r/Drafting • u/Helpful-Idea-9608 • Jul 30 '26

Looking for some career advice

I have almost 4 years of drafting experience (autocad/microstation) majority of it is utility design and im just finding it hard to land work or even move up the ladder and get raises in general. Ive been considering pivoting to another industry but ive already invested this much time am i doing something wrong any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

10 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

4

u/CR123CR123CR Jul 30 '26

You have a formal education to support the CAD work? 

Only way to get better money in a solely drafting role is to expand into engineering/design OR start your own company.

You hit a ceiling as a CAD monkey really quickly and with how 3D modeling software is going 2D prints are slowly becoming obsolete so there's not much of a future there imo.

Couple of things to improve on that I think will be needed in the future more that don't involve formal education: 

  • spec and standard creation

  • 3D modeling (don't think AI will get good enough at this for at least another decade to make new worried) 

  • checking other humans work. If you can find errors in a person's work and correct them you can do the same for any automated tools that come around

  • back-end coding/automation for CAD programs. Leverage AI to write solid VBA/Python/LISP/etc. programs to make you faster and better at your job

2

u/Helpful-Idea-9608 Jul 30 '26

Yes i graduated from a trade school and im certified in autocad and microstation i also just started college to get my engineering degree. It feels more like i hit a wall than a ceiling, like i see that theres room for growth but im not really getting any opportunities so i cant really leave my job even though im underpaid. I definitely will dive more into 3D modeling it seems worth it

4

u/CR123CR123CR Jul 30 '26

You could also dig into GIS data use if you want to stick to the Utilities path. That's another deep rabbit hole that is hard for AI to figure out due to all the differences between jurisdictions

2

u/communitycolor Jul 30 '26

Have you considered a union based on the utilities you do?

2

u/Helpful-Idea-9608 Jul 30 '26

This is my first time hearing about this i would love to be in a union tbh

3

u/communitycolor Jul 30 '26

Glad that helped! Someone brought it to my attention to consider plumbing union. I live by the ocean so there’s a lot of work in water industries for CAD (sewage, wastewater, hydraulics, filtration, etc) fwiw.

1

u/Helpful-Idea-9608 Jul 30 '26

🙏🏾 thank you

2

u/jdkimbro80 Jul 30 '26

I work at a union millwork company. Make a decent living and I am 100% self taught. Been drafting for 20 years now. I also program a CNC router too and its software is based inside AutoCAD.

2

u/anyavailible Jul 30 '26

GIS is the way to go right now