Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Is there too much CAD and not enough blueprint reading?

 I'm curious! Which do you think is more important? CAD skills or blueprint reading skills? This is a very important subject for those of us involved in teaching, training, and industrial manufacturing. So far in the last five years I've seen many students come out of college level classes with cad related skills that had no idea how to read a blueprint. It seems to me like we missed the point somewhere along the way.

A very simple mechanical print
 Now like many of you, I have been on both sides of the aisle on this subject. I've had one foot stuck in academia and the other foot stuck in manufacturing, which quite frankly sometimes makes it hard to walk, but both sides really need to get a firm grasp on this as we continue to try to address the skills gaps found among students leaving education and joining the workforce.

 It is my opinion that too much time is spent teaching students CAD when what is really needed is for students to know how to read a blueprint.  I can see all the academics in the group right now with their hair standing on the back of their neck. The reality in industry is how many people really need to know how to draw in a CAD program? The vast majority of the workforce that's needed will never draw parts up in a CAD program. This includes job roles like welder, machinist, CNC operator, supervisor, quality inspector, and even a lot of management personnel will not draw in AutoCAD, Mastercam, Solidworks or any of the other CAD/CAM programs that are out there. However pretty much every single one of those job roles will need to know how to read the blue print that's put out on the shop floor. It seems to me that education has failed a lot of students by teaching them how to draw in a CAD program but not really training them on the fine art of blueprint reading and interpretation.

Getting harder to read.
 We just let the engineers handle all of that you say. That's fine. Engineers do need to know how to draw in CAD programs but they also need to know how to read blueprints.  In my experience, the vast majority of engineers in manufacturing are not doing the design work that requires drawing in CAD. They are however taking a customer’s blueprint, interpreting it and drawing the part into their companies CAD program. Blueprint reading and interpretation is still more relevant.  If you are teaching a CAD class, are you incorporating blueprint reading skills and abilities in your class? Or are you just assuming that students already know how to look at and read a blueprint?

 My argument is really quite simple. Blueprint reading is much more of a necessity and critical then CAD. Education of course embraced CAD over 20 years ago because students sucked up the technology like sponges and still do. Educators are always excited when students take an active interest in what their teaching.  I can't deny that, whether it's on a high school or college level, students have far more interest in sitting in a classroom behind a computer drawing in a CAD program then they do sitting at drafting tables looking over and studying printed out blueprints.

Assembly print
For students, designing and drawing in CAD is a lot of fun. I too would much rather create then copy. But again the reality behind industry and manufacturing is the design and drawing aspect is a relatively small percentage of the job tasks that need to be done. There is a relatively small amount of personnel needed for this task in comparison to all of the other manufacturing operations combined. When we’re talking about skills gaps, more people will need to be able to read a blueprint then will be in need of being able to draw a part in CAD. If students don’t know how to visualize the final 3-dimensional part from a drawing, either print or digital, when they come out of a class than did they really achieve what was important for their future success?

And let’s not even begin to talk about G, D & T. That’s geometric dimensioning and tolerancing for any non-manufacturing people out there reading this. If a student doesn’t know how to relate part features from one view to another view than there is no sense to try to explain parallel, perpendicularity, cylindricity, profile of a surface and other more complex part design requirements. Heck, I even get myself confused on some of these sometimes. Where do I have bonus tolerance at and if I make this to +.0003 and that to -.0001 will the part still fit when the hole is -.0002?

Again I say it all goes back to being able to read the blueprint.

Because it's cool and I'm a Geek!

8 comments:

KRJ said...

I have been concerned about this for a long time. Using CAD is not the same skill as drafting. You need to understand drafting conventions to be able to make a useful set of drawings. Unfortunately, I have meet several individuals who were CAD wizards but could not correctly place views, draw a section, dimension an object or include tolerances. Since many drafting competency exams emphasize CAD, it is possible to pass some of these and still not have a good grasp of engineering drawing.

Kirk said...

It is easy for a student to just copy a drawing from a book, and have it look like a professional drawing. I have seen it from Junior High through High School. The challenge is fully understanding what was drawn. In my experience (Technology Education teacher for 24 years)I believe that a part of the problem is that we live in a 2 dimensional world, our lives are dominated by "screen time:. Many of my students cannot visualize a 2 dimensional drawing as a 3 dimensional object. One solution would be what I call draw it and build it. I have used styrofoam to have students create a model of what they have drawn. True, it can be difficult for complex objects, but if the concept is introduced at the start with simple projects, then the students can project the concepts to more advanced products. 3D printers add another dimension to this possibility.

Terrie Rust said...

A friend's husband is a mechanical engineer working in the nuclear industry. He commented recently on how the "new kids" can't visualize something because they never had to draw it out. Reading blueprints vs CAD shouldn't be an either/or. Both skills are important but we've let the CAD take over and learning about reading schematics and blueprints slide. An important component of the engineering design process is the drawing component. Let's not let it drop because we think plunking students down in front of a computer is easier.

Terrie Rust said...

A friend's husband is a mechanical engineer working in the nuclear industry. He commented recently on how the "new kids" can't visualize something because they never had to draw it out. Reading blueprints vs CAD shouldn't be an either/or. Both skills are important but we've let the CAD take over and learning about reading schematics and blueprints slide. An important component of the engineering design process is the drawing component. Let's not let it drop because we think plunking students down in front of a computer is easier.

Anonymous said...

In the Tulsa area, the largest segment of jobs are in manufacturing. Our employers tell us that not only is blue print reading important but so are the manual drafting skills before CAD. In our certification programs, we start off our students in Blueprint reading, then drafting, then CAD.

Anonymous said...

I agree with you completely Kirk. Good teaching is explaining why things are the way they are. Good drawings should be easily read. Explaining that to your students puts the application into CAD. That way it's not just random part drawings after random part drawings.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I agree that knowing how to read blueprints is more important than operating a CAD program. With the technical level of students today, CAD skills can easily be developed. However, when students don't even know the difference between first and third angle projection it can cost companies big time, especially if no one has time to check their work. Over the years I’ve been fortunate to help some of our young engineers just out of college. One scenario I’ll share that seems common place is I’d be given drawings to check for them. Often they had no idea that their SolidWorks drawings were in first angle projection (default installation). A typical reply would be - IT installed the program, did they install the wrong version or what’s the difference between first and third angle projection anyways.
Just like any other skill, you need to have a basic understanding to grow in the discipline.
When I instruct students in CAD/drafting I work with them understand how to visualize the views with physical models. For the non visual learner having an origami box with the views labeled on it seems to help.
For the students that are there to fill a requirement, but do not really want to be there; well, I try to engage them by picking an interest of theirs (computers, trains...) and going from there with the visualization.

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