Dead Career - Drafting

i know several guys that are prospering in a drafting field that dont even have that 2 year degree. education is not a substitute for common sense or taking pride in your work.

"Longshot" wrote in news:M7S7f.277254$084.162220@attbi_s22:

Maybe it varies from country to country. CAD Drafties here in Oz seem to be in short supply like many other construction trades.

Same here in Canada. I don't know the OP at all, and I don't know what he hopes to gain by his post. I don't know anything about him, but if the days of "dumb drafting" are over you won't see me shed a tear.

I once worked in an office of mostly community college cad jockeys, and their attitude towards their work was deplorable. The only thing they cared about were their paychecks, beer, pot, sex, and their cars. One guy handed me a supposedly finished set of plans for a house and there was an entire of corner of the house which had no means of structural support. When I asked him how he could take a set of drawings as far as he did without a clue about how it stood up, he said he couldn't figure that part out, so he just moved on.

Elsewhere, I have had the honor of working with "mere" draftsman who elevated their work to the level of a fine craft, and they taught me a lot that I still carry around today. These guys don't have to look for work. Work comes looking for them.

Sure sounds like the rantings of someone that just couldn't cut it.

I hope these "cad jockeys" aren't expected to design structural support. That's the job of the structural engineer.

We generate models in 3D. With 3D "walkthrough" software, we can visualize the model. We can even give a "published" version of the model (not the DWG) to the client with the 3D viewer and they can visualize what their plant will look like. The response was tremendous when we first started doing this.

What I'm getting at, is men and women looking to enter the drafting trades should consider honing their 3D skills. We have a hard time finding people who 3D well!

-S

There's a lot of ground between structural calculations and common sense. My point is that some fools think that because some fancy-pants, university trained guy is taking ultimate responsibility for the project, they don't have to apply common sense to their work.

I wouldn't draw anything I didn't understand, because I wouldn't have any way of knowing if I had even drawn it correctly, and I would need continual supervision. That's completely unproductive. If I had to supervise every "from point" and "to point" I might as well draw it myself. (I ended up redrawing this guys work, rather than explain it to him.)

I guess I'm luck then, I've been working as a drafter for 15 years, switched my employer 3 times and my 2nd employer begged and paid me to return.

I haven't had many good experiences with new drafters coming out of school. So far we've gone thru 6 over the last 2 years. The problems we usually have are bad work habits (tardiness, taking off sick often, and not being very motivated), also most want to argue how a job is to be done and not wanting to follow company drafting methods.

So basically in a nut shell, we won't hire a fresh drafter anymore. There are too many drafter / designers out of work willing to actually work.

I can draw 2d or 3d, but in the 15 years that I've worked with Cad I've never had to draw anything in 3D. (HVAC/Plumbing/electrical building systems)

I also hope we don't switch to 3D in the building services field, Its bad enough having to change 100,000 square foot hvac or electrical designs in 2D every time an architect changes a walls location by 3 inches.

Doesn't that get back to this? I can teach you CAD in 40 hours, I can teach you architecture in 40 years.

it depends on the person.. some people will never get it. others will pick it up just by watching someone else do it once.

I don't know about "once" but some get it faster than others, while many never do.

I agree with zion9 Drafting is dead. I am a Kentuckian as well with

2-year associate degree and I can't even buy a drafting position. Th sad part about it is that I DO enjoy drafting. :cry: :cry

move away from Kentucky. Indiana is thriving with jobs

Yeah. Sounds like Kentucky is dead. It's tough when the place you love won't support you doing the things you love. Something's gotta give. Maybe you should think more like an entrepreneur?

I have a Masters in Fine Arts. I picked up drafting working for various architectural firms, first as a typist, then doing, computer graphics and 3D modeling. I got laid off in 1999 and went to work as a consultant. I've never pretended to have any knowledge of architecture. Give me your sketches or red lines and I'll get 'em back to you, fast, accurate, in accordance with your standards, and at a reasonable price. I've got to think that architects and engineers (I've worked for both) are more particular here in Massachusetts than they are in Kentucky and nobody's ever complained about my drafting skills. I'm back at a corporate job again doing graphics and 3D and I'm having a great time learning Sketchup and Piranesi on the company dime. Aren't there any temp agencies in Kentucky? There's plenty of call for CAD monkeys around here.

Marc

We are beyond many companies in our business. Many of our clients have never seen this capability offered. Sure, mainframe systems have been avaialble for years and even PC based 3D has been available since the late 80's, but smaller engineering firms could not afford mainframes so they used PCs. PCs could not handle large models until the late 90's when large memory became affordable and CPUs got faster.

Though I since a few insults toward my drafting opinions, I'll admit that 3D work would be nice if done correctly. But the Architects that provide the drawings that we work with and hire us must first produce the 3D floor plans which has not happened yet.

I am comfortable drafting in 3D or 2D having once worked for a few years for an injection molding plant. I still think that 3D requires more keystrokes to edit over a 2D drawing in production drafting (where the client requires our designs and drawings in the quickest time)

If a person can't look at building sections to determine a pipe, duct, conduit routing they should not be in the design drafting business.

Start doing side line jobs from the Internet. There are web sites around that list employers seeking people to do CAD work (usually converting old hand tracings to CAD). The pay isn't bad but the taxes suck just remember to stick 20 percent of EVERYTHING you make in a savings account for taxes.

. I still think that 3D requires

a 3d model can be changed in one view & the other views are automatically completed. a 2d requires separate changes in multiple views & much more room for error.