Poll about CAD knowledge 7

[Lion06]

How many people here work at a firm in which they need to know how to use CAD themselves. I have know idea how to draw a straight line in CAD, but many engineering companies say you must be proficient in CAD in part of their job descriptions.

 

[ron9876]

I don't see how you can afford to pay engineering salaries for drafting. It seems to me that the only way to justify is if you can't find a decent cad operator. This is becoming a bigger problem in my market. I just passed on hiring an engineer because hepreferred to do his own drafting and I have in-house drafting capability.

 

[Lion06]

Michfan-
I am not talking about not knowing how to draw a detail. I draw details all the time, but I hand them off to CAD after I draw them by hand. I certainly know how to communicate what I want, but I don't see how that relates to actually USING CAD.

 

[mrMikee]

I like to do some of the CAD layout and design if I can. I find that it can be relaxing after several weeks of grinding through the analytic stuff with structural software, design spreadsheets, programming, report writing, etc., to be able to work on a layout puzzle of sorts. In my opinion I'm as fast and make better drawings than about 80% of the techs I've worked with in the past, and maybe this has something to do with the fact that I have done as many drawings as I have. I should mention that I work in manufacturing which is probably a different environment than consulting.

I agree with the comment made by michfan that learning drafting by hand teaches a better understanding of the basics.

Regards,
-Mike

 

[JedClampett]

I don't know anymore CAD than knowing how to open an existing drawing and magnify a detail so I can read it. And I'm not even very good at that. I discourage my engineers that work from me from using CAD. I find that engineers using CAD tend to overly detail (fine tune) work for my money. I'd rather pay a competent CAD technician to work off of hand sketches and redlines of existing drawings. We have too many layering rules and X-references to have engineers do that and do good engineering efficiently.

 

[michfan]

StructuralEIT,
My point was that young engineers nowadays usually have some CAD experience because hand drafting isn't widely used any longer. How much that experience helps them in their day-to-day engineering work would depend on how well they learned and understand the process of DESIGN, not just drawing. Simply knowing how to draw lines in CAD won't necessarily give you the experience you need in learning how to design correctly. You can be an expert at CAD and know all the shortcuts and be lightning-fast, but if you don't understand the basics of a good design, just knowing how to draw in CAD won't make you a good designer.

But I think the reason a lot of companies want you proficient in CAD is two-fold: (1) you have the technical ability to understand a cad drawing when it is sent to you; how to open it, manipulate it, turn layers on and off, incorporate it into your work, plot it, etc. -- especially in smaller companies without a dedicated CAD staff, and (2) it shows you PROBABLY have some DESIGN experience. If you took classes to learn AutoCAD or another program, you likely have some design sense, or are on your way to acquiring it, and hopefully it's good sense and not non-sense. You may not actually even use AutoCAD in the position you are applying for, but if you have the ability to use it, it adds to your overall "value" to the company. (And they can always make you a CAD monkey if things get slow...)

I'm at an age where I learned on a drafting board through middle and high school, and CAD was just starting when I hit my college years. I used a drafting board all through my classes for my architecture degree, but used more CAD by the time I went for my CE degree. I really value the hand-drafting experience, as much as I value knowing AutoCAD, and I'm fairly proficient at both. Just being able to draw something in CAD doesn't mean it will work in the real world.

I get plans across my desk nearly every day that aren't worth the paper they are printed on. HVAC running OUTSIDE the roof structure, incorrect details referencing other incorrect or even missing details, etc. Dimensions that don't actually go to anything, that's always nice. Whether these were drawn by an engineer with poor CAD skills, or a CAD tech with poor engineering skills, I'll never know - but either way, it reflects poorly on that company, and no owner or manager wants people to think their company isn't the best.

Personally, I wouldn't care whether you are proficient in CAD and can do your own sketches, or if you hand sketch and give it to a CAD tech, as long as your design really WORKS in the real world. But, if I were a boss looking to hire, and I had the choice between someone who was proficient in CAD or someone who had no experience with it, all other factors equal, I'd go with the CAD experience.

 

[Lion06]

Michfan-
This is your quote.
"How much that experience helps them in their day-to-day engineering work would depend on how well they learned and understand the process of DESIGN, not just drawing. Simply knowing how to draw lines in CAD won't necessarily give you the experience you need in learning how to design correctly. You can be an expert at CAD and know all the shortcuts and be lightning-fast, but if you don't understand the basics of a good design, just knowing how to draw in CAD won't make you a good designer."

