AutoCad?

So as not to thread-jack the plasma table discussion I'm starting this one. Some of the posters stated how valuable and in demand such skills are. So hypothetically if someone was looking for a career change the heck out of a low skills life would autocad be a route? And most importantly where to, how to and how much? One last point I have a relatively free mind and will go where the work is no matter the industry. Many thanx in advance.

Disclaimer: I'm not too into the CAD world anymore, but AutoCAD was on its way out when I went to college in 2003ish. The only people really using it then were civil drafting/engineering. Since then, Architectural went to Revit and mechanical was already switching to Solid works/Inventor (now Fusion) or, on the larger scale, Catia, Pro/e Wildfire or Siemens NX.

From what I see in the industry as an outsider, most of the engineers themselves are running the software, so I'm not sure where an Associate's in drafting gets you anymore. If you're planning on doing a full bachelor's in engineering you'll get exposed to the software as a matter of course.

If you're looking for an in demand job that has a helluva high pay potential while getting to play with cool software like CAD, if recommend looking into the machining/manufacturing courses offered by the local community or tech college. Then you get to use the cool software to actually make machines move and cut things for you :)

As a point of reference, the 18 month manufacturing certificate at the local school I'm about to start teaching at takes in 18 students every 4 months. The guy running it told me that every student that wanted one has gotten a job offer for the last two years he's been there, and the pay was starting around 18/hr for most of them with as much overtime as they wanted to take on.

If you go down that path, get in good with your tooling suppliers and machine company applications engineers. After a few years of experience, become an expert at something and move onto a machinery supplier as an apps guy, it's loads of fun. At that point, take every training on every software that us vendors throw at you!

Sky's the limit on pay scale, if you can work your way up to Mill/turn (also known as multitasking machines) or 5/6 axis programming, it's not unusual to have a base salary in the 6 figure range.

CAD (any CAD program) is a tool. Knowing how a tool works is useful, but knowing​ what you're trying to do and why is much more useful​.

I use AutoCAD 50% of my time at work, but I have a VERY niche role, where ACAD has been the best tool for a long time. That is because it cross-flowed (some better, some worse) with the other types of programs already described. We're now moving towards vectorworks since it does enough of the different things we use different programs for well enough to get by with just it (mostly).

If you are a hands-on creative type, then Solidworks is a great skill to have in your resume. Some exposure and preferably proficiency in Solidworks is something I look for when I hire. I would sign up for a course at a local college since it will start a paper trail of proficiency that you can add to the resume.

A few years ago I strongarmed my department into taking the course. Since it was on their own time, I felt I should maybe lead by example. The program is kinda fun if not frustrating to learn, but I did get three of my guys up to speed and they have run with the ball and done amazing things. Me,being the pointy haired boss, never touched it after the course and still do any sketches I have to do in AutoCad...aka Etch a Scketch by my guys.

It will depend somewhat on what career path you are considering. ACAD is still the default standard for architectural engineering although Revit is definitely becoming more prevalent. I happen to have Revit open on my computer here at work right now. My common analogy is ACAD is a drawing program, Revit is a modeling program.

ACAD is definitely more user-friendly than many CAD programs, which has been its strength for years. It's a pretty easy program to learn and become reasonably proficient with. Revit is definitely a more powerful program, but also has a much steeper learning curve. When you learn Revit and get it to do your bidding, it's a wonderful program. When you are fighting with trying to get things to look right after placing them in the model and you can't figure out why because you forgot some setting, it can be very frustrating. For example, I was just helping a co-worker figure out how to get some detail lines to show up how he wants.

In some ways, the ease of ACAD made old red-line drafters obsolete - it's simply faster/easier for designers and engineers to work directly in ACAD to create their drawings. However, Revit is more specialized and to some extent, we are returning some to having engineers work with designers and drafters to create engineering documents.

Personally, I work as an electrical designer (lights, receptacles, panels, etc) and as such, much of our work is diagrammatic. Most of the time we show device locations, but actual wiring is left to the installing contractor to execute how they see fit within the NEC. For us, the modeling power of Revit is of limited usefulness.

