For thousands of years, up until the 1980s, all mechanical, architectural and design drafting had to be done by hand. Blueprints or other mechanical schematics meant offices full of manual drafters hard at work at drawing tables. Engineering training had to include working with your army of technicians, and the role was an entry-level stepping stone and a career path in its own right for people with the right background.
These days, much of the grunt work in drafting is done by computers, and what would have taken a team can now be done by one skilled professional. But there’s still a huge demand for drafters; they just have to specialize in Computer Aided Design (CAD). It’s such an important background skill set that it’s offered by high schools, and through online CAD training, not just because it can lead to a career in its own right, but as a prerequisite for things like architecture training and other highly competitive career paths.
A job as a draftsperson or design technician means a career focused on technical drawing. The computer-aided aspect means that you could be working in traditional 2D, or in 3D; often, jobs require both. Sometimes you may also produce work in isometric perspective. Rather than flat blueprints that show cutaways, this allows printed schematics that show the finished appearance of the design.
While there are a wide variety of CAD software platforms out there, the undisputed world leader is Autodesk, who brought the world AutoCAD way back in 1982. Applications like AutoCAD, Inventor, and many more play a key role in creating designs for automatic CNC machining, for example; or for 3D printers, the latest innovation in material and mechanical manufacturing. A well-trained CAD professional will know how to best use all the tools and menus in the specialized software of their profession, to produce high-quality technical documents on time. They may also be required to extrapolate from real life measurements of an object or location and display that data in the form of drawings.
Accuracy and commitment to scale are some of the most important skills in CAD. This means that everything in your work must match up perfectly with the end results you want, and no errors. Even a mistake in labeling can be a disaster. For example, muddling micrometres with millimetres, or using the wrong graphical representation (including the wrong colours or cross-hatching), could lead to mismatched parts or the wrong materials in a finished product.
The training and work standards may be demanding, but becoming a skilled professional in computer-aided design is an in-demand skill for everything from architectural firms to mass-production-focused design shops. Other surprising places that CAD pops up include fashion (including pattern making) and interior design, or even seemingly old-fashioned skills like custom cabinetry.
Where will a CAD career take you?