Are you saying that designing and drawing are virtually one in the same? In my experience, designing is sizing the members, welds, etc... as well as making sure the detail will perform as desired (e.g. that a "pin" connection will allow sufficient rotation to make this assumption). None of this designing (by my definition), requires any CAD knowledge at all.
I am not disputing your assertion that CAD knowledge is good, that is the whole reason I started this thread - to get everyone's opinion on the matter. What I am questioning is the idea of knowing CAD making you a better engineer or how drawing a detail that an engineer (possibly yourself) came up with means that you are a designer. I'm just not following the logic.



This is your other quote
"But I think the reason a lot of companies want you proficient in CAD is two-fold: (1) you have the technical ability to understand a cad drawing when it is sent to you; how to open it, manipulate it, turn layers on and off, incorporate it into your work, plot it, etc. -- especially in smaller companies without a dedicated CAD staff, and (2) it shows you PROBABLY have some DESIGN experience. If you took classes to learn AutoCAD or another program, you likely have some design sense, or are on your way to acquiring it, and hopefully it's good sense and not non-sense."

Again, what does being proficient in CAD have to do with design experience? The CAD guys draw EXACTLY what you give them. They are not designing connections. You don't give them a beam and say, "pinned-pinned" and let the CAD guy design the connection - You, as the engineer, design the connection. Again, I am not following the logic.

 

[archeng59]

I have a good knowledge of cad, so there are times when I can do a framing layout faster than having my cad tech do something. My cad tech has over 30 years of structural drafting experience. Sometimes, I can do a cad detail faster than he does from a sketch. Sometimes, I can modify an existing detail as easily as redlining it. However, I don't do alot of cad work because I prefer to engineer rather than draw on the computer.

 

[PMR06]

StructuralEIT, I think Michfan and others are trying to convey the concept that it is important to have basic CAD knowledge and skills, not necessarily be an "expert" at it. The extent of your CAD knowledge will depend on your particular company's business practices, but at least some knowledge is not a bad thing.

There's something else important to remember and consider about drawings: Most of the time, your final product is a drawing. That's all anyone ever sees or cares about. Not only are the drawings important now for proper construction, but 2 years from now when the client looks back and maybe wants to rehire you, and 10 years from now when an owner needs to modify the structure you designed. Having as much knowledge as possible about what information the drawings contain, and how they were created will only make you a better engineer, later a better engineering manager, later a better engineering firm owner, etc.

 

[JackTrades]

StructuralEIT, I understand (hopefully) the intent of your question to be: "If I design, detail, and hand-sketch my requirements for the construction drawings to be done by a drafter in CAD, how does it make me a better engineer to learn CAD?"

After 20+ years of drafting, originally with pencil on vellum, now using AutoCAD and MicroStation, it's my opinion that if you do your hand skecthes to scale and as quickly as you could learn to do them in CAD there would be no real gain in design engineering ability. The key is that in detailing complex structures, it becomes really helpful to get a sense of actual scale and proportion which is sometimes lost in a schematic sketch.

I've found that what works best for me is to do the main structure layout and details in CAD and then ship them to the drafter, with red-lined notes, to finish. The degree of detail that I'd have to provide on a hand sketch and time in explaination in order to get the same final results would take far too much time.

That's my 2-cents.

-Jack

 

[ewh]

I am an interloper here, having had no civil experience. I do have considerable CAD and board drawing experience, however. In other industries, michfan is quite correct in her reasoning of drafting experience aiding in design capabilities. Machined parts and assemblies rely on accurate and reasonable tolerancing in order to work correctly. Having your drawings repeatedly come back to you all marked up in red tends to refine your ability to reason out how to best apply dimensioning and tolerancing schemes, which in turn is a stepping stone to being a good designer. Board experience is valuable because of the effort required to repeatedly re-dimension something and still produce a good drawing. It teaches one to plan ahead and try to reflect how that part is going to be made, as well as a sense of pride in the finished product. CAD jockeys with no board experience have not had that learning experience. Re-dimensioning or redrawing to them is much simpler (which is the point of CAD), and they often seem to miss out on that analytical part of their work.

 

[DRC1]

"Are you saying that designing and drawing are virtually one in the same? In my experience, designing is sizing the members, welds, etc... as well as making sure the detail will perform as desired (e.g. that a "pin" connection will allow sufficient rotation to make this assumption). None of this designing (by my definition), requires any CAD knowledge at all."

Thought about this for a while and my answer is to some extent designing and drawing are one in the same. Drawings are the medium through we communicate our design. Before cad, plans were artfully drawn and were clear and consise. Now we have thick rolls of stanard details, modified to meet the site conditions. I find plans are getting less clear as more engineers allow drafters to do it all. Supose you were a brillent composer, who could create great symphonies of music, but did not know how to write them down. So every day you go to your music scribe and hum while he jots it down. He might capture the overall melody, but do you think he can completely capture the music in your mind? The same is true of drafting and designing. We need to be able to be able to draw well enough to capture the music, not just hum.

