Thoughts on engineers using CAD?

[BIGAL]

If your using out of the box Autocad then get the draftie to do stuff, we have a good civil add on plus around 100 lisp routines, the lisp means a couple of picks object drawn rather than say draw a box move it & rotate, v's pick line L & W done. I push the guys & gals here to tell me what they are doing over and over so we can reduce their drafting time.

Ask here theres lots of civil users who may have a routine your looking for. I know I have downloaded a few.

[SLW210]

I encourage our engineers to use AutoCAD LT to do their preliminary sketches then pass them along to me with the engineering change notice. I take all responsibility for finished drawings and any revisions. Engineers weren't hired for their drafting/CAD capabilities in the first place and I see it as a waste of the company's money paying a highly compensated chemical engineer to do CAD work.

I know of at least one company where it was a requirement that all engineers do their own drawings. Since they all had their own style and no one bothered to oversee who was doing what and how, it got so out of control that the practice was halted and they hired a CAD manager.

I second that.

[CyberAngel]

Considering that I'm pulling my hair out every week because my boss has no clue about how AutoCAD works, it would be nice if he learned it. Taking into account some of these other posts, though, I'd be pulling out the rest of my hair if I had to clean up behind him.

[Jack_O'neill]

When I was at the dinosaur curtain wall company, we had a guy there for a while who was actually pretty good at drawing stuff, but absolutely refused to use any sort of layering scheme. He drew everything on layer zero and then would change the colors and linetypes to match the cad standard. When asked about why his reply was "I don't have time to screw with all that, and it's just lines on paper, what difference does it make?"

[Tankman]

Considering that I'm pulling my hair out every week because my boss has no clue about how AutoCAD works, it would be nice if he learned it. Taking into account some of these other posts, though, I'd be pulling out the rest of my hair if I had to clean up behind him.

I know the feeling. He doesn't have to learn AutoCAD but, he should at least get a "clue about how AutoCAD works."

Dilbert-AutoCAD-Upload.JPG

[CyberAngel]

When I was at the dinosaur curtain wall company, we had a guy there for a while who was actually pretty good at drawing stuff, but absolutely refused to use any sort of layering scheme. He drew everything on layer zero and then would change the colors and linetypes to match the cad standard. When asked about why his reply was "I don't have time to screw with all that, and it's just lines on paper, what difference does it make?"

I'll let Janet Leigh say it for me....

[Jack_O'neill]

I'll let Janet Leigh say it for me....

that was pretty well my reaction as well.

[Ryder76]

I second that.

I third it - the vote carries!

For profits sake let the engineers do engineering and the drafters/designers do the CAD work. ISO compliance not withstanding - most engineers could care less about drafting and document control standards. Heaven help us!

[flem snopes]

Depends on the quality of the Cad Techs.

I'm an engineer and had a drafter that insisted on putting text in paper space over objects in model space!

[Jack_O'neill]

Depends on the quality of the Cad Techs.

I'm an engineer and had a drafter that insisted on putting text in paper space over objects in model space!

You can do that if you do it properly. Dimensions, leaders, text, all that stuff can be put in paperspace, then when plotted, no matter what the scale of the viewport, the text is always the same size. Prevents having to have a dozen different text sizes and linetype scales.