Engineering and Design/Drafting

The creation of CAD blurred a line in the last century.

Prior to CAD, engineers would make drawings if they really, absolutely had no choice. The separation of drafter/designer and engineer was important for two big reasons – first, the engineer was responsible for the safety and effectiveness of the end product and needed to keep a perspective fresh from the design, and second, the designer was responsible for making sure the drawing standards were met. Once drawings were put on computers suddenly everyone thinks an engineer should be a CAD person.

Not true.

First of all this means an engineer is now expected to spend all of their professional time doing the thing they took for one semester. Secondly this means a design drafter, who studied drafting as a trade, is being overlooked as an engineer fills that seat. Nobody is being put in a position of strength.

Engineers go to school for years studying math and risk and analysis. They are trained to be able to dissect a problem using logic, mathematics, statistical theory and reference centuries of evidence. Notice that the word “drawing” is absent from this list. Engineers need to start their career drawing on the documented failures of other engineers, then as they build their own experiences they can leverage those judgements and expectations to reduce risk of failure in design, process, and manufacturing. A seasoned engineer has made some mistakes, an experienced engineer has made more and has learned to listen to others.

It is this listening part that becomes more powerful and critical to an experienced engineer. A new engineer comes in thinking they can do anything, a seasoned engineer will coach that new engineer around some common pitfalls. The experienced engineer will take all the engineers out to the floor and ask the experts – the crew that does the work – what failures they have experienced. All this information needs to be used to analyze risk and drive the questions the engineer needs to answer.

The engineer has spent four to six years studying in a heavily disciplined curriculum and comes away with loads of analysis skills. The engineer needs to be heads up, watching all the moving parts of a project, asking critical questions, analyzing possible failure modes, and coordinating the project results.

The engineer is responsible for managing risk.

Drafters on the board (yes, with a pencil) spend years studying standards and common applications of commodity features. Things like fasteners, bend radius, machining needs (don’t make a true sharp corner!). Things like GD&T and how it controls a part. Things like using a locating pin or shoulder to mate two parts, then cinch them together with a fastener – never use a fastener to locate two parts. Understanding fits and tolerances and how they interact to make parts assemble right everytime.

CAD designers have to go further – now there’s a model in 3D space that needs to be constrained and managed. Automated features might be helpful – they might be hinderance, the designer needs to know which path to choose. CAD designers are very much individual contributors – they are heads down, focused on shapes and fits and tolerances and listening to the guidance of the engineer.

The designer will spend three to six years honing their skills in both solid modeling and applying the dimensional standards and studying machining methods to become a good designer. This same time is when an engineer is studying stress and calculus and statistical analysis.

The Design Drafter is responsible for managing the design.

The engineer and designer make a powerful pair – they can often deliver as a pair more than they can as two individual contributors. A team of one engineer with several designers can be stunningly effective on large projects – giving the designers the latitude and empowering them to make most of the initial design decisions frees the engineer to focus on risk and critical decisions. Having the engineer monitoring the overall result gives them the ability to grow the team – and a seasoned, experienced team like this is invaluable to the company. Relying on an engineer to be both engineer AND designer cripples the ability of the engineer to perform and puts the responsibility of creating technical drawings on someone who did not spend years developing that skillset. Here’s a simple breakdown: