Help! I'm Sick of CAD. 8

[Wrightguy]

I'm in my mid thirties, married with two kids and have been doing nothing but Cad work for 10 years in the structural side of things to make a living.

I'm considered a technician. I've been going to engineering school at night (1 class a semester) and have 7-8 classes left mostly humanties and water/civil classes. Strength of materials, concrete, steel, structural analysis, soil are all behind me. (Senior standing in school)

I watch as each new engineer comes to work with half the knowledge I have. (Don't get me wrong, some are very bright and will succeed and become those people we admire the most.)

My question is this.....

Does it make sense for me to sit for the EIT exam and leave my current position as a tech and strive for a more design oriented engineering job now or wait it out.

I think I have CAD burnout... and I understand that CAD is an important tool in the design process.. however I would like to see if anyone else has been down this road and can share their insight and wisdom.

Thanks in advance.

MJ

 

[DanDel]

Wait it out for what? I think you have already made your decision. You will probably never be more able to pass the EIT test than right now, as you are finishing your studies. You can certainly take the EIT(it's actually called the FE now) test while you continue your present job, and there may be no need to leave your current position while you work towards your PE. Perhaps your company will stop thinking of you as just a technician during this process.
And another thing: In my state, at least, engineering work done before, during, and after your EIT and Bachelor's degree can be used as PE experience if you are working full time in the day and going to school at night. Possibly the CAD work you've been doing may count for some of the required experience, especially if you've been working under a PE. Good luck.

 

[GregLocock]

Finish your degree and start applying for jobs as an engineer. By all means go for EIT/FE/PE if they appeal to you, but without a degree you'll have a hard job convincing a new employer that you have the requisite analytical skills.

I've moved one CAD guy into an engineer's job and he went very well, and in this company our current Design Supervisor is an ex tubee. In both cases they already had engineering degrees, and got into CAD as a lucrative post graduate short term option, not as aspirational career moves.

Your experience as a draughtie will stand you in good stead as a design engineer. In my opinion ALL design engineers should spend a year or two on the tubes, and it wouldn't be a bad move for many other engineers in manufacturing industries.

Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[peebee]

Who you work for can make a tremendous difference (true for any job, I guess). Having a boss that will train you & gradually increase your responsibilities is the most critical requirement. I've seen engineers that were forced to copy stuff into CAD all day (I personally quit a job over that once) and I've met designers that would put most engineers to shame.

Unfortunately, the ever-shrinking budgets and schedules seem to motivate more and more "copy-cadding", while designers get less and less opportunity to actually design (rather than draft) anything.

Your EIT/PE could help convince your boss to give you more design responsibility. A conversation with him might do it. Changing jobs might be necessary.

 

[PSE]

Get the degree and sit for the exam. The combination will provide you with expanded opportunities. Without them (especially the degree) you will find it extremely difficult to break from the technician pidgeonhole. You might find out from your current employer if you would/could be promoted from your current position upon degree completion. At least you could test the waters there to find out what options may or may not be available. You may end up having to leave in order to truly break out of the mold. If you want to get away from CAD for a while (a lot of designer positions still do a lot of CAD), see if you could move into project management. Possibly you could assist on a project currently underway in order to gain a little experience there.

looks like I re-iterated some of all three previous posts. I think they all offered some good advice.

Good luck

 

[whyun]

Wrightguy,

I totally hear you. I am a structural engineer. The industry always had a symbiotic relationship between drafters and engineers. At the same time, drafters had been treated as "support" and not compensated as much as engineers with years less years of experience.

After the introduction of CAD, engineer's dependence on CAD drafters increased significantly. Years ago, engineers were able to calc the design and even "draft" info on the vellums themselves. With the introduction of CAD, and the advances made in the program itself, CAD knowledge has become a field of its own. It doesnt make buisiness sense for the Principal to have their engineers perform engineering AND learn AutoCAD.

