Online CAD courses

[dannogilchrist]

Hi folks. I’m looking to do an online CAD course and was wondering if anyone has any real world experience of doing one. I believe there are a lot of resources on the ‘tube but would quite like the structure of an organised course. I’m proficient with a PC but haven’t used any CAD programmes before. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

 

[UNG]

How familiar are you with engineering drawing, CAD is not too difficult to use and learn if you have some engineering drawing experience.
I use CAD reasonably often and have never done any formal course other than engineering drawing back in my schooldays before computers were yet to appear, once you have mastered the basic drawing commands it is very to advance and develop you own style of drawing and command inputs

My old business partner got into CAD and taught himself from scratch with some previous drawing and draughting knowledge and we even purchased a couple of large format plotters to print off as fitted drawings for jobs we had completed, he was asked by one of our customers (local hospital trust) to advise them on going digital for all the drawing plans they had, quite a few of the engineering staff were starting a CAD course at the local college and being self taught my business partner thought it might be a good idea if he went thinking he might learn something he didn't already know aside from teaching the lecturer some different methods and a few bit he didn't know he completed all the workbooks of a 12 week course in four and a half of the three hour weekly sessions

One tip I would give you is draw full size and only scale the drawing when printing

 

[dannogilchrist]

How familiar are you with engineering drawing, CAD is not too difficult to use and learn if you have some engineering drawing experience.
I use CAD reasonably often and have never done any formal course other than engineering drawing back in my schooldays before computers were yet to appear, once you have mastered the basic drawing commands it is very to advance and develop you own style of drawing and command inputs

My old business partner got into CAD and taught himself from scratch with some previous drawing and draughting knowledge and we even purchased a couple of large format plotters to print off as fitted drawings for jobs we had completed, he was asked by one of our customers (local hospital trust) to advise them on going digital for all the drawing plans they had, quite a few of the engineering staff were starting a CAD course at the local college and being self taught my business partner thought it might be a good idea if he went thinking he might learn something he didn't already know aside from teaching the lecturer some different methods and a few bit he didn't know he completed all the workbooks of a 12 week course in four and a half of the three hour weekly sessions

One tip I would give you is draw full size and only scale the drawing when printing

Thanks for the reply- I really appreciate your thoughts.

Sadly I don’t have any experience with engineering drawing so I’m pretty much a complete newbie as far as the process is concerned.

I work for a small firm and at a request of one of our commercial clients, I’m looking to produce accurate plans/drawings of proposed mains room installations.

It seems it would be wise for me to trawl through a few YouTube clips to get a general idea of what the process involves so I can work out my own individual needs. Like I said, I am quite comfortable with tech/programs so hopefully I may be able to pick the basics up fairly quickly.

On another note, Is there a particular software package that would lean towards electrical drawings specifically?

 

[UNG]

Thanks for the reply- I really appreciate your thoughts.

Sadly I don’t have any experience with engineering drawing so I’m pretty much a complete newbie as far as the process is concerned.

I work for a small firm and at a request of one of our commercial clients, I’m looking to produce accurate plans/drawings of proposed mains room installations.

It seems it would be wise for me to trawl through a few YouTube clips to get a general idea of what the process involves so I can work out my own individual needs. Like I said, I am quite comfortable with tech/programs so hopefully I may be able to pick the basics up fairly quickly.

On another note, Is there a particular software package that would lean towards electrical drawings specifically?

In what part on Manchester are you based, if you are not to far away from me (Wigan / St Helens) may be we could meet up and I could show you some of the basics of CAD to get you started if that helps you

Commercially AutoCAD probably have the largest portion of the CAD market and seems to be the default software within the industry, if all you need is 2D drawings then AutoCAD LT is probably all you need for 3D it would be the full AutoCAD software which runs to £000's for a single licence
It can be a bit of a problem with other CAD software when it comes to the interchange of drawings as there can be some compatability issues when moving drawings between the different software and bits of drawings can be lost in the transition

 

[Spoon]

I use AutoCAD Electrical for producing schematics, if that is what you are after.
It can also produce different reports like wiring from/to, BOMs, PLC info and so on.
I went with a company called Quadra Solutions with is based in Accrington.
Not sure how much it cost as it was many years ago and the company paid for it.

