Topic: I Went to the Autodesk Experience Tour in Dallas, TX today.....

[StykFacE]

And I have pretty much came to the conclusion that me and my office is now in the "stone age" of CAD design. I work for an HVAC Mechanical Contractor, a large one at that, here in Dallas. I personally run AutoCAD MEP 2008, and the rest of the guys run AutoCAD LT 2008. After the seminars, I have made up my mind that my company now needs to hire two more full time draftsman such as myself, and let us run 100% of the CAD work. Here's why:

All 6 of our Project Managers all run LT. This means that when I'm busy on a particular job, they have to pick up their own slack the old fashioned way: insert blocks, draw lines/arcs/rectang's, etc. update arch backgrounds, create Sheets, create schedules, etc etc. And in all that, they need to follow company standards so the CAD file is exactly how we like it. However, this takes away from their #1 duty - to project manage the job.

Then, when we do a design/build job, Estimators have to calculate everything to build a price for a particular job. This can take hours to do, however with MEP this can be calculated in a single click of a button thanks to a Macro I got from this site, generating an Excel Spreadsheet BOM Report.

Not to mention, our Superintendents have to do a take-off (in other words, when the plans are complete, they count everything, note it, and send it to the fab shop for creation). This takes hours upon hours for certain jobs, not to mention all their other priorities they have to do throughout the week.

Then, our Engineer gets the biggest shaft right now, because he has to redline almost every job, and make sure everything correct.

So, I am going to propose to my company that we hire two more full timers, and let us 3 do all the CAD work. Nobody else touches anything. But, we all will be running MEP. So this will streamline everything relating to CAD. We all can focus on the design aspect, because MEP honestly does so much for you already. No more tedious editing, automatic scheduling, and BOM generators (3rd party of course), drawing standards won't get lost from extra responsibilities, on-the-fly editing for revisions/change orders, and much much more. And with the ability to save tons of labor hours for the engineer, estimators, and superintendents, this will create so much more efficiency throughout the office as a whole.

And if we don't make this change now, then we still will be held back with 2D drafting mainly from inabilities of LT, when a new design department can push so many things out, freeing up the rest of the group. This is obviously my opinion, but I think it's time for me to round up the big bosses and have a talk about what I realized today.

What do you guys think?    :kewl:

[architecture68-raff]

I think you make valid points, but just realize that Autodesk throws these parties is to make everyone think they are stuck in the stone age so they can sell more products.  The new technologies are certainly promising but I don't think they've caught on in the real world as quickly as they'd like you to believe.  For as much as you hear about Revit, MEP, and BIM in general, 90% of the firms we deal with still use little besides vanilla autocad.

[Krushert]

All 6 of our Project Managers all run LT. This means that when I'm busy on a particular job, they have to pick up their own slack the old fashioned way: insert blocks, draw lines/arcs/rectang's, etc. update arch backgrounds, create Sheets, create schedules, etc etc. And in all that, they need to follow company standards so the CAD file is exactly how we like it. However, this takes away from their #1 duty - to project manage the job.

Then, when we do a design/build job, Estimators have to calculate everything to build a price for a particular job. This can take hours to do, however with MEP this can be calculated in a single click of a button thanks to a Macro I got from this site, generating an Excel Spreadsheet BOM Report.

Not to mention, our Superintendents have to do a take-off (in other words, when the plans are complete, they count everything, note it, and send it to the fab shop for creation). This takes hours upon hours for certain jobs, not to mention all their other priorities they have to do throughout the week.

  The software is great for reducing the error prone mundane task.

Then, our Engineer gets the biggest shaft right now, because he has to redline almost every job, and make sure everything correct.

I don't care how fancy and powerful software you have, you will still have redlines,  but with the new software you reduce the amount of redlines becuase of the above mention.  The old adage applies here Garbage in garbage out.  IF the engineers or draftsman screws up and inputs the wrong data then the redline will catch it.  Look for ways to eliminate the repetitive mistakes.

So, I am going to propose to my company that we hire two more full timers, and let us 3 do all the CAD work. Nobody else touches anything. But, we all will be running MEP. So this will streamline everything relating to CAD. We all can focus on the design aspect, because MEP honestly does so much for you already. No more tedious editing, automatic scheduling, and BOM generators (3rd party of course), drawing standards won't get lost from extra responsibilities, on-the-fly editing for revisions/change orders, and much much more. And with the ability to save tons of labor hours for the engineer, estimators, and superintendents, this will create so much more efficiency throughout the office as a whole.

And if we don't make this change now, then we still will be held back with 2D drafting mainly from inabilities of LT, when a new design department can push so many things out, freeing up the rest of the group. This is obviously my opinion, but I think it's time for me to round up the big bosses and have a talk about what I realized today.   

You have to be careful here.  IMO you are better off getting the engineers to input the data into MEP and you create all the automation stuff so as it creates the BOM and schedules and what not.  It is the engineer with the brains that knows what to put in to MEP.  You just need to train them on the software.  We just canned our drafters becuase they were nothing more than electronic scribes.  Why, too much overhead for little gain.

Think it thru before you go.

