You just got to laugh..

A neighbor popped round for a chat this morning and the the possible need for me to use some of my pictures.
He is 80 and is no way up to speed withthe www and all that goes with it.
I gave him my email address to pass on to an official in the council and after explaining that she can contact me by using my email I have written on this paper for you.
He then asks... What happens if you are out?

You just got to laugh.

 

:D

I've tried to get my mum online but she won't use e-mail as she's convinced that she will somehow buy things if she presses the wrong key. I've given up trying to explain. Last time I visited she was using the screen as a place to hang teatowels.

 

I`m sure theres a million tales like that amongst our members.
I feel a best selling book coming on...

Anyone got anymore?

 

When i was a Laboratory Colourist in the plastics production industry,i had an older man on my shift who was a Brilliant colourist who had been using his eyes and colour knowledge for about 30 yrs without the use of computers to make corrections..

With time, we changed over to using a Colour Spectrophotometer Correction Computer.
the older chap just could not get his head round this unit and he was terrified of it ,
well the man had only about 2 yrs before retirement..
I would sit him down at the unit ,show him the procedure and after about the 400th time i left him on his own to do a correction. i watched him through the glass door,he did not sit down at the computer,he stood up ,pressed a couple of keys, pressed the enter key, and run past me at the door shouting," Stick your Computer Up Your A***..

 

Ahhhh....bless

 

for more than 25 years, I used to train engineers and draughtsmen on CADD/CAM/CAE software (Computer aided design/Computer aided manufacturing/computer aided engineering)

hardest folk to teach were the older very qualified and experienced folk ... they were anti computer from day 1 and many took an 'aggressive' stance

even before the company commited to buying the software, and during CAD demonstrations, the most opposition were from the older guys ...

they always maintained that a computer would never 'take over their jobs and that they were more proficient on the old drawing board' with their chisseled pencils and 35 years of experience

some even went so far as to say that the new drawings generated on CAD 'had no personal touch'

it's sad as these old folk were on very high salaries and were afraid they would be made redundant, ....

and sadly, many were as they just refused to embrace the new technology

I always have a saying in the Engineering field .... '

If you use yesterday's technology today .... you most probably will be out of business tomorrow

 

Makes you realise how far we've come so quickly.

I remember getting our first Bakerlite Telephone (It was on a party line so you had to wait for the neighbours to stop using it before you could)

My Dad was terrified of it.

 

A few years ago (about 6?)used to be that you still had to be able to do the hand drawing on top of the cad in order to get qualified.

 

I use cad in my business, and it is hard to imagine not having it now, but it is going to kill jobs just as mini diggers have put thousand of ground worker out of work. i wonder what people will do in the future for work as the machines take over and the population grows?
The guy I work with is 63 and I am 59 and we think we had the best years, cars with no traffic, great music, wierd clothes, chose any job you wanted, mini skirts, good telly. I think we did have the best years, I am glad I am not 20 with a cr*p future in front of me.

 

We get all our drawings done by CAD.
Then we have to do a drawing onto MDF or ply to make sure we know what we are making.:D

Scale drawings are OK but useless for some things regarding Joinery.
Especially when you print the drawing and the scale is never right, it seems to lose something from drawing to printer.

Many times you can prove it wont work once you see it full size, trouble with cad is you just see a tiny screen and never the whole thing in full size.

I'm no computer expert, but I know a bit and they dont frighten me, but I dont think they are all that they are made out to be.

Fancy tricks like a three D image is fine to show a client, but basically useless for making the item.

 

Pete, I use cad for electric gate installs and I can't remember the last time something did not fit to the mm because we tested all the clearances on cad. sounds to me that your cad operator is not testing his design or not doing 3 views if you are having any problems at all.

 

the cad operator is not selecting the print scale properly, and most probably is using 'scale to fit' ... if you have a decent plotter, there should be no problems at all .... many companies use this method, especially when working with sheet metal and creating tempelate drawings that are cut using laser

3D is the bee's knees .... what you design, is what will be made .... you only ever have to design an item once, and it is stored in a library ... when needed, you insert it within seconds

as for 3D only being a pretty picture, totally untrue .... this enables you to see if there are any clashes etc, and enables you to do things such as NC machining of specific components .... In the old days, drawing offices employed an NC (numerical control) specialist who spent days plotting co-ordinates for the manufacture of the complex item .... now, tou just download the design to the NC machine and the job is done .... what appears on your design/computer screen is what is produced

when you dimension the part, the dimension is true to what has been designed (i.e. there are no errors where the draughtsman manually inputs the size)

working in 3D shows any flaws and clashes .... especially good when doing piping in installations such as petro-chem where piping can look like spagetti junction

once your library has been established, time savings are huge .... what used to take 100 hrs on a drawing board can be done in under a day, bill of materials are instant and accurate .... and CAD is a huge benefit to a company as savings are huge

many companies work in conjuction with other companies when doing a tender .... so as an example:

assume that your company does piping in the petro chem field ....

now on cad, the company who has designed the building emails the cad drawings to you .... you upload their drawings onto your system ... saving you hundreds of hours

the company that supplies the equipment such as pressure vessels emails the layout to you .... you upload their drawings with their equipment in place, and you continue with your piping layout and design

this is just a simple example, but you can see the huge cost savings and scale of accuracy achieved by using cad instead of an old fashioned drawing board

as for skill, you still need to know how to design the item, how to manufacture the item etc, so by learning on a drawing board at college is still a very good thing, but most colleges now teach their students directly on CAD

any company that still produces complex engineering design drawings on a drawing board are a 'mickey mouse' company IMHO, and are doomed to fail

even architects use CAD nowadays

 

I think we are talking vastly different types of work here.

In my case I'm dealing with timber, and measurements such as 54.2mm for example are pretty pointless when making say a window frame or cupboard.
Secondly, everything we make is a one off, or at least only half a dozen or so at the most.
Show me any building built about a 100yrs or so ago with window openings and stairwells all exactly the same, even modern ones can vary widely.

Every drawing has the note at the bottom, "do not scale from this drawing", so to get any missing dims, (lol), it involves going to the office and getting the drawing back up on the screen.
In the old days everything was set out full size on ply rods.

We still have to do this to some extent even when we get the cad drawings, the old method just jumped the cad step and went full size from the beginning.

But clients like nice pictures to look at these days.

I work for a small company producing bespoke joinery items.
We work with basic wood machines and assemble things traditionally.

Craftsman made if you like to call it that, but I just consider it normal practice.

 

judging from your post, it's a mickey mouse company (please don't take offence) :D

you don't need cad and you don't need a drawing board ... what you are designing/manufacuring can be done on the back of a pack of 30's cigarette box or on site on the back of a van with a tape measure and a band saw

when your company gets large and expands and gets global .... come speak to me and I will save you zillions

(flippin heck! ... I'm starting to sound like Dai when he stated he can make zillions if he manages a garden centre)

:D