AutoCAD 2010/2011/2012 DWG Format

[#1]

Is it just me or do other cad technicians have this problem.

Having been trained to use Autocad by going on courses (prior to this I trained as a draughtswoman working with ink pens on a drawing board .............sounds so old fashioned lol) I now find at work that everyone and his granny has autocad installed on their computer, in particular the Engineers, who supposedly need it to look at drawings, true view not good enough apparently.

The thing that bugs me is that it is so easy to cut and paste or copy someone elses work nowadays that Engineers or other members of staff with autocad installed on their PC either prepare drawings by copying or cutting and pasting, without any real understanding of how autocad drawings are prepared or decide to make changes to other drawings. They then play around with colours layers etc and either everything is drawn on layer 0, or there are hundreds of layers with one square/circle/word or dims styles always are named after themselves ie joedim..............

This results in lots of problems and lots of drawings of poor standard with line types wrong thickness/scale/layers off instead of frozen etc not to mention various weird font styles. I think its because preparing a drawing is so much more fun.

I started out my career as Architectural draughtwoman and drawings had to be precise but also look good, this does not seem to be such a big deal anymore especially where I work, or is it just Engineers that dont care what a drawing looks like as long as the content is correct???

What do other CAD techies think????

[#2]

Who is the boss?
Who sets the company standards?
Sounds like someone is asleep at the wheel.
Opportunity knocks!

[#3]

And then there is the other extreme where management puts AutoCAD on almost NONE of the engineer's workstations because, "... they don't need it".  And so work continues on as it did in the 1890's (or earlier) with everything going to the draftsmen/women.

Methinks the answer lies somewhere in the middle.  It certainly isn't at either of these extremes.  This will certainly change as BIM and C3D modelling takes hold.  It will have to for companies to survive.

Dave.

[#4]

I'm with JD on this one. Those other folks need to be educated about how to follow standards or they get priveledges revoked.

I'm also with Dave in that the role of "drafter" isn't as cut and dried now as it once was.

[#5]

I'm 100% with akunkinga here.

It has nothing to do with who's in control of standards etc etc, ENGINEERS and anyone else who don't use AC day in and day out ***k it up ALL the time. Wrong layers, same layers, change object colour not layer colour, need I go on?!!

As for having no engineers with AC. I say brilliant, drawings with get done quicker, be set out correctly. And when those same engineers want to make changes, because it's been done correclty in the first place, it gets done in half the time it would have had the engineers got anywhere near the drawing!

Engineering is done by engineers.

Drawings get done by Draughtspeople, period.

[#6]

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TrevN wrote:

Engineering is done by engineers.

Drawings get done by Draughtspeople, period.

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Word.

[#7]

We don't have draftsmen, we have designers.  They are familiar with the ins and outs of running pipe, or selecting steel, or running cable tray, as well as the software and drawing standards.  The engineers are familar with the codes and calculations, they run the numbers and certify "Yes, this works and is safe for operation".  Very few of our engineers *want* to work in AutoCAD, to do drawings.

Aside from the two groups, we also have senior designers who do nothing but QA/QC on drawings to make sure they are organized properly  I think the OP is missing that in their office.

[#8]

Lessee now. I have had to do code research, promulgate CAD standards, organize files, put together entire drawing sets, run energy analyses and mechanical design calculations, run structural calculations, design entire buildings, do space-planning and site-planning, create spreadsheets and databases related to some of these calculations and info management, taken on-site measurements, drawn as-built conditions, calculated plumbing supply and waste sizes, calculated electrical panel loads, uplift and lateral wind pressures, and even created customized GUIs. Today I draw up medical equipment supports and fall arrest systems, and run a program that analyses the deflection and allowable moment loads on our steel products.

So, given that I draft and design and so much else, what freakin' category do I fit into???

[#9]

>... what freakin' category do I fit into???

An underpaid one, if nothing else.

Dave.

[#10]

I'm afraid that the profession of draftsman/woman no longer will exist in the future, like already happened with the typist.

But:

The old big drawing board will come back. (But then it will be a big IPAD.)

Then, finally, I have my so long missed overview back, and I can again sit on a stool, where I made my first technical drawings more then 40 years ago.

Jan