Becoming a Drafter

Before every product, building, or anything else manufactured or built is completed, drawings and models made by someone using the skills taught in drafting courses are created. Every consumer product we use and every building we live or work in started out as a design. And every design had to be represented by a drawing in order for the people who constructed the end product would know how to make it. This is true for toys, furniture, electronics, etc...

In a drafting course, you'll not only learn to draw plans on paper, You will also learn how to use CAD programs on computers. With Computer Aided Drafting programs, you can make changes and add detail to plans very quickly and with an accuracy that can't be accomplished on a drafting board. With the CAD you can also make realistic 3D images or models that make it easier to understand the drawings you create in 2D.

You also have to learn one or more of the fields that use drawings. For example, some courses specialize in residential or commercial architectural drafting. With this type of drafting course, you would also study architectural terms and the problems of design and engineering that architects and designers have to deal with. You would also learn how to do an estimate for building materials from the details that you have drawn. Not to mention how to generate renderings of the proposed finished buildings in three dimensions called a rendering.

As a survey drafter, you would learn the needed mathematics and drawing techniques to draw boundaries and topography of a piece of property. How to research deeds and plats at the courthouse and interpret the field notes of the surveyors who go out and get the raw data you need.

When learning mechanical drawing or drafting, you study the mechanics of materials, industrial products and manufacturing systems, furniture construction, structural parts of engines, Heating, venting, and air-conditioning systems, plant layout, etc.

Learn these online in a fraction of the time it would take to learn it at vocational schools. Please go to http://drafting101.com/ for more information on learning to be a drafter.

A Course in Mechanical Drafting

Taking a course in mechanical drafting is not one of the easiest endeavors. A student needs to develop a discipline over the way he or she looks at things. They also need to develop a constructive way of thinking so that the student can think in a mechanical way. Not only this but they need to be trained to be able to communicate graphically so that the intentions of an idea, process, or item are understood without question in a fabrication or machine shop.

Mathematics are a major part of the learning process. In this field of drafting, some of those math classes you took in high school will actually seem like a necessary skill to have once you start your studies. Calculations of material stresses and deflection, calculations of material density and volume, sheering, load tables, etc. are only a few of the things a student will have to learn.

The student has to get a working knowledge of the fundamental operations and conventions of mechanical drawings from lettering and calculations, to the lay out of the work and so on in order that the completed sheet or sheets of drawings reflect a well arranged and clearly executed finished drawing. In the making of working drawings, it is often very difficult for the novice because of its conventional character of the work.

In today's engineering drafting offices, the student will need to be able to work on a CAD system. CAD is short for Computer Aided Drafting. In other words, it is a drafting board in a computer. And before a CAD system is learned it is always best to learn how to draw on a drafting board. Manual drafting may be a disappearing discipline but in my mind as a teacher it is indispensable.

As I said, it isn't the easiest career to learn. But like anything you have to learn to do, once you get past the basics it can become second nature to you. It is a high paying however and good pay means a more comfortable life. With enough determination, you too can do it. I did...

My name is Tim Davis and I draw architectural and mechanical plans for a living. I also teach others how to draw house plans, site plans, mechanical and shop drawings and other types of drafting that I have been trained to do in a virtual classroom on the internet called Drafting 101 at http://drafting101.com/