Dead Career - Drafting

Makes you feel REAL SAFE when standing in a building designed by a
Drafter. ;-P

 

Tough.
A "degree" is not a union card to be stupid (one
could argue this about some from trade schools).
It's just an intoduction to learning, usually.
You have to do almost all of it on your own from there.

How large is your library on the subject? NOT the CAD,
it's just a tool, like a pencil. How much of it have you read &
understood?
Where are you going from here?

WHY?

 

You could be a detailer I suppose ....

 

More likely the job was exported to India or China for the tax
credits.
Or just died as we are now so much more productive & profitable
per Enron's accountants.

 

Dunno what to tell ya man... I started out on a drafting board, with
a 2 year degree in Mechanical Technology. I progressed from the board
to the computer, and am now titled as "senior designer". I design
parts, from engineers direction, they tell me the requirements, I
model the part(s).

We still have cad detailers, those that haven't developed the modeling
skills yet, or just don't have the designer knack. They take my
models, and detail them.

 

great.. it doesnt mean you have a mechanical aptitude or any sense at all,
it means you have good study habits & thats about it. either you cant cut it
or you live in an area where there just arent any jobs. you;d have to
relocate to figure out which it is. of course you know that because you are
so smart. oh but wait. you have no job.. perhaps you are not as smart as you
think.

 

SNIP

Ah, you are working with a teenagers mentality. "How Immature" is a
favorite amoung teenagers.

 

A very interesting thread IMHO (As a draughtsman who became an
Engineer by part time study ONC HND (Now called BTEC) and a 4 year
Part time day and evening Honours Degree in Civil Engineering (with
Advanced Structures as my option) whilst working.

Until the site agent, chippy, brick layer, plumber, roofer and others
carry around something to view 3D models on they are for Architects
and clients on schemes that warrent the investment in time and money
to produce them.

Mind you seeing the crap that 60% of Architects create in 2D do we
really want them to produce this in yet another dimension ?

Before I get flamed some of best friend are Architects and so are some
of my worst nightmears, and IMHO the Best architects are those that
has worked their way up from technicians that draw construction
details.

They don't train draughtsmen like they use too.

A good draughtsman, and those listed above create the 3D model in
their heads from the 2D details (if detailed correctly in the first
place)

Finding good draughtsmen is hard as an employer!

Many employers don't value these people enough! or pay them enough.

In the UK they don't teach TD (Technical Drawing) anymore in schools
and drawing is not covered at ONC HND level like it use to be.
University Grads may have picked up some CAD experiance from their
studies, however this is not covered as a given subject.

Nearest thing in the uk to what you guys are talking about is a city &
guilds course in AutoCAD, I have seen the wonderful 3D windmill the
guy has drawn, but he can't pass my 3Minute test and has no
understanding on how bricks are bonded, and about general
construction, thus he goes to show another prospective employer his
wonderful 3D windmill.

Rant over time to get ready for work


cadalot

 

Ditto
(As a draughtsman who became an

One of my sons is very competent in 3D AutoCAD, and was recently asked to
work on an architectural drawing, to produce renderings and walk-throughs
etc. Oops - the roof turned out to be on the same level as the ground
floor ... he ended up starting again from scratch using the engineering
drawings.
In his view, the best device for walk-thoughs is the scene developer for
Quake. Ideal. No more walking through walls. One drawback is you must
have at least one monster (real estate agent) and one weapon (clipboard).
You can shoot the real estate agent with the clipboard - but you don't
tell the client that ...

My son produces things like a 3D nautilus shell, 3D fish. Eventually he
ran into someone who was racking their brains trying to find someone who
could draw a self-extracting mining drill - large double helix device.
Things began to look up after that. He had breezed through the CAD course
in the Australian TAFE system, but was a bit daunted at the prospect of
doing a 4 year evening course in basic construction, until an employer
suggested not to bother, just get out there and do the site surveys,
measure-up, and they would find the errors ...

 

What is that 3Minute test?

 

Get the guy to produce the drawing and see how he does it and how
accurate he is. If he takes more than 3minutes forget it.

I had one guy who after 20-25 minutes I just said sorry and showed him
the door.

http://www.cadalot.co.uk/how_to_draw/3mintest.pdf

 

All you need is LINE and MOVE to pull that off....and BRAIN set to (1).

It reminds me of a job I had as a teenager delivering mail. They interviewed
me, and then gave me ten envelopes to place in alphabetical order according
to street name......in two minutes.... Go!

