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Should Engineers have access to CAD 1

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Ussuri

Civil/Environmental
May 7, 2004
1,582
We have an ongoing discussion in my office whether Engineers should have access to AutoCAD. There are two schools of thought.

No: As Engineers we should provide sketches to a draftsperson/technician and they should develop the drawing. The Engineer should then mark up checkprints, so never has any need to a drawing package. Working with CAD is not part of the Engineers Job

Yes: As Engineers we do drawing as part of the design process, visualisation, checking geometry, conceptualising etc. A person can do more accurate sketches with CAD, and a lot quicker as well. The sketch can then be taken an worked up into a full drawing. The art /skill of the draftsperson is taking the bones and scribbles from an Engineer and turning it in to a professional document.

I personally fall into the Yes category but I would be interested to hear other members opinions.

 
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YES, Engineers should have access to AutoCAD.

We do electrical controls work and after learning to do CAD I became much more productive and my drawings were better due to increased detail.

Speaking strictly for electrical control drawings, the problem arises when you have to devote too much time adhering to overly complex CAD specs that in the end don't gain you very much.
 
I once drew a very simple vessel (a piggable line drip) on an engineering pad with straight edges and circle templates. Took a couple of days to get all the parts and pieces to fit the concept in my mind (and many discarded sketches). Took another week back and forth with the draftsman--probably 50 hours all in.

We built it and it worked fine. Then I had the idea that I could expand the concept to allow two lines to come together within the drip. I drew this one (much more complex) in AutoCAD LT in 3 hours. Sent it to the draftsman to pretty it up and the result was right the first time. Total time was about 5 hours. I can't say that every job I've done had been 1/10 the elapsed time, but it has been pretty close to that kind of productivity improvement.

You just have to be able to identify the point where you stop doing engineering and start doing drafting and hand the work off at that point.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

The harder I work, the luckier I seem
 
I normally don't have a problem with MOST engineers using AutoCad, as long as MOST stay away from solid modeling. I have worked with a lot of various engineering disciplines and most of them can not handle working with solids very well. I get flack for saying this from engineers, but it is my experience.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716
 
You might consider that according to the state engineering laws, much of the CAD work that is done must be done BY an engineer or under the engineer's direct supervision.

You might ask the same question, as to whether it's appropriate for an engineer to type out a letter or whether a secretary should always be involved.

On both questions, I've done it both ways, and the best answer depends on the work involved, and on the people involved.
 
I think an engineer should be doing engineering work. Type a rough draft and let a secretary do the letter.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716
 
You said it ctopher - the engineer should use the same tool but stop when it becomes someone else's job to finish it up. Typewriter or CAD system. Personally, I take offense with your suggestion that engineers can't handle 3D CAD. I do it all the time.
 
Thanks. I said most engineers, not all. It is also just from experience.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716
 
My vote is for Cad in the hands of Engineers. At our firm I use Cad (though I am NOT an Engineer) and so do some (though not all) the Engineers. We use it to make small/minor changes as convenient for us to make rather than taking them to a CAD drafter, this is also how we do must of our design. The point at which we take it to a CAD drafter is dependant on timing, complexity, and schedule.
As far as 3D my experience is that it is a step further than our Engineers, and myself have time to work in to any real degree. At that point is usually all in the hands of the CAD operator
 
Engineering in 2006 is insane without using all the tools - which is to say, computers. I personally will not hire an engineer who doesn't use CADD, I simply have no use for one. The same with Word and Excel; if all you can do is write a letter with a pen and I have to hire a separate person to type it, I can't justify the expense of having you around.

Remember: The Chinese ideogram for “crisis” is comprised of the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.”
-Steve
 
It helps to have something to scale and
not a sketch. I am in favor of the Engineer
using ACAD to at least rough sketch the parts
so that sometimes the not obvious mistakes
or errors is graphically illustrated. He
would not have to trim or fillet the parts
but work with the correct parameters in his
sketch.
 
The market has already decided. It's hard to find a mechanical engineering job that doesn't require five years of experience with SolidWorks or Pro/Engineer, or both.

Many companies that run high- end CAD packages employ engineers, or designers, but not both.

That's partly how I came to be in the job market. My team selected Pro/E to replace some aging junk. Partly because the designers were already sitting in front of the computers with decent graphics cards, the company dumped their engineers in order to pay for Pro. No, it was never overtly acknowledged, but the math ain't that hard.

Beware unintended consequences.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
 
The answer in my opinion is "it depends." Every company (or industry) has its own way of doing things. The ones that figure out a good balance will probably be successful and the ones that don't, may not. I work with Autocad and personally think I spend far too much time making drawings and fixing mistakes by the designers and drafting people.

-Mike
 
I think engineers should have access to AutoCAD, but should know better than to start editing a designer's drawing. The engineer should know his/her capabilities/limitations with CAD and should leave a designer's drawings alone.

When I was working as a mechanical designer in the North East, I didn't know one single engineer who didn't know how to use AutoCAD VERY well. The mechanical engineer I worked with was a super-user in AutoCAD, Mechanical Desktop & Inventor. I was still in college and could not do some of the things he could do with those programs. I advanced quickly by sharing knowledge about the programs. I had no problems with him adding things to my drawings because it was done flawlessly.

Now I'm working for a company which is based in the south. NONE of the engineers know how to use AutoCAD, but still DEMAND to have the program. I've had drawings which took WEEKS to compose properly, altered by a Civil engineer who doesn't have a clue what he's doing, but tells all of my designers, including myself, he's an expert with AutoCAD and it's so easy.

All of my drawings are password protected now. I'm in charge of the CADD Department and have ordered all of my designers to password protect their drawings as well. We each have the same password so we can work on each other's drawings or critique them.

If you're an engineer and truely don't know how to utilize AutoCAD very well, don't make remarks to designers about how AutoCAD is such an easy program to learn and use, or you used R12 and know everything about AutoCAD and how simple it is. It's very rude and you'll just look like a complete FOOL walking up to a designer and asking him/her how to make a block, make a viewport or freeze layers in a current viewport.

From my past experience, I understand not all engineers are like this, but I have been having a terrible time here so far. Perhaps my opinions are bias.
 
MechElement

I agree with you about not changing another persons drawing. If you do make a change without someones knowledge it can become a bit of a mess and no-ones knows what is correct, who has changed what and who is responsible for it.

However, I have worked in places where the draftsmen are very possesive of their drawings, and will only allow Engineers access to pdf versions. This causes me problems when I need to get a dimension from a drawing thats not called up. I have to go up to the drawing office, interrupt the draftsman and stop him working, get him to open up the drawing I want and get him to scale of a dimension. I then go back to my desk happy. It would be a lot easier if had done it myself.

On the flip side, to Engineers not understanding AutoCAD, I have worked in an office where the draftsmen did not know how to use viewports and drew everything in paperspace, scaled manually.
 
Ussuri,

Fortunately, I do not have possessive designers. I understand where you're coming from. As a group, we had decided to password protect our drawings. We also decided we will keep one version of the drawing unprotected for the engineers to use to their likings.

Another thing I do not like, is when an engineer voices he drew something up really quick, but just copies one of our drawings, overrides a few dimensions and submits the drawing. When we see the drawing, the title block reads: Drawn By: (My name or one of the designer's names) and the drawing looks terrible because the engineer didn't use the plot styles or text styles we created, exploded dimensions and scaled arrows and text for some dimensions while leaving others alone, etc. The same goes for copying one of our drawings and putting they drew it after doing the aforementioned modifications.

Regarding your dimensioning statement. Every draftsman should understand that a drawing should be completely dimensioned, but not over dimensioned. In other words, there shouldn't be a part on that drawing an engineer or draftsman cannot establish by simply adding or subtracting a couple of dimensions. Plus dimensions shouldn't appear in different views dimensioning the same part/line. I am a firm believer of this and so it was in the mechanical field. Now that I've been working in the civil field, it does not seem to hold true.
 
I see a variety of viewpoints up there. I think one reason for that variety is a wide discrepancy in who the "draftsman" is in the original question. I'm doing AutoCAD to some extent every day- and I'm a registered engineer. At a previous employer, we had a couple of AutoCAD workers who were fresh out of junior college and were doing good to lay a line on a page. There's a vast difference. And a number in between, with varying degrees of skill in layout-type work.

How exactly are you defining a "designer"? Is a designer actually designing stuff or doing layout and drafting type stuff? I ask, because typically, design work constitutes engineering. So when you make a distinction between engineers and designers, it's not clear who is included in either party, or why they would even be separate and apart in the organization.
 
JStephen,
Different subject.
thread731-126817

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716
 
Wow...that's a lot of words to say "words are used every which way by different people".
 
While thinking again about the original post I came to the conclusion that I have too much access to Autocad. Last week it was 14 hours per day thru the weekend. Next I hear they will be making me have access to Solidworks. There's not too much engineering in what I'm doing lately.

-Mike
 
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