 

[ron9876]

That is what red pencils are for. I don't understand this debate. An engineer should be able to visualize what they are designing. If they can't there may be a problem. I don't need a 3d drawing or something to show me what something looks like. If I give a draftsman a detail in rough sketch format they had better be able to turn this into a scaled copy of my sketch. If not then I need to either train or replace them. Can't afford to pay engineers salary to do drafting. Also good engineers are hard to find and I don't want them using their time drawing.

 

[Lion06]

ron9876-
THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I started this thread as a simple poll to find out how many engineers do their own CAD work and it has somehow turned into a debate as to whether engineers should know how to do CAD work.

DRC1-
As ron9876 points out, "that is what red pencils are for". The drafter doesn't need to understand how the detail works, just draw it the way I show it - nothing more, nothing less. All this talk about being a composer is nonsense. As long as the detail is drawn (and subsequently built) the way I show it, it will behave the way it is intended to (regardless of the drafter's ability to understand it).

 

[StructuralEd]

I do it all myself.

 

[ewh]

StructuralEd,
It must be nice to not make mistakes (or at least not have anyone point them out).

 

[PMR06]

ron9876, you are correct, good engineers are hard to find. I will argue that good drafters and good drawings are even harder to find though. As an engineer who knows both CAD and hand drafting well, I know a bad drawing when I see it. I know how to do it better myself, how little effort it really takes if you're good, and therefore I can tell a tech how to do it correctly. I have respect for good techs, but no tech will ever be able to tell me that I don't know CAD, and I shouldn't tell them what or how to do it. That's power of having true control over my final product.

Now, I personally do not advocate engineers spending the majority of their time drafting, even though my current company tends to. However, I do believe that as EIT's, spending some time on the CAD and learning the basics of creating a drawing is beneficial. They are paid less, are more open to learning new technology, and are in the mindset of soaking up knowledge. Not only is CAD valuable for something as simple as calculating trib areas or grabbing dimensions, but a tremendous amount can be learned by drawings plans and details in true scale and organizing designs into a coordinated drawing set.

StructuralEIT, I think your simple question has been answered. In my opinion, you are limiting yourself. If you ever applied for a job at our firm, and didn't know any CAD, you wouldn't even get a first interview. We would use the back your resume to do some hand sketching though.

 

[ron9876]

Yes good drafters are hard to find for sure. First you have to find someone who can run the machine and then teach them what they are looking at. Over time I have developed a process that gives detailed info to be drawn by line makers. Sad but true. However, I never give up control of the final product.
I suppose that some limited time when you first start out of school may be good but would you substitute that training for starting the steep learning curve that transitions from school to the real world. I am also curious how much time a new grad would be willing to spend drawing instead of engineering. When I got out of school that would have been a big minus and I would be looking for a position that was looking for a full time engineer.

 

[Lion06]

PMR06-
Let me assure you that yuo wouldn't have my resume on any desk in your company if I knew that you required your engineers to do drafting. It seems that virtually everyone has a differing opinion on this, and I prefer to spend my time engineering, not drafting. As ron9876 points out, there are many things that new grads must learn when coming out of school and spening that time drawing instead of picking up valuable engineering experience is a waste in my opinion.
I only have 10 months of full time engineering experience and while I feel like I have learned a ton, I know there is so much more that I need to learn. I take books and papers home to read on weekends to help understand any number of things better. If I were spending my time drafting I would be so much further down on that learning curve that ron9876 references that I probably would be looking for a new job that would allow me to do more engineering.
The best example I can think of is the new 13th edition steel manual. I learned ASD in school and we used ASD at my office until last week when we switched to LRFD using the new manual. This is a big transition and if my employer wanted me to be drafting instead of getting up to speed on the ins and outs of the new steel code, I would be wondering what is wrong with my boss!

 

[jt12]

I've worked at 4 places. Two of them I've done most of my own drafting. Two of them I've done little to no drafting. The amount of drafting I've done has been dependent on several factors:
1. Company/office policy on Engineers Drafting
2. Availability of drafters to meet deadlines
3. Competency of drafters for structural drafting
4. Complexity of design in correlation with #2 & #3
5. Cost-effectiveness of engineer drafting on specific projects

 

[cedent]

I work in a small firm. We are in a market where it is hard to find good draftsmen. We are also very often working on fast-paced projects. Consequently, we do most of our own drafting.

We have one very talented designer that drafts and preps basic building layouts for the engineers as well. He also is in charge of double-checking constructability issues. He has a calibrated eyeball... and he hand drafted about half of the buildings we are renovating now.

We use college engineering interns for draftsmen when we can get them.