Nature of the Beast

At eCADlt, we are consulting engineers at the core. Engineers are odd ducks to say the least. We take things apart that aren't broken. Who does that? It's like being a fireman that runs into a burning building when everyone else is running out. That's just how it is with engineers. We feel a need to fix things including things that aren't yet broken. Consulting engineers are their own sub-class though. Only about 10% of graduating engineers go into consulting. Most go to work for utility companies or large firms like Boeing, IBM, Apple, or Lockheed Martin. Consulting engineers are closer to construction workers than their engineering peers in many cases.

CAD is a key element in the life of a consulting engineer. It's the machine that produces the construction documents and that's what pays the bills. CAD standards, office templates, and company policies should be tools of the design professional. All too often, the CAD system, the templates, and the bureaucracy become the designer and the engineer is forced to be the tool. Technologies used in the company should be a tool used by the engineer to accomplish his design. When it becomes the master, we’ve gone too far. Technologies and company standards should never force an engineer to modify or compromise his design just to make it work.

We've seen plenty of CAD systems at the various firms we've worked at. Some were just terrible to try to work with. Take, for example, a firm that uses a piece of text as a switch symbol — just a large scaled up letter "S". Sure, it looks like a switch but guess what? You can't snap a circuit to a piece of text. We've also seen blocks like receptacles or disconnect switches that have the wrong insertion point. Every time you insert one into your drawing you then have to move it. Other CAD systems wipe out your running snap settings each and every time you insert a block. All of these practices and thousands more are counterproductive.

The value of innovation in CAD can be easily demonstrated mathematically. Let's say that you have a firm with (30) people working on CAD. Suppose your CAD guru says that, by investing (2) days of effort and training, a change can be made to the CAD system that will save everyone a mere (60) seconds a day in a repetitive task. Okay — that saves (30) minutes of work a day times (5) days a week times (52) weeks a year. That totals up to (7,800) minutes a year or (16.25) days of work. So, was the (2) days your CAD guru spent on the improvement worthwhile? Definitely!

Why Reinvent the Wheel?

Making innovative changes to a CAD system is what we've been doing for years. Each project we put out revealed something that could be improved. Perhaps a new detail was needed. It may have become clear that a new standard note would be useful. You can benefit from all of this refinement by purchasing eCADlt. This will also allow you to instantly benefit from future developments that can further improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your CAD staff. Our product is under constant refinement. We review it for NEC code changes as well so that it and you can both stay up with the times.