Justify the use of CAD for the production of a range of drawing types

Hello everybody,

I am a new person here and I have that kind of question in my assignment.

To be honest with you, I got no clue.... What I know, is for what kind of drawings we can use AutoCad and for what kind of drawings we can not use AutoCad. Maybe someone here, could explain and teach me how to understand it.

Thanks,

Laurynas

Question again:

Justify the use of CAD for the production of a range of drawing types.

Acually AutoCAD is best known for its 2D drawings. Also its very easy to make Elevation views, section views, floor plans, and much more. There is integreated 3d in the progream as well. but thats another autocad guru to explain.

Basically here in the forums is that we answer individual questions on specifics aspects of the program regarding problems.

Im a designer at a large firm and i do mostly 2D layout drawings of factory's.

Also, Welcome to the forums. its great to see new people interested in the wonderful world of AutoCAD!

So basically, AutoCad is best for 2D drawings. But I didn't quite get you about 3D drawings. You can do 3D drawings but with some additional software or something?

You can draw anything in AutoCAD, so it's perfect for doing a "large range of drawing types" There are different variations of AutoCAD for Electrical, Mechanical, Plumbing, Architectural, Geographic, etc, that have specific/automatic tools for automating certain tasks, but with a bit more work, plain old AutoCAD will do the same things.

Plain AutoCAD (not AutoCAD LT) actually does a very good job with 3D as well, but there are more specialized programs that are better suited if 3D modeling is the primary task.

So what you saying is that there is no point to draw manually? Because in all cases AutoCad will do it better and easier. Am I right?

CAD is a real time saver when it comes to making revisions or when you need to make 12 copies of an object or your boss says "Nice design but can you make it as a mirror image?".

I work for a small specialty chemical manufacturer. I've done process building layouts, site plans, process piping and instrumentation diagrams, fabrication drawings, isometric piping drawings, hydro-geologic drawings, electrical schematics, 2D and 3D drawings, etc. all with plain vanilla AutoCAD. It is as versatile as you want it to be. Need greater functionality in a specific area? Then look at one of the AutoCAD vertical products like Civil 3D or MEP or Revit.

So what you saying is that there is no point to draw manually? Because in all cases AutoCad will do it better and easier.

... after you become proficient with AutoCAD, yes, but there is a learning curve during which you'll likely think to yourself that you could do it faster on a drawing board.

I did manually drafting for a while before getting into CAD so I could still do it today if I had to but CAD is certainly the way to go.

My firm (architectural designers) tend to do most of our actual design work, figuring out where each house is going to go on site, room configurations of each house, that sort of thing, by hand because different options can be explored more roughly but more quickly, CAD is then used to produce final, neater drawings. It would take you a lot longer to compare the effects of having a terrace of ten small houses against five larger detached units in the same corner of the site in CAD than by hand, but CAD would be easier and quicker to decide whether you need to push one of those units a meter this way or that or rotate it by a couple of degrees.

Nothing beats a napkin for back of the fag packet design! Perhaps a more essay style answer would be that hand-drawing is more suitable when accuracy is less of a requirement and therefore produces speed advantages.

Do you have to consider other types of drawing? Photoshop would be more appropriate for, say, colouring a drawing, than AutoCAD would, or Illustrator better at graphic design.

dJE

Nothing beats a napkin ...

A distinction needs to be made between sketching and full-on drawing board documentation equivalent to what we are now doing with CAD.

Sketching will never go aways.

Laurynas, can you fill in some more info on what you are trying to do and what you are currently doing it with? Your statement of "drawing" is pretty broad. I'd like to offer a newbies perspective but feel I don't have enough info to answer intelligently. But for sure there is a learning curve to be considered.

Thank you for your help, I found an answer and just because of you! Amazing website and amazing members.. Thanks.