My Experience
AutoCADWhen AutoCAD Release 9 came out I was working at a company that purchased two stations for computer drafting, but no one in the company knew how to use the program. I spent a number of afternoons learning how to use the program with some help from my brother. My brother seemed to believe that an AutoCAD workstation would somehow eliminate the need for drafting by hand. Soon there was a college course offering certification in computer drafting and I enrolled. The course was a year long class with no text book and really no set curriculum. I was able to land a job within the first couple months of class. My interview was a simple one, I was taken to a large room with a drafting table in the center where the engineer had been doing some sketches and a computer and plotter setup in one corner. The engineer and production manager pointed to the machine and asked, “there it is, you know what to do?” I waited a moment figuring someone would turn the thing on, when no one volunteered I reached around and flipped the large toggle switch on the back of the computer. An instant response from the engineer was, “you got the job.” The Project manager finished the interview by saying, “no one who’s interviewed has been able to turn it on.”
That first job was an audio/video tape manufacturing equipment manufacturer… confusing? The easiest way to say it is that they made the equipment that manufactures audio and video tape material that’s placed inside the cassettes.
I still went to class, but after six months I stopped since it was tough working full-time and taking the full-time course.
Due to financial issues, I was looking for work and figured it would be a good time to go back and finish the AutoCAD class I had started and get my certificate. Strange enough that soon after I started going to class I got a call from the engineer I had worked with from the previous job, he needed a computer drafter to do layouts and details for a food manufacturing company that was going through a major renovation.
Luckily my teacher and I made an agreement that my experience in Drafting was better than the schooling and I was awarded my certificate after completing a test of what I had learned.
While working at the food processing plant I had met with a sub-contractor that was going to relocate some refrigerated piping within the building. The drafter of the company talked to me for awhile and a few days after they called and wanted me to come out to check out their company to see if it was place I’d like to work at.
I wound up taking the job and working there doing floor plans and construction drawings for refrigerated warehouses for seven years.
I left that job to do HVAC design drafting for a couple of years before getting a job close to home that built fog machines that were being used for special effects, humidification, and cooling.
I went from the fog machines to another refrigeration job, the ironic part is that I’m working for the drafter of the refrigeration company that came out to the food processing plant. In fact the people I enjoyed working with are now owner’s of the place I’m at now and they definitely learned what not to do from the experience of working in the previous company.
So I’ve been working with AutoCAD for over 15 years now and I’ve seen it go through some major changes. It’s got a lot easier since the old prompt driven menus for plotting and opening drawings. Xref’ing was a huge jump with Paperspace closely following afterwards. Now there are all kinds of features making drafting quicker and more efficient. I’ve had a fairly big learning gap to fill because the company I worked at was not able to upgrade their software. So I’m still learning all the features between AutoCAD versions 2001 and 2006.
posted by Jaxom at
12:30 PM
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