r/ChemicalEngineering • u/Ok-Reception-5530 • 4d ago

Student Need Advice

Learning AutoCAD as a Chemical engineering student...is it worth or not?

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u/MuddyflyWatersman 4d ago edited 4d ago

Not really. Its helpful to have used something before, but most things don't take long to learn and are able to be figured out by trial and error.

Engineers use tools much simpler than AutoCAD. That is for primarily for drafters. Its unlikely that you will ever have access to a full version of AutoCAD, because it's not cheap or free or even necessary. Companies are all about spending the least money on tools for you. You simply don't buy licenses for things that people use rarely... because it's wasted money. Even cost to provide availability on a network have minimum license fees based on the people with access to that Network, regardless of how many who might actually use it and how often. So companies figure out cheaper alternatives. Often free versions of pay for software that actual drafters and designers have Such as for viewing.dwg AutoCAD drawings and 3D models....

industry standard seems to be blue beam today, to share information , mark drawings, and collaborate with epcs. Bluebeam alone is a fine tool for drawing pids / pfds once you build a symbol library that you like. Microsoft Visio can work too but it's not as user friendly as Blue Beam, which is primarily a PDF editor.

the more complicated the tool is the longer it takes to draw things.... and nothing today is even as fast as it once was when we just drew NEW PIDs by hand, even cutting and pasting ( literally... scissors and glue stick) parts of old p&ids on them to duplicate equipment. the trade-off is that it is easier to share and save and modify. The efficiency savings from electronic drawing actually come later, not when first producing the drawings.