Now this is just my experience working in the consulting engineering world. Other facets of engineering have different needs. I would love to learn Solidworks, but there is no need in my work.

If there is one area of my industry where there seems to be an opening, it would be in process piping, which while similar to other engineering fields, has some unique ways of doing things and many of the guys currently in the field are nearing retirement and right now there is a frightening lack of younger guys to take their place. ACAD-based programs are what they use the most, although there is a push towards Revit.

I have no training in any of the software platforms that have been mentioned above, but I love Tinkercad...its unbelievably intuitive. Its fairly restrictive in terms of allowing free-drawn design. But, if your design can be accomplished by arranging some basic shapes together in 3 dimensional space (cones, spheres, pyramids, etc etc), its incredible what you can create. It could serve as a nice intro to see if this is the kind of thing you want to do for a living (I think with some training I would LOVE IT!)

Here is just one design Ive created - its the design of a pattern for a bar bracket I want to cast in metal using my foundry

As an architect, I agree completely with everything said above. CAD of any kind is a tool... no matter how well you know how to use the tool, you also need to know something about the end result to be truly useful using it.

In architecture, AutoCAD is dead and Revit is where it's at. It will be a few more years until that is fully realized, but it is the truth. M/P/E engineers are lagging behind that, in part because the Revit support is not as good for them. Also, engineers tend to work more in the abstract, and also sometimes don't think past the immediate engineering requirements to see the larger impact (architects do it too, in different ways, so let's not rekindle that old friendly argument).

Building mechanical systems are VERY important to have modeled in 3D since ductwork and mechanical equipment are the major causes of coordination problems. Lighting is good too, because with accurate models, we can do a lot of pre-rendering of how spaces will look in real life. Plumbing is the least likely to benefit from 3D modeling, but it's also the easiest to do.

While it is true that many architects and engineers do their own drawing / modeling rather than relying on drafters, it's by no means predominant. I work in an office of 5 people - 4 are registered architects, 1 on his way to becoming one. We all use Revit, but 3 of us do most of it - me (the oldest, surprisingly) and the 2 younger guys. The 2 partners use it to varying degrees, but some people just don't get it or don't have the patience to learn it. The younger of my 2 bosses, who is in his early 40s, really just can't get his head around it. He prefers to stand over the junior architect's shoulder and tell him what to do.

But in reality, given the direction of the building industry, don't bother learning AutoCAD if that's the field you're inclined toward. Learn Revit and some background information in construction. If you can come to the table with a very basic understanding of how a building goes together, and a solid set of Revit skills, I could start you at $20 an hour next month.

I'm an Mechanical Engineer that designs HVAC and plumbing systems for (mostly) industrial buildings. We need drafters and designers that know at least something about buildings (or willing to learn) and can operate Revit in an efficient manner. AutoCAD has some legacy uses but very few.

Typically the drafters/technicians have associates degrees from local tech schools. Our company offers additional training and certifications. The company I work for is always looking for help.

Historically, I've done all my own drafting, but business-wise its a poor decision. Now that I have an actual drafter that knows mechanical systems, I do the engineering and he does the drafting. I'm too expensive to do drafting and that should be the case for all the professionals (engineers/architects).

In reply to Duke:

I'd agree with that. What I'm not sure of right now is if there is a way to learn Revit. I learned ACAD through a tech school night program and then ended up doing electrical design on the job. I'm not sure if that path is available today (although I haven't really researched it). Now we mostly hire from colleges.

Yes, Revit support for MEP is borderline horrific. The systems work great in a perfect world, but as you know, the world isn't perfect. For mechanical, it does offer some great coordination capabilities, but electrical and plumbing we're still struggling to find the value for the considerable extra time it takes (usually about triple) to put of project together.

Actually, plumbing is possibly the worst trade for Revit. Why? Revit likes "absolutes" when connecting things. It's likes things to be at nice, 90 degree angles. Fine for cold and hot water lines, but in general all plumbing lines are pitched to some degree. Getting Revit to connect pipes that in real life are slightly out of alignment has proven a real PITA. This also tends to apply to the piping side of mechanical systems (chilled water, for example).

Lighting is a bit of a mixed bag. I'm actually in the middle of doing that right now - laying out fixtures and using Elum Tools to calculate light levels. The problem is the accuracy is dependent on the family and how well it was created and the quality can vary a lot.

And maybe someone can explain to me why architects with 20+ years of experience still lay out ceiling grids like they've never seen a light fixture.

Ian F wrote: And maybe someone can explain to me why architects with 20+ years of experience still lay out ceiling grids like they've never seen a light fixture.

Because we hate walking into a room and seeing 2-inch slivers of ceiling tile down the sides...

My uncle, end of his career, got a job down in Florida because he's slowing been learning enough Revit to stay relevant. He's designing HVAC and Fire Systems for a commercial builder.

AutoCAD is still used super heavy in the surveying/civil world. I can't convince some of the Civils Engineers we work with to give me anything other than .dwg files for importing into GIS.

So, it sounds like we really need to flip the question back to nutherjrfan, and ask "what are you interested in doing?"

No matter what direction you want to head in, the easiest foot the door that I've seen is a local community college/tech school with an Obviously, if you go into architectural, a background working construction is a plus, manufacturing would prefer a background of mechanical things, etc, but the background isn't required to get an entry level job often. On the manufacturing side, once you're in the door somewhere, your work will be your resume, and if you can be reliable and put out quality product, the rest is just details.

SolidWorks seems more common in the mechanical engineering world, but AutoCAD doesn't seem to be entirely dead. But if you're trying to learn it yourself, get a copy of DraftSight - it's basically a free AutoCAD clone. Apparently the guys at SolidWorks got mad at AutoDesk when something in AutoCAD stopped playing nicely with SolidWorks, and released a free competing bit of software out of spite. I use DraftSight for a number of 2D projects around here, and it's good for drawing up something that would be cut on a plasma table.

In reply to WonkoTheSane:

Just getting caught up on the replies. All great and detailed. Thank you gents. I apologize for my next reply. I will go where the work is. Obviously entry level coming from a decade and a half of the service industry and three years of college would be too much now. I will have to start looking at the community college offerings as well. My career change will be made by June 2 2018. That much I know. Thank you all again.

In that case, speaking as someone who has an associates in drafting/product design, I'd recommend a manufacturing/machine operator/cam programming entry certificate..

I think with drafting you'd have to at least get an associates to get looked at with no other relevant experience, whereas you should be able to get a job with a certificate in machining. You could always pivot into something else later if it interests you more, and this should take less than 2 years to do. I think the manufacturing certificate class at the school I'll be teaching at costs around 6k all in and the credits are applicable towards an associates if you want to go further.

Of course, manufacturing has treated me very well, so I'm biased :)

I work for an engineering consulting firm. We still use AutoCAD a lot for 2d drawings, and things like electrical schematics, but Revit is being used more and more. The younger engineers often do some of their own CAD work, but they still hand over quite a bit of it to technicians - it just makes financial sense to do so.

Then there are us older guys who only learned how to use a pencil and paper and we delegate all CAD work to technicians.

If you want to play with a 3D CAD program to see if you actually like it, onshape.com and Fusion360 are free online CAD programs that are very powerful. They are not up to the levels of a professional CAD program like Solidworks, CATIA, etc but they more than adequate for 99% of the things I've needed to do. They also have excellent tutorials and user forums to help get you up to speed.

I am bumping this thread in order to ask a similar question. 

Many talked about autoCAD vs other. But I was hoping for folks to talk about their training experiences. I have shifted from product design to buildings along my career. So I want to get some dedicated training on Revit and autoCAD in particular. In my search so far the training seems sparse even from the AutoDesk certified training companies. 

So to those that are in the world of using CAD did get in company training? University? Did your company bring in a contracted trainer?

Or has everyone just taken a job that morphed into CAD work with on the job training?

Revit is only for buildings and their systems. If it's product design you're looking into, you can generally take Revit off the list.