 

[timbobelfast]

Hi folks. I’m looking to do an online CAD course and was wondering if anyone has any real world experience of doing one. I believe there are a lot of resources on the ‘tube but would quite like the structure of an organised course. I’m proficient with a PC but haven’t used any CAD programmes before. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

Have a look at your local college for courses.

I completed a CAD level 2 last year during covid.
It stated off classroom based then ended up running remote via Zoom.

It was challenging enough to learn this way as you do not have the same live feedback from teacher. Got there in the end though!
There are some CAD books available, also AutocadLT is a good starting point if you are purchasing a licence.

CAD is a good tool, I only notice now how bad some people are a t CAD when I am updating some existing drawings. Getting your settings right is key, ortho mode and object snaps. Those who use CAD will know what I mean!

 

[timbobelfast]

This is the book I use for reference, others are available......

Item no longer available

The item you are looking for is no longer available. <br/>

www.abebooks.co.uk

 

[UNG]

It was challenging enough to learn this way as you do not have the same live feedback from teacher. Got there in the end though!

I think the learning curve with CAD depends on how much knowledge of drawing you have before you start

There are some CAD books available, also AutocadLT is a good starting point if you are purchasing a licence.

The CAD books can be a useful resource if only for picking up the command line shortcuts as your drawing speed improves rather than looking for the pick box command
I think for most CAD applications you will only ever need a 2D drawing capability and AutoCAD LT for me is the goto for that

CAD is a good tool, I only notice now how bad some people are at CAD when I am updating some existing drawings. Getting your settings right is key, ortho mode and object snaps. Those who use CAD will know what I mean!

My old business partners pet hate was the architects who having drawn to scale on A0 / A1 paper on a board for many years when they moved over to the digital format still drew to scale in CAD, for some the problem was they couldn't get to grips with paperspace and getting the printed scale correct when it was sent to the large plotters so they worked on WYSIWYG, more often than not he scaled the drawing to full size to accomodate his custom symbol library that with many hours work I embeded into the program and modified the menu bar to add a symbols drop down

The time spent in customising the frequently used drawing templates can save a lot of time so you can start drawing that much quicker

The problem I find with CAD is I don't use it often enough to keep my drawing speed up and I find that unless I use it to draw anything once every few months the time lost getting back into it can be a bit frustrating

 

[dannogilchrist]

In what part on Manchester are you based, if you are not to far away from me (Wigan / St Helens) may be we could meet up and I could show you some of the basics of CAD to get you started if that helps you

Commercially AutoCAD probably have the largest portion of the CAD market and seems to be the default software within the industry, if all you need is 2D drawings then AutoCAD LT is probably all you need for 3D it would be the full AutoCAD software which runs to £000's for a single licence
It can be a bit of a problem with other CAD software when it comes to the interchange of drawings as there can be some compatability issues when moving drawings between the different software and bits of drawings can be lost in the transition

Thanks for your very kind offer! I plan to spend a couple of days in the office later this week and I’ll have a play around with the software in an attempt to get a feel for it. I may take you up on the offer depending on the level of my success!

 

[i=p/u]

8000 @90
3000 @ 270

Something like that I remember.. less than the basics

 

[pc1966]

The problem I find with CAD is I don't use it often enough to keep my drawing speed up and I find that unless I use it to draw anything once every few months the time lost getting back into it can be a bit frustrating

This!

I have some old and once-expensive PCB CAD software I use on occasion. It takes me a good couple of hours to get back in to the swing of things and remember all the oddities from part creation, through schematic capture, to design rules, to actually creating the PCB layout, and finally generating usable drill/Gerber plots to have it made. And these days it is for one-off or small hand assembly so I can skip the long-forgotten step to create the assembly (component X/Y/rotation) files!

But if you use stuff regularly it is less of a problem.

 

[raul7real]

you can learn Cad electrical from this playlist