The job of architectural drafters is to produce extremely detailed drawings that include structural and architectural elements for buildings such as homes, community centres, government offices, and factories. Working for architectural firms and construction companies, architectural drafters need to ensure that their drawings are meticulously crafted and extremely accurate because often the soundness of the structure depends on their thoroughness.
Architectural drafting, especially in the realm of Computer Aided Design (CAD) is an extremely rewarding career with a wealth of opportunity, but what exactly are the kinds of skills you’ll need if you’re considering taking CAD drafting training or enrolling in a CAD course? While basic essentials like computer literacy, reading comprehension, and others are no-brainers, here are the top skills that employers look for in a prospective architectural drafter.
Critical Thinking
Without a healthy dose of critical thinking and being able to step outside the box, it’ll be hard to make it in the world of architectural drafting. Since you’ll run into many roadblocks and challenges when drafting up drawings, you’ll need to know how to work around them, fix what’s broken, and come up with several options and contingency plans. In the world of drafting, just saying something is “good enough” is not an option, so you’ll have to have the necessary reasoning and critical thinking to be able to identify the problem and then conceive of a host of alternative solutions.
Focus
If you’re easily distracted, or can’t concentrate on one particular thing for too long, then architectural drafting may not be up your alley. Getting distracted or not being able to put all of your focus into your work may spell disaster if you miss something in the plans, or accidentally incorrectly draw something as a result of distraction. Being able to hold your focus and concentrate when it counts is absolutely paramount to your success as a drafting technician.
Interpersonal Skills
While it may not seem apparent at first, interpersonal skills are a very integral part of being an excellent architectural drafter. Because you’ll be communicating and collaborating with a variety of different people in your place of employment, having great listening skills and being able to communicate clearly and effectively is particularly important.
If you’re not good at realizing what people are describing to you, or what they’re communicating to you that they want, your drafts and designs are going to not only fall short of their expectations but might actually be completely different from what they were expecting. Being able to accurately understand and convey what needs to be done is integral to properly draft plans. If you’re not able to communicate effectively, how do you expect to be able to know what the client or your boss wants, and be able to translate that into your design?
By honing these top skills through enrolment in CAD training courses, you could land yourself in an exceptionally rewarding career as an in-demand architectural drafter in no time.
