is because sometimes I am giving work to senior engineers and it provides an opportunity to pick their brains. i.e. This isn't how I thought I would do it, why did you do it that way?) I have learned a lot about manufacturing capabilities and preferences this way!

However, as I said, this may be based on the fact that there isn't a separate drafting and engineering department where I am. It is nice to see the engineering manager step in when the work is swamped though and make some drawings with pencil and paper because he has never used CAD! Sure, we have to re-draw in CAD later, but it gets us over the busy period and material can be ordered, the fab shop can at least get started.

-- MechEng2005

 

[csd72]

This is an issue that is close to my heart for a number of reasons, mainly in that I think this is at the center of the reasons why Structural engineers salaries have declined.

I liken the engineer.draftsman relationship to a lawyer and a legal secretary. The legal secretary is well paid (sometimes better than engineers) because with their training they can do a lot of the lawyers tasks more efficiently and save the lawyer lots of time. The lawyer on the other hand is able to bill more because of the secretary so they are both of more value to the firm.

Now this lawyer/secretary relationship only works if the secretary is well trained, and he/she can do her job with minimal input from the lawyer.

This is where we let ourselves down, we dont train our draftsmen, so they need much more than minimal input from ourselves! You cannot expect someone to come out of college to be able to understand a building.

I read a very good article on this which I will try to find.

I disagree with engineers doing more than a minimal level of drafting though as it flattens the learning curve. If you are an engineer with 10 years experience that has spent half that time drawing then you are really only an engineer with 5 years engineering experience.

I have worked with firms at both ends of the spectrum, those where the draftsmen wer basically tracers who did not draw anything that wasnt on your sketches, and those where all I had to give were beam sizes and number of bolts and the draftman would produce drawings. On the first they were contract draftsmen and on the later they were full time employees that were trained from graduation. The later company was much more efficient.

I have also done my own drafting, so I do have an understanding of the process. I agree with what was said above about 2 sets of eyes being much better.