Just my two cents from my experience that is all

[mjfarrell]

I'm with Krush on this one.  The smarter more capable the software is the input source must have increased knowledge or intelligence as well.  Otherwise you just get more sophisticated garbarge faster with no value added. I run into this teaching Civil 3D all the time, that the companies don't get is that the Draftsman position is the LAST guy you want entering your sophisticated design information anymore, unless he has been trained as a designer. Let them print and publish and trained seal stuff, but let the educated use the design software to do the design.

In short the smarter the hand on the mouse, in theory the more profitable your throughput becomes.

[StykFacE]

I think you make valid points, but just realize that Autodesk throws these parties is to make everyone think they are stuck in the stone age so they can sell more products.  The new technologies are certainly promising but I don't think they've caught on in the real world as quickly as they'd like you to believe.  For as much as you hear about Revit, MEP, and BIM in general, 90% of the firms we deal with still use little besides vanilla autocad.

Totally agree with you, HOWEVER, I have been running MEP myself for awhile now and have done jobs where only I touch them. Definitely more efficient when it comes to our own in-house drafting techniques. I still will have many hours of tweaking for quality control, though.

As for the other opinion, thanks. However this is why my engineer loves for me to go to these seminars - to come back with info like I have today. I already briefed him today that I want to discuss things tomorrow. And all the PM's in our company are actually Mechanical Engineering degree grads. That's our own company policy. So, they do their own designing, and he simply checks it. Plus, he does all the engineering in TRACE, which is an engineering software created by Trane, and 90% of our jobs consists of their products. So he simply exports the gbXML data and I import it into MEP, and we have engineering data complete. Plus, I definitely know enough to get a design started - I was in the field for 4 years before doing this, and he teaches me a lot.

It is a tight knit company. More like a family. I still am going to push the thought that maybe we need to sit down and think about the future of Venture Mechanical - especially with Revit. I am going to Revit training in about a month, and we have already had clients knocking at our door wondering if we do Revit jobs yet. That, however, will definitely be very tightly streamlined with my engineer because the engineering is done 1st.

Honestly I figured more people would be for this proposition. Thanks though for all the $0.02 - it still is always appreciated.

[pmvliet]

Hey Tanner,

I am surprised that you have not taken the leap before this. Here in the Detroit Metro area, all the big name mechanical contractors are using 3D Design tools for Coordination and Shop Build.  Seems all the ductwork guys are using CadDuct and the piping guys are favoring Quickpen. I worked on a job doing piping coordination and felt the same way as we were working in 2d and the Duct company was working all in a 3D model! I sort of know the feeling of feeling like you are "stone age".

I just started and stopped working on a full 3D coordination/BIM job where everything is being drawn in 3D. Steel, duct, piping, med gas, electrical conduit, fixtures, pneumatic tube etc.  I was helping out on the electrical portion. Putting in lights and then routing conduit. Then they decided not to coordinate any conduit smaller then 1" in the model due to too many collisions. They will have fun as some electrical rooms have 140-3/4" conduit coming out with no where to go because of all the other trades...

One thing that I have seen and learned is the the 3D technology and some of the advanced tools are great when they work. Having a good understanding of the software at it's limitations will help you immensely. manpower issues will change as the basic Drafter becomes replaced with a more educated Designer or preferably an Engineer...

Pieter

[StykFacE]

Hey Tanner,

I am surprised that you have not taken the leap before this. Here in the Detroit Metro area, all the big name mechanical contractors are using 3D Design tools for Coordination and Shop Build.  Seems all the ductwork guys are using CadDuct and the piping guys are favoring Quickpen. I worked on a job doing piping coordination and felt the same way as we were working in 2d and the Duct company was working all in a 3D model! I sort of know the feeling of feeling like you are "stone age".

I just started and stopped working on a full 3D coordination/BIM job where everything is being drawn in 3D. Steel, duct, piping, med gas, electrical conduit, fixtures, pneumatic tube etc.  I was helping out on the electrical portion. Putting in lights and then routing conduit. Then they decided not to coordinate any conduit smaller then 1" in the model due to too many collisions. They will have fun as some electrical rooms have 140-3/4" conduit coming out with no where to go because of all the other trades...

One thing that I have seen and learned is the the 3D technology and some of the advanced tools are great when they work. Having a good understanding of the software at it's limitations will help you immensely. manpower issues will change as the basic Drafter becomes replaced with a more educated Designer or preferably an Engineer...

Pieter

Yeah, I recently talked to my boss about it. He heard me out, and agrees that something needs to be done, and eventually will in the future. However he did say that I will have to present this in a manner that will convince the other stock holders of the company that it's worth spending the extra $50K/yr for a draftsman + $5k a seat of software + $3k of new computer equipment. Basically, how we do things right now is our "money maker" is how he put it, and until that "needs" to change, we will slowly migrate into the opinionated situation I laid out on the table when we talked. Also, he stated that we have more work than I personally can handle, but another full timer might be a bit too much for our office. I will strongly disagree though, lol - but he's the boss.

So on one of our next good size projects, he wants me to do everything as I mentioned to him, so that when the job is complete me, him, and the other important guys of the company can sit down and discuss future plans towards a full blown "design department".

So, looks good, but just nothing that's going to happen overnight.