I learned basic AutoCAD skills at a local tech school.  Unfortunately, the school no longer offers the CAD program.

For Revit, my current employer contracted instructors through AutoDesk. The first time was about 10 years ago, then about 6 or 7 years ago.  The rest has been on the job training learning from more experienced users. 

The basic program isn't terribly hard to use and understand.  It's when you get into some of the more complex areas things can get tricky and confusing.  For example, as I type this, I'm trying to figure out why my lighting level calculations aren't working for one specific room where I'm not sure what I did differently on this room vs. other rooms I've been working in.  I'm sure it's something stupid, but I'll need to go find one of our Revit gurus to help me (edit: two gurus stumped, one left).

There are a number of YouTube videos posted for how-to's, although that seems to require a level of dedication I lack.  I just want the program to work.  Intuitively. And until you've worked with it for a long time, Revit can be a frustrating program. Powerful and sometimes really helpful - but frustrating when you can't get it to do what you want and don't know why.

Edit: agree with the above. Revit is a building modeling program.  AutoDesk does offer a 3D design program more powerful than ACAD ("Inventor" if I recall correctly).

Advan046 said:

I  have shifted from product design to buildings along my career.

I pretty much learned all of my CAD proficiency on the job, but I had a professional degree in architecture, and some design, detailing, and construction experience to contribute while I was getting up to speed on the CAD work.  This was starting back in the late '80s and early '90s.  Ditto when I transitioned to ArchiCAD in the late '90s - I could still do my job while I learned the tool; I wasn't trying to gain the practical design experience and how to use a CAD system at the same time.  You'll have to decide for yourself where you fall on those relative scales.

When my current firm went to Revit Architecture, we purchased a week's worth of training from the vendor that sold us the software.  I do not know the cost, and that was probably 8 years ago so it wouldn't be relevant anyway.  That week was enough to get me able to use the program, which is a (good) paradigm shift away from how AutoCAD works.  But it takes a lot of seat time to get used to the nuances of Revit, and it is not a program you can bludgeon into doing what you want.  You need to understand how it works and what it needs to function the way you expect it to.  Fortunately, there are a number of great forums, blogs, and other online resources that can help you solve problems and gain understanding.

That being said, unless you have absolutely no access to Revit training, for an architecture career I would not spend any money learning how to use AutoCAD.  It is still used as a legacy, or in small / cheap / old-school firms, but any reasonably modern architecture firm should / will be using Revit.  If I had 2 similar candidates and one only knew AutoCAD while one only knew Revit, I would unhesitatingly pick the Revit person.

For mechanical / plumbing / electrical work, Revit is lagging a little behind architecture and structure.  AutoCAD is still used fairly heavily in MPE, but we try to stick with consultants who will work with our model in Revit.  It's only a matter of time before Revit catches up and closes AutoCAD out of that arena, too.

I have not done anything CAD related for my career since late 2010.  I've continued to draw/design stuff for my own use, but all of my software is pretty out of date at this point.

My training was initially formal, but I took that and kind of ran with it, teaching myself other CAD software as time went buy.

Probably more details than you want to know, but here's my story:

I was perusing an engineering degree, I eventually changed majors, but while in the engineering program some of my required classes were design classes.  I took a drafting course, where during the lecture, it was hands on, pencils, rulers, compasses, protractors, and graph paper.  The lab for that class was computer drafting, on AutoCAD 2000, which was 2 or 3 years old at that time, depending on when it was released.

I hated going to the computer lab, I had a computer in my room, at my house, and as a student I could buy AutoCAD 2002 LT (student version) for about the same price as one of my science books, so I bought AutoCAD, and did most of my work from my own computer.

I was fairly big into car audio at the time, and wound up designing a bunch of speaker and sub boxes for folks.  I naively shared one of my designs with a car audio shop in TX, I thought I was helping some guy out, not doing free design work for a shop, but I digress.

