question for all you CAD guys

[trick250r]

ok, its time for me to start thinking about what i want to do out of high school. ive always been interested in working with CAD machines. so ive been wondering what kind of jobs can you get, what kind of pay, ect.. just the basic questions about a career. thanks guys.

[400exrider707]

I just got a CAD job about a month ago, fresh out of college. CAD is definitely not the only class you should take. I've taken, inventor, autocad, pro-e, solidoworks, and I have been messing around with ansys on the side. They all have their benefits and every company using something different. I just got hired by Dielectric Laboratories which is an electrical company. I am the first mechancial engineer on staff now. Im primarily drawing in autocad and we design filters/ capacitors in single layer and multilayer and many other things. Its a pretty cool job.... I am sitting here on the internet while being paid! Pay isn't horrible, but I would like to get more, but I am just starting too so I really cant complain. As far as other jobs, with autocad your options are basically limitless. Construction is huge with autocad and architectural design. There are millions of jobs that can be done with autocad, anything from designing car wheels, to desiging furniture. Just make sure to take some 3d drawing classes too, I strongly suggest solidworks which is a very user friendly program, and PRO-E which is not, but is extremely powerful, and more than a few companies use it.

[Quad18star]

If you're interested in CAD software , maybe try getting into an engineering field of some sort . 1/4 of my time spent in college , I played around with CAD programs to design structures , buildings , check loads , etc . It can get really f'ing complicated if you don't understand the basics right from the start . I got 2 Auto CAD books sitting here in a box ... both are 1500 pages .

[bwamos]

Just to clarify.. are you talking CAD (Drafting) or CAD/CAM (Manufacturing) side of things as your interest?

[tat900]

if you go for civil you can work for surveyors or civil engineers , i work for the government drawing maps of land for them

[spent21]

touche` on the proE. i'm with a design firm in nashville, and we use microstation almost exclusively. we will be moving to 'revit'? pretty soon. it is a 3-d modeling program. however, i rarely ever draw anything! (mechanical engieer). we have 'designers' that use the programs to draw up all of our systems. i've used proE, microstation, solid works, and a few others.
i understand that almost everyone is moving to the 3d modeling stuff though.