After 30 seconds they asked me if I wanted to double check my work....after
45 we were staring at each other somewhat uncomfortably for the rest of the
time allotted. I should have known I couldn't last at that job right there
but I was a kid.

 

How are they "bonded"?
The entire field of various types of
cements is rather complex andcontinues
to evolve.
Then there is workmanship ..... and many,
many types of "bricks".

 

Mike

A little more than LINE and MOVE……

There are two concentric squares that appear twice in the arrangement;
I would look for those to be drawn using rectangle and offset maybe,
and then copied and moved into the correct location (How did they go
about that process?). Could they see where they could save time in the
drawing process? I would watch to see how they would draw the shapes,
x,y or polar or tracking, did they draw a line from the centre figure
to the location point of each element around the centre element then
delete or did they offset from a point. How did they handle OSNAP or
did they snap at all, did they go beyond the basic figures as asked
for, (could they read and understand an basic instruction) and add the
dimensions? Did the final drawing match the information provided i.e.
was it dimensionally accurate or did it just look right.

As you say a very simple test, but I wanted to see that these guys
could produce accurate work and understood coordinates and snaps etc.
This little test really helped me weed out those people that were time
wasters and wanting to learn CAD on the job.

I had other short tests that were based upon my training material that
then showed me they had an understanding of layers and dimensioning.

Before my company let me start vetting the Agency Draughtsmen that
they were employing we had some wonderful crap produced by these
people. I can send you a drawing I use to this day to show what good
draughtsmanship isn't

 

Cliff

The modern brick size in the UK is 65mmx215mmx102.5mm (OK they are
made of clay and the size varies a little from brick to brick. And you
will see the width taken as 100, 102, 103 or evem 105 by Architects.

However it is accepted that the thickniess or mortar is 10mm thus the
building module becomes 225 x 75mm. The BDA Brick Development
Association produces tables that give the amount of bricks used in
various typical situations. i.e.

A straight wall
A wall with returns either end
A wall with a return one end
Over openinigs etc etc

It's the basic setting out of drawings / plans such that the amount of
brick cutting can be kept to a minimum and the very basic information
about the materials they are drawing and how they are placed, whatever
type or grade of mortar is being used.

Alan

 

Sir, could I have some more ?

More tests! More tests!

 

[
You are given three demos numbered respectively 1, 2, and 3. #1 and #3
contain salesmen, banquers, and advertising. #2 contains banquers. All
the banquers happen to be blinking in this case. The demos may contain
other things than those listed above.

Definition: An banquer is something that blinks whenever it detects
the presence of advertising in demo(s) other than it's own demo.

Definition: Salesmen cannot communicate; they can see all the
banquers; they can see all the demos and the numbers on them, plus
advertising that is in any of the demos other than their own demo.

Definition: Advertising is a substance invisible to the human eye, but
visible to salesmen and detectable by banquers.

Definition: A demo has a number written on it; it may contain
anything, but each demo has a definite content. A demo makes all
advertising and banquers which it contains invisible to all salesmen
which it contains. That is, salesmen cannot see anything of the
contents of their own respective demo.

Problem: The salesmen are trying to definitely answer the following
question: "Is there any advertising within my own demo?" They cannot
solve their dilemma.

You must determine, using the above information, whether or not demo
#2 contains advertising. You can definitely solve your problem with a
yes or no, and a reason for your conclusion.
]

 

U.K. sounds like a simple gig to me. Here we have half dozen brick modules
to work with.

Modular Metric
C.S.R.
Norman
etc..

Then there are imperial size windows openings while using modular metric
bricks.Try figuring that one out!


Steve

 

Don't forget Jumbo, Ontario, Norman Engineer, etc.
A nightmare.

 

The window people for standard size windows work to the old imperial
size bricks which were a different module. But if you are going to
make windows for the scheme why not use the modular size?

Blocks are based on a similar module to bricks i.e. 3 bricks high so
215mm + 10mm mortar and 440 ling with 10mm perp. Thus the cavity wall
ties can match up with courses in the inner and outer leaf.

I had toinvestigate a building (read sports complex) where the walls
seemed to move when a UK footbal was kicked againit it. On opening up
we found the the builder had not lined up the briick and block
coursinig so had bent all the wall ties into the cavity out og the way
so he could build his outer leaf.

Bring back the COW