Many young civil engineers (in training) come to college with very little in the way of real skills. They may have taken a few classes with a focus on engineering in high school if their school offered it, and a few people will have already taken a CAD class if they were lucky (but those people probably don’t need this article). This leaves a discrepancy between people who already have used some kind of CAD program and those who are completely new to design on a computer. Those who have no idea what they are doing can feel at a major disadvantage and get frustrated with not understanding things as quickly as their peers who may already know the program. Here are a few tips on how to not only survive but thrive in a college CAD class.
*Disclaimer for the purposes of this article we will be talking about AutoCAD but this information can be applied to any program (details on how at the end)
Relax
First things first, if you found this post you are probably stressing out about a CAD class of some sort. I’m here to tell you that there is nothing to worry about. CAD may seem like a foreign world where nothing makes sense but every CAD program operates by predictable parameters that need to be learned in order to use them to your advantage when drawing, and if that still sounds daunting to you don’t worry because AutoCAD specifically can be tackled one command at a time. This means that to begin simple drawings you only need to learn a couple commands as opposed to learning the whole program right away.
CAD can’t be taught
This may seem counter-intuitive at first but the reason this article can apply to any CAD program is because drafting is a way of thinking about problems and the CAD program is just a tool to help you put your vision onto paper. Every design can be completed in multiple ways, and while some ways will be more efficient it is important to not get stuck in the box of thinking there is a correct method of doing anything. Since a teacher can’t hope to show every method of drawing even simple designs it becomes apparent that teaching CAD is almost impossible. Instead CAD class should be seen as a demonstration that shows one of many ways to solve a problem.
Don’t listen to your professor
You should of course pay attention to your professor’s lecture because that will teach you about how all of the drawing commands work, but be conscious that there are many right ways of doing something. For example if your professor wants to include an arc into their design and they choose to use the arc tool to do it. This is a correct way of placing in the arc but you could also use the fillet command on two lines or draw a circle and use the trim tool. Like I said before there are many ways of coming to a solution that works. So if one way doesn’t work for you be creative and use the commands you know to finish the design any way you know how.
Google is a resource
An AutoCAD class’s main goal is to give you the resources to be able to figure out how to find the right commands for the proper application. In class there will most likely be a base number of commands that are demonstrated, but if you hover over any button in the ribbon it will show you how the tool works. As you become more familiar with the language and uses for tools you can extrapolate to find commands that you may not know exist but you think should exist. Before you reach a point where you can guess at which commands are out there google is your best friend. Everything you need to know about a program can be found online (here is a good AutoCAD tutorial with most the basics). Oftentimes if I’m stuck doing something repetitive I’ll google for a solution because with a program such as AutoCAD that has been around since the 80’s there aren’t many questions left unasked.
For example my coworker just asked me if there was a way to group a line segment without making it a block. I knew the group tool existed but knew it created a block. I also knew that in Microstation (a different CAD program I use) there is a join tool that had different properties from the group command. Without seeing it in the top ribbon I typed in “join” and hit enter and sure enough it was the tool he needed.
Given enough experience you learn to think in terms that CAD programs use and it speeds up the design process, but even if I wasn’t there to help him, my coworker could have used google and found his answer with a bit of looking.
Don’t worry if it doesn’t click right away
Like I said at the very beginning learning CAD isn’t about learning a program necessarily; it’s about learning how to think about designing things. The most important lesson’s that could be gained from a CAD class is learning how to pick up any program and have a base to build off of. Every CAD program will have basic tools such as the line tool, circle tool, move tool, etc. These are a place to start and then learn more commands as you create more complicated designs. Knowing this I have had the ability to easily pickup Microstation, Sketchup, Inventor Professional, Fusion 360, and Civil 3D. The best part is that as you learn more programs you learn more about how to think about design, and much like languages the more you learn the easier it becomes to pick up a new language.
So don’t be afraid of your first CAD class even if you struggle at first it will give you the ability to use and learn more about the basic tools that are used to design the world we live in.
The STEM 