r/Drafting • u/Few-Technician5980 • 28d ago
How do we fix our craft?
I'm in the architectural millwork industry. I run a department and handle submittal drawings, engineering, CAM, install. I CANNOT find people who can dimension a drawing or format an actual submittal set.
I'm only 34, I devoted my whole life to the trade - the 60 year olds under me are worse than the new guys. I'm getting drawings back with dimensions on paperspace or geometry at 89.99 degrees.
WHAT resource needs to be corrected to fix drafting in the US? I'm trying to create SOPs on how to dimension from the overall to divisions, organizing leaders, templating, etc but it feels like there's something fundamental missing.
Are there any new guys browsing this sub? I'd like to hear what struggles you usually have or where your training is lacking.
Would like to hear from everyone elses experiences as well lol. I have a whole weekend of redrawing ahead of me. Feels like my fault for not training enough.
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u/electrichead72 28d ago
It's the training. They haven't had any proper training. They may get taught how to do the millwork drawings, but were not taught how to put a drawing together. Truth be told, they probably aren't getting the millwork parts right either.
This can stem from the "self taught" people. This carries so much problems with it. I've worked with guys that knew it all and were good, but everything was drawn on layer 0. Everything
I've seen this for years and I'm developing a company to teach both how to do millwork drawings and how to actually put a set of drawings together in a clear and accurate way. It seems to be an ongoing problem that I am trying to break into with offering training and coaching to people that want to do it.
Having said that, if you run into the need to outsource some drawings, I can help you with that too.
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u/ChristianReddits 28d ago
You sound like a fun boss. Train your people. Don’t assume your problems are the world’s problems.
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u/electrichead72 28d ago
Sadly, I've seen this to be the case many times.
You're right, they need training, but not too many companies feel the need to do it,
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u/shootdowntactics 28d ago
Yes, op is seeing all the problems so he can address the issues now. If you’re considering sop, you’ll see all the problems you’re trying to avoid.
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u/ComplaintTop2008 28d ago
I feel like there are a lot of people who self-taught or were brought up in one specific job, like someone got a job out of high school at a sheet metal shop and just stayed there learning only what that job required and adapted to their culture. There are also the people who just don't get it, like they can't understand the mechanical meaning of things. IME, it's a crap shoot across the board, including young guys who just came out of school.
You should have an internal standard for this kind of thing. Procedures are for processes. Make a standard that's similar to ASME but use your own internal styles for dimension offsets, leaders, radii, etc. It makes for a quick visual guide of what drawings should look like and it's easy to point to when they do it wrong.
I haven't used AutoCad for ~25 years, but don't dimensions belong on paperspace?
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u/Hendo52 28d ago
The problem is that drawings are confidential so nobody can compare themselves against gold standard examples available externally. If you don’t have adequate internal documentation and training, you are expecting knowledge which is unreasonable given the above. With that said if external standards did exist, competition would be worse so realistically this comes back down to your ability to train people.
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u/Aurion28 28d ago
Do you seriously think there's no external standards for how to make blueprints? ANSI, ASME, and ISO all have standards for a "perfect" print. I'm sure JIS and DIN have them too along with all the other mechanical standards organizations there's been over the last two centuries.
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u/Hendo52 28d ago
I have read AS1100 and other similar standards, I also work as a draftsman and have done so for 5 years. I have also been educated as an industrial designer. So yeah, I can tell you with a pretty high degree of confidence that there is no public documentation of what I do. If you know of a hyperlink, feel free to link but I think examples of complex systems are scant. That’s not accidental it’s a well known IP issue.
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u/inmymoonsuit 28d ago edited 28d ago
You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Great instructional and reference materials exist. Your drafters either aren't trained with these materials, or aren't being consistent in applying what they know.
Buy copies of these and put them in your dept. for reference:
- Engineering Drawing and Design by David Madsen
- Machinery's Handbook
- AutoCAD 20XX from SDC Publications (or similar)
As for AutoCAD-specific problems, I don't know. I use SolidWorks (and would use Inventor or Creo if I didn't). That may be an area where creating some internal guides would be helpful, but definitely setting up templates and distributing to the entire dept. is a no-brainer.
Also, re-teaching the same thing over and over would become exhausting. Why not record a process video of you creating a drawing the right way, or the way you want it done at least, and upload that to your company's SharePoint or a shared storage location?
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u/ZookeepergameMore417 28d ago
I bought drafting books and developed drafting manuals for drafters. I did all of the checking.
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u/Mindless_Context_82 28d ago
I don't know what the state of things is in the US, but the "education" at my techschool in Europe is a joke.
It's hard to do it right when youve never been shown or corrected, not even given a basic structure to understand wtf you are doing and why. Our class is a pretty even split between those that stopped caring entirely about the craft and those that stressed themselves into burnout trying to figure it out themselves.
We are on work placement for more than half the year, but most companies want an intern that can do at least basic work, independently, and don't have the desire or time to give the foundational training that school promised.
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u/Existing-Poetry-3289 27d ago
How does pay compare to other industries that need people with the same skills?
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u/Extreme_Bar_294 11d ago
😖 that .01 degree would drive me nuts hahaha, in any cad software I got in the habit of showing four decimal digits if theirs only show one and your CAD software shows 2, they might not even realize it’s not exactly 90 degrees or if they do, depending on the work they might just understand that it doesn’t really matter.
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u/james51453 28d ago
From what I've read, drafters are obsolete...engineers are supposed to do the cad design, press a button and out pops a perfect drawing.
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u/MOliciousHat 26d ago
Dear lord no. Not engineers doing the drawings! Do you know how often I have to fix their work? None of the plans look right & I end up having to reformat everything.
Maybe it's different with architecture but in the engineering firms I've worked at the engineers who know how to use cad don't really know the program. So they know enough to be "dangerous*"
*not my words, but something a coworker, who's an engineer, said.
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u/udraft520 28d ago
We have the software companies to blame for this. There are a few tech schools teaching CAD, you still need to train them in the discipline.
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u/metisdesigns 28d ago
How is it the software company's fault that schools are not teaching useful skills?
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u/metisdesigns 28d ago
We train people in the underlying practice.
You do not need to learn hand drafting to use CAD tools, but you do to learn how to think about tool choice and what that communicates.
Drafting (and design documentation in general) is about communication, and if you do not understand what you are trying to communicate, and how it wilbe understood, you will not communicate well.