Once you receive the necessary education from either a good technical school or from apprenticeship under a professional designer, drafter, architect, or engineer, many people venture out to open their own drafting office. You need to make sure that you have enough training and expertise to go out on your own. Technical drawing is a highly specialized field, and if practiced poorly can injure your reputation as a professional and your personal credibility.
With science and technology the way it is today, very few people complete drawings using a drafting or drawing board, thanks to the advent of computer generated drawings using a CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) program. A well designed CAD program not only makes it easier to open an office but also makes it much less expensive because of their ease of use and accuracy. Most drafting offices can be run out of your living room or den with nothing more than a laptop or desktop computer and a professional CAD program. There are however certain other considerations before going into this type of business.
One of these would be the needed library of reference books that are not available online. This would be books like "Architectural Graphic Standards" or "ANSI Standards for Mechanical Drawing", although certain portions of both of these books are available on line on the Internet. If you are doing architecture, a good selection of plan books would be a handy resource. Not to copy from however, that would be a bad thing, but as a fresh source of ideas you can suggest to your clients.
A good electronic symbols library for your CAD would be great too. This saves time, which is precious by the way, to not have to re-draw the same thing over and over. There are several websites offering them for sale and a few free download sites also.
Another thing would be a web site presence where you can advertise your services and also display drawings at certain stages to your client from the comfort of their home. I've been using this process for at least ten years and the clients love it. They have access to their drawings any time of day or night. And instead of waiting on the mail, the changes you make to their drawings can be reviewed almost instantly after you upload them.
You might also consider talking to your local insurance agent about some sort of malpractice insurance. Better safe than sorry. And with any new businesses it is always good to hire a bookkeeper to help you keep up with your taxes.
If you want to learn to draw mechanical drawings, including survey, and architectural, go to http://maginvent.com and learn online.
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