<p>how often do engineers use AutoCAD in real life?</p>
<p>and to want feilds do they(autocad) mostly involve?</p>
<p>I think alot of engineers in all fields use AutoCAD. Certainly those involved in any consultancy, this is an essential element of their work.</p>
<p>depends on the profession...some of the MEs I know use ProEngineer</p>
<p>Yeah a lot of them may use other tools. It really depends on the job. AutoCAD* seems like something good to know to land you a first job in engineering.</p>
<p>or ProEngineer, or SolidWords, or MatLAB or whatever depends on the field and tools.</p>
<p>AutoCAD being a blanket phrase for ProEngineer or Microstation or whatever (though I don't really see MATLAB being used as a CAD tool... I'll have to look into that... MATLAB kind of implies analysis to me, and CAD is just for making pretty-but-informative pictures, really...), pretty much any engineer who designs something where the plans get sent off and someone else does the building of the designed 'thing', whatever that thing may be, is going to need to have some CAD knowledge.</p>
<p>There are, I'm sure, exceptions to the rule. I don't think electrical engineers who design boards and such use CAD programs; I think they might have their own proprietary electrical engineering software for that sort of thing, but most mechanical-ish/civil-ish engineers use CAD fairly extensively in design.</p>
<p>That being said... Pretty much the only thing that I personally have to know how to do, as a designer of buildings in industry, is be able to take a red pencil and mark the heck out of the lovely drawings CADded out by our two fantastic CAD techs. (Note that we've only got five structural engineers in our office and two architects, and <em>two</em> whole CAD techs working on our drawings full-time... I interviewed with a lot of firms, and in structural engineering, this tends to be the norm, having a large bank of CAD techs doing all the drawings.)</p>
<p>Good. I hate dicking with AutoCAD.</p>
<p>SolidWorks or AutoCAD are used every day by Biomed engineers. (Once you know one package, you can pick up any of the others.) I know H (a Director of Engineering) couldn't hire a new grad unless he was proficient.</p>
<p>i am majoring in biomed eng.....</p>
<p>i am a freshman and started using autocad last week.....it can get confusing....oh man!!</p>
<p>i guess its used mostly for designing.....</p>
<p>Knowing CAD is still a good skill to know regardless. I've been interning at a traffic engineering firm and we too have two CAD technicians. However, everybody else is still expected to be able to do CAD drawings if called upon.</p>