RE: New at Piping Design Central: CAD

From: <Aaron>
Date: Wed Jul 28 2004 - 11:53:00 EDT

In my experience, the problem is when you need to hire contract designers. Direct hires are researched more thoroughly, and more training is provided.
There isn't time to train a contract piper on a new software platform when the job will only last a couple of months. We need him/her to jump right in and contribute. When we hire contract pipers I am fully convinced their resumes are taken at face value. If they say they can do it that's enough for management here. I have spent a good bit of my time training contractors who say they know autoplant(when the last time they used it it was still called pro-pipe), or compensating for their inexperience with the program. That is not to say they aren't competent designers; But when the actual construction drawings (isos) are automatically generated by the program it doesn't matter if the model looks impeccable and their design is good, if they don't know how to connect components in the model their time is all for naught. They have to know that you can't copy welds in the model or that an extruded solid is not the same as a pipe to autoplant etc, etc. In that situation there has to be a balance.

Regards,

Aaron Wolfe
Piping Designer
Paul Mueller Company
P.O. Box 828
Springfield, Mo 65801
(417) 575-9780
E-mail: <a href="/group/PipingDesign/post?postID=9MHnMVwjzxCy65AZ_iIz9a36WDIJb8JC62SF48HPhs-DG85rbSE0xwh8rKegZbOxxE6ydA6NrrFuWQ">awolfe@muel.com</a>

-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Wright [mailto:chrisw@skypoint.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 9:43 AM
To: Pipingdesign
Subject: Re: [PipingDesign] New at Piping Design Central: CAD

><<When it comes time for mechanical engineering students to look for
>their first professional jobs, how much does it count which
>computer-aided design system they learned in college? Maybe an employer
>uses a particular type of system and wants new engineers to know that
>system inside out. Do employers make their hiring decisions based on
the
>CAD system the job seeker knows best?>>
I think this is absolutely ass-backwards. The first thing to know is whether the new hire knows enough engineering for the job. If the guy's an incompetent engineer, all the CAD skills in the world aren't going to

do anyone any good. Once it appears the guy has enough bandwidth to do the engineering he needs to be trained in-house on some of the CAD skills
he (or she, Barbara ;-> ) needs for the particular office, like ECO procedures and standard practices. There are probably some local Code issues to be thrashed out, as well. After he knows about the job is when

he's sent to a seminar by the CAD vendor to fair up his software skills as necessary.

Hiring decisions based on CAD skills is like hiring a pilot based on how

well he runs MicroSoft Flight Simulator. It practically guarantees you an
office full of CAD monkeys instead of designers.

Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant at <a href="/group/PipingDesign/post?postID=fCkquhj4JoOc0mK-zU-znMgtf8nReZAryoqPWFmJ3wGBfEfmrg3T-__dyXnC-RDKtnQW6OeNRyXr7A">chrisw@skypoint.com</a> | this distance" (last words of Gen.

___________________________| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)

<a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw">http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw</a>

---

PipingOffice - Excel Spreadsheets for Piping Calculations <a href="http://www.pipingoffice.us/">http://www.pipingoffice.us/</a>

---

Main site: <a href="http://www.pipingdesign.com">http://www.pipingdesign.com</a>

Yahoo! Groups Links Received on Wed Jul 28 11:53:00 2004