Does anyone here have a career in CAD?

Hunders

Hunders

Hunders

Soldato
Joined
6 Jan 2006
Posts
3,559
Location
Plymouth
I am thinking of going to the University of Plymouth for 5 years and get a degree in Civil Engineering and Computer Aided Design.

Here is the course: http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/courses/course.asp?id=1348

I like the idea of 3D design of structures but I would be interested to know what sort of career prospects I would have if I were to graduate. Does anyone here have a career in CAD? Is the job satisfying? What are the pay rates in jobs like?

The reason why I am asking is because I want to make absolutely sure about my choice of course to study.

Thanks.
 
I suppose in terms of desk jobs its at least engineering related - but you sure you want to aim for a career of "just" CAD? Seems a little boring just sitting in front of a computer being a CAD monkey. Where I work the CAD people don't have any design input - they simply surface what they are told to. You certainly don't need a degree to learn how to use Pro/Engineer, CATIA, Solidworks, AutoCAD or any other industry standard.

Sorry if that sounds harsh!
 
i am in petrochemical as a plant layout and piping designer.
plenty of CAD involved.

I think maybe your vision is a little clouded by a lack of knowledge into the subject. this is by no means an insult.

your career would be in civil engineering. CAD is merely a tool to aid the process (and save a few head scratching calcs :) )

I think that civil engineering is a good career to have, in any field and can stretch to all sorts of industries.

There are plenty of companies that focus hard on employing bright graduates from colleges and showing them what they could do with their career. most companies will approach universities directly fro open days/work experience etc.

next week I am off to site to execute a survey on how we can get this plant to produce loads more income. change of scenery really is always good...and a bit of pasta is always nice (can you guess where it is).

been to a few other places as well.
definately better than being a CAD monkey drafting dwgs. all that takes is a short course (city and guilds) in autoCAD or microstation. or both if you can.

hope this is of some help.

oh, and I left school straight into a company didnt really know what I was getting into. lucky I still enjoy it I suppose (8 years now).
 
Civil Engineering will let you go in a variety of different directions, first up you have the utilities (Gas, Leccy, Water etc) then you have Highways, Oil Rigs and other industries like that. Will let you go anywhere pretty much and CAD is a fairly standard tool in all of these industries.

I'm in the water industry, feel free to drop me an email to my trust account if you want to know anymore info :)
 
Im a highways engineer and have been for 4yrs. I've worked for 2 local authorities and two major consultancies (Atkins and Halcrow).

What you will find is that engineers tend to do the designs and all the complicated stuff and then hand over the stuff to "cad monkeys" (yes thats what they are known as in the trade) to put on CAD and create working drawings.

If your happy doing CAD stuff day in day out then its fairly easy work as all you have to be good at is using CAD and taking whats on paper and putting it on the screen. But it does get boring from what i have heard.

There are a whole vast array of branches which fall under civil engineering but by far the biggest are Highways & Transportation and Utilities. I would say a good 80% of civil engineers work in these two fields and this is why these are the two biggest markets in civil engineering by turnover alone.

What you have to remember is CAD is just a tool and these days most engineers can use it to do what needs to be done.

Where dedicated CAD staff play a key role is in Architecture, structural engineering and mechanical engineering as in these sectors the drawings are more time consuming and far complexed.

As for the rate which CAD staff are on it varies from region to region. Up here in the North East a CAD techy starts on around £18-19,000. Top end they can earn around £24-26,000.
On the contracting side of things they can make £18-22 an hour.

In comparison to a civil engineer (working in highways), starting salary is around £19-22,000, which rises to around £26,000 within a few years. After 5yrs experience and IEng or CEng accreditation the minimum you would be looking at is around £28-32,000.
As for contracting, civil engineers can command rates of £25-40 an hour depending on experience

My advise would be to do a dedicated civil engineering degree and leave out the combined CAD as in the civil engineering degree you will have atleast 2 modules of CAD.
 
Thanks for all the replies! Its helped a lot and I will probably be back here with any more questions I might have.
 
I am actually in my 3rd year at UoP doing Civils and CAD.

There is not as much CAD as you would think involved in the course and not much tuition supplied on how to use CAD or 3ds max in great detail so i would suggest trying to get to grips with the programs before starting.

The one good thing is that you get pretty much complete freedom on what you draw for the CAD projects we get. for example im doing the Addams family house for my final project.

It is a good course as I want to go into the CAD industry but be prepared for a steep learning curve and a lot of maths.
 
Maths you say? Eeek... Maths is definately NOT my strong point. I think I am going to have to look into other areas of work that I might be interested in.
 
Any form of engineering career will involve a lot of maths.

Now if you were interested in the CAD part and want a more IT based course you could always do GIS like myself, its more focused upon geographic data / databases / programming, used for geographic analysis for things like flood risk assessment.

CAD is purely a drawing package and is becomming more of a specialised tool than an industry in itself, similar to UNIX, 20 years ago being a UNIX programmer was a career path, now its just a skill that experts will have.

www.gis.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system
 
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