In my opinion, if you have the desire to succeed, you may put yourself in a position where you are "managing" CAD personnel. With your structural knowledge, you can establish office standards and guidelines. At that level, your time on CAD will have reduced significantly, your salary increased and you will have more authority over new engineers whom you have to train anyways.

Starting over as an engineer will take years. Finish engineering school, take EIT, get experience to qualify for PE exam, if in califirnia SE, etc, etc. During this process, you may find yourself getting the same pay as a new engineer right out of school.

I am not trying to discourage you; however, just presenting some thoughts to consider. It will be a big move. Engineering is rewarding, at the same time, follows a big responsibility and liability. It is a never ending struggle until we retire. In fact, structural engineers never really retire... we fade away.

Best of luck to you.

 

[whyun]

Forgot to add a few:

If you have desire and interest in engineering, by all means, go for it. It may be very rewarding.

If your move is because you are simply sick of CAD, there are things you can do in this field that doesn't require much of CAD. Field work, shop drawing review (for copys give it to the office boy/girl), CAD manager, Senior designer, etc. I feel that you can't escape CAD in this route, but there is room for career advancement (if your employer has it in his vision).

Regards,

 

[Wrightguy]

Thanks for the responses, this web site is a good resource.

Do you guys think that an engineer can survive in the future without knowledge of CAD and its capabilities?

It seems to me that it has worked so far with the attitude of some older engineers. They continue to make more and more money without the knowledge of CAD and "farm it out".

Especially since they used to draw by hand just a few short years ago and now all of sudden stick their head in the sand and don't adapt to the technology.

Boy if I had that attitude I'd get booted out on my butt as fast as you can say "AutoCad"!

 

[peebee]

I personally think we are in a temporary transition to CAD ("temporary" including a 10 to 40 year transition period).
I don't think that engineers will be able to forever avoid CAD, and I don't think designers will forever be able to avoid learning how to design something.

I strongly believe there are substantial efficiencies and quality improvements to be gained by a broad overlap between "engineer" and "designer" positions, same as there was in the past prior to CAD. Unfortunately, there is a strong (and hopefully temporary) resistance on the part of many engineers to learn CAD, and there seems to be a strong resistance in many designers to learn design.

There's no reason a reasonably intelligent designer with nothing more than a high school diploma can't learn to design stuff, same as 30 years ago. And while there's certainly a generation gap with computers, there's plenty of old designers that were forced to learn CAD and are doing at least marginally well with it. Any engineer who "can't" learn CAD is either stupid or stubborn.

I had an interesting conversation with an industrial engineer some years ago. He said the model for project-based organizations is a race-car team. Everyone on that team may have a specialty, but they know at least a little bit about the whole car. In the pit, problems are fixed by whoever is closest. This makes a lot of sense to me in design work. Whoever sees a problem on the drawing should fix it. Designers should understand the concepts behind what they are drawing. Engineers should be able to make quick corrections on CAD. That's my opinion anyway for whatever it's worth.

 

[GregLocock]

CAD.NE.CAE

Well, strictly speaking, CAD is not essential in my opinion. It is only replacing draughting, and so long as you can read the drawing correctly and visualise the product I don't really think that knowing how the lines get on the paper/screen is all that important.

However, CAE is becoming more and more important, I doubt that anyone in a first world manufacturing environment could imagine coping without it, cost effectively. Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[peebee]

Exactly. CAD is only a tool that should be used to increase productivity.

 

[whyun]

Wrightguy,

In my opinion, the need for CAD in our industry (Structural primarily)will never go away. Other disciplines the same probably.

What will happen is, there will be an overflow of new tech school graduates with expert CAD knowledge but no structural background. What these "older engineers" need are a few talented CAD personnel with competent level of CAD knowledge but who knows the structural detailing and standard symbols to represent engineer's intent. These people carry great value. I hope that you belong in this category. It makes business sense to employ the young CAD experts to carry out the tasks under the direction of the CAD coordinator such as yourself.

I am also against the idea of having engineers to perform AutoCAD work. If they possess that talent, it will not go un-noticed; but i feel that engineers should focus on engineering. We are not trying to AVOID learning CAD, we just have more qualified people to do that work.

I sincerely hope that you are valued at your current work place. I am sure you will make the decision that best serves your goals.

Nice chatting with you. Ragards.

 

[Wrightguy]

I'm with you Whyun.

I think there is a distinct separation between the CAD experts and the engineering experts. I say let them ascend to their chosen abilty and make lots of money on the way. Its always good that each discipline knows just a little taste of the other.

I'm just finding that I'm in that transistion period and need to "tough it out". However, I've been doing it so long the burnout thing is getting to me and I'm ready to move on and dive into my chosen profession. I feel like I'm losing time that I don't have when I was younger.

Can anyone out there share with me their experiences? Any late bloomers out there that didn't graduate at a young age?

 

[Northst8r]

You asked for advice and have received some good ideas. I am a late bloomer too and am glad I made the change.
First, my advice is to go back to school full time and get it over with. You sound like a bright guy and could knock out 4 classes per semester. There is a lot of help out there in grants and loans. It’s a little tough but worth it.
Second, Pass the F.E. and P.E. as soon as possible.
As far as the comparison between experience and education, they are not interchangeable. You will be amazed the way people treat you once you get your degree and then your P.E. It gives you credibility. Something you can’t get with a hundred years of experience.
What you do at work is directly related to the things you are willing to do. For example, on my first engineering job they found out that I knew something about computers and liked tinkering with them. Guess what I spent hours doing instead of engineering work. Every time someone couldn’t get a printer or program to work, I’d hear “got a minute?”
If you choose to do cad work and are good at it, that’s what you will be given. On the other hand, if your answer is “I really need to get to this or that meeting with a client and then review his billing, and then draft that report to the home office, etc. then you will see the change.
Good Luck

 

[whyun]

To add to Norths8r's posting:

If you decide to pursue a full time engineering degree program, you will definitely be ahead of the young engineering students in that you already have experiences to be able to focus on topics that matter in the real world. Most students with no experience will basically be spoon-fed with information and realize in the end that they haven't focussed on topics they should have.

As an experienced person in the structural field, and having dealt with engineers, you may have a clearer understanding of what's important.

Wish you the best of luck.

 

[Wrightguy]

Excellent advise norths8r and whyun.....

Thanks for the input. I'm looking at speeding up my time in school and appreciated the remarks.

If anybody needs some solid grounding all they need to do is just listen to the pack that roams this thread.

My Thanks!

 

[GregLocock]

As a matter of interest how did you find the maths? I imagine that would be the hardest thing to get up to speed on - even in my one year between school and uni my maths degraded from excellent to just good enough! Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[Wrightguy]

Maths?

You mean Calculus, Differential Equations and the like?

or something else????

You would be surprised how much you draw upon on the disciplines that came before. Even the algebra and physics of years ago. I'm fortunate, I enjoy the math and use it day to day in my job.

Hope this helps.

MJ

 

[whyun]

In all honesty, I have found college level math to be a mere "weeder" courses to filter out the people who are smarter (people who go into business, law and the like). The less fortunate, who happened to "like" math, physics and such end up as engineers and scientists.

In real life, and I am talking average Joe's life like mine, even with the engineering work I have, I hardly use college level math.

Way to success, in my opinion, is common sense and ability to apply your knowledge and be resourceful enough to learn and apply things you haven't learned in school.

Cheers.

 

[Wrightguy]

I hear you whyun!

Come on....I had to take 3 calculus courses????

Do we really need that many. I could have used a Masonry or Wood design course peppered in there. Instead, I have to flounder out here on my own, or take a post-graduate course.

Oh yea forgot...I haven't graduated yet...hmmm.

regards,

MJ