My continued use of AutoCAD for various projects, for years after that, got me a "consulting" job, right out of grad school.  There weren't a lot of folks hiring at the time, and drafting didn't have anything to do with my environmental science degree, but a good friend that worked for Air Gas had a customer that was starting up a boutique trailer and fab shop.  These guys had previously just done paper sketch designs, and farmed out all of the fab to other local businesses, but were in the process of vertically integrating to do it all themselves.  They were all fairly computer illiterate, let alone CAD, and my buddy told them, "hey I know a guy."

I went to work for them as a part time consultant, originally just taking all of their current products and designs that they'd been having built for years, measuring them, and drawing them in CAD.

They were sold a BobCAD suite before I came onboard, which at the time, was garbage.  I don't know if BobCAD has improved since then, it may be the best thing since sliced bread now, but my experience trying to use it, and their customer support, got me to swear it off.  Avoid it like the plague.   To avoid my frustration with BobCAD, I took to using my own, at this point, very old version of AutoCAD at home.  I was basically drawing and measuring everything on paper, going home and drawing it on AutoCAD. 

I'd take the files I drew on AutoCAD, and import them to BobCAD, since they also used BobCAM for their CNC plasma cutter.  I taught myself g-code, and got a crash corse in CNC operation from one of the Air Gas "gurus."

I knew if I was going to do more than consult for these folks, I needed a better solution than my ancient AutoCAD, that couldn't render 3D models.

I "acquired" a, um, Russian maybe?, copy of Solid Works '07, went through the tutorials, bought a couple of books, and taught myself Solid Works. It was really intuitive, especially with already having some drafting experience.  Learning weldments and assemblies were really the only "new" concepts.

After seeing their products in pretty 3D Solid Works renders that I'd drawn, they were convinced to hire me full time, and buy Solid Works.

I worked for those guys for about 3 years, soon after going to work full time, I was designing new stuff, not just measuring and drawing old stuff.  I did all of their drafting, created all of their blue prints, and ran their CNC plasma table.  I did that, all from just having only taken the one drafting class many years prior.

I sometimes miss the challenge, and seeing things I designed become a reality, but that's not where my passion is.  I'm happily making use of my degree now.

Thanks all for the response.

I will probably only do buildings from now on. So Revit is key. As I understand Revit is owned by AutoDesk. If I get the history right, AutoDesk knew AutoCAD was going to die so they used all there capital to just buy any good 3D product and architect software. They seem to market AutoCAD as the MEP component of Revit. 

My initial request for Revit to be added to our work software was met with puzzled faces. I hope they will give me two distributed licenses. So me and some other intrepid engineer can start the transition.

I will send an email to the next local training company, get some training prices, and see what my supervisor will pay for. 

Correct, Autodesk bought Revit rather than develop their own product, which is a good thing.  If you are used to AutoCAD, you'll need to forget all your shortcut keystrokes, etc, because they are all different in Revit.

AutoCAD uses the traditional unrelated 2-dimensional 3-view drawing method (plan, section, elevation) and kinda sorta makes it work in wireframe 3D if it absolutely has to.

In Revit you need to get used to modeling the building as a solid 3D entity, and then making viewports that look at the same object from the required viewpoint.  Which is awsome, because if you move a wall or door in plan it moves in elevation and section as well, automatically.  Being able to cut sections anywhere on the fly, without painstakingly drafting them, is awesome.  That and all the other myraid housekeeping details (if you move a detail from one sheet to another and renumber it, for instance, it automatically updates every reference in the set) that it takes care of behind the scenes make it much easier to use on a daily basis, once you get the hang of it.

Multiple different drawing files for each project and XREFs are gone - YAY.

Layers are gone - YAY.

Lineweights by color are gone - YAY.

There is still kind of a modelspace / paperspace thing, but it is much more intuitive and easy to use. 

Texture scaling and text size are much simplified.

I am a mechanical engineer and we almost exclusively use Revit for mechanical/electrical/plumbing unless it's a legacy project or a weird client request. Even still, if a client gives us a .dwg, it usually gets imported into Revit. Revit claims a lot of MEP functions, but like others have noted, it's lacking yet. So don't assume it's a 100% complete design tool for MEP related items.