These were the tools of my trade for the first five years I was a draftsman.
Not sure where my Ames lettering guide went.
I was good at manual drafting.
CAD killed that.
I was good at CAD too.
The market for skilled drafters has contracted severely.
28 August 2024
9 comments:
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I quit my last contract with a division of Kratos in early 2021, because the management was the dumbest I ever saw in almost 30 years as a UG designer. I thought I would be able to get another contract, but I can no longer leave the Cincy area due to health issues, and I don't take care of myself on the road. I still follow the field, and get Aviation Week. I miss working a lot but I can't bear to leave my wife for any extended period, and the Cincy areas is dead technically. Burger King pays more than tech lead UGNX designers with patents.
ReplyDeleteLeroy lettering sets and manual templates, my goodness. I still have pen and ink sets, slide rules, and manual drafting supplies in the garage.
My first CAD experience was on Cascade V, and I spent three years on the original Applicon workstation in the late 80s to early 90s. I migrated to UG after 6 months doing manual drawing updates for Kodak in 1994 and never looked back.
(feel free to delete this and my other comment if too long/boring. I'm an old man now, largely stuck in the house until my foot injury heals up sometime next year)
From my perspective as a junior greybeard, unfortunately, we just started calling people design engineers who are actually drafters, and not always skilled ones, but they have engineering degrees. In the process we excluded a bunch of skilled and experienced drafters, who I miss working with!
ReplyDeleteWe had a lot of people with advanced aerospace degrees working as drafters in a couple places thanks to the contraction of the defense industry right at the end of the cold war. They were just marking time to keep their insurance until they could retire.
DeleteI imagine there is a market in China. With basically no design or manufacturing work being done in the US, that has shut down the demand for drafting. I did programming work that ran inside AutoCAD back in the early to mid 1990s so occasionally I have recruiters send me drafting jobs. Usually they pay fairly low.
ReplyDelete-swj
You do know that people like you automating the process are part of the reason that demand went away; right?
DeleteFor sure. One of the big projects I worked on didn't eliminate a drafter from the process but it probably reduced the amount of work by at least 1/2. It automatedly generated thousands of the drawings for the whole finished project in a few hours work. Then someone would have to edit a handful of those to make additional holes in the parts for mounting wiring harnesses and stuff like that and add additional drawings for the parts bolted on. But I am sure that design automation like that made an impact, or companies woulnd't have paid for those big software projects.
Delete-swj
On some of my contracts, I was titled design engineer, others were merely CAD operator, NX designer, and so on. Yet I was tasked and paid as a 4 year engineer with the BSME, even though my only relevant degree was an associates. I had the pleasure of working with a lot of very smart engineers, young and old, but I also suffered under a number of engineers who weren't really qualified to tie their own shoelaces, also young and old. On some contracts, I couldn't wait to get to work and get into the 3D modeling, such as the GE Grand Rapids assignment. Those contracts were a blast and I hated to have them end.
ReplyDeleteGot an email this AM asking if I was interested in a lead designer position here in the NE Cincy area. I was very interested until I found out the rate: 12/hr, 40 hours pay, but working 50 hours/week(salaried). Taco Bell pays better than that, so no thanks. I might have considered it if the assignment had been for aerospace, but this was a consumer product line, and I would have to deal with grocery store managers and staff.
I have an associates in mechanical design and drafting. Kept me fed until I moved to Florida and 9/11 killed all the nearby mechanical shops. Still lots of architectural and structural jobs, but you have to deal with architects. Fuck that and fuck them; never dealing with that kind of ego just to eat again. Dumpster divers at least get to keep their pride.
DeleteI have a compass set and technical pen set from when I was studying industrial design. I never really used that skill set much.
ReplyDeleteI do do a lot of CAD support for civil engineering clients so I have the misfortune of dealing with Bentley software, which makes you appreciate AutoCAD, and the fading away of licensing dongles.