<p>Is taking a course in engineering graphics useful for a mechanical engineer? Do we need to use this stuff in our jobs? It's a 1 credit class and I seem to be interested in this stuff.</p>
<p>Introductory Engineering Graphics (1) Multiview projections, pictorial drawings, dimensioning, engineering standards, and working drawings.</p>
<p>You need to learn the stuff, but most people learn it by osmosis either in their classes or once they get into industry… It might be useful to have it all spelled out, though, before you have to figure it out on your own… Hey, take it and let us know in three or four years whether it was a good idea! =)</p>
<p>I just wonder if just getting a handbook/text about drafting would do the same as a course. You don’t really need a lecturer telling you how to do it. You probably learn more while practicing and doing examples and messing around with autocad if you have a book to guide you.</p>
<p>It definitely won’t hurt if you take it though.</p>
<p>I don’t imagine most people will take the initiative to actually sit down and work out all the examples from a book. Not to mention it’s also nice to have other people in the class you can talk to about the assignments if you don’t get how something was supposed to work.</p>
<p>I took at 1 credit Maple course my freshman year, and it was a huge help for me since none of my friends knew how to use anything other than the TI calculators, but I was able to simplify a lot of my engineering homeworks by doing them in Maple.</p>
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<p>For this type of a class, I can’t imagine many times where you can’t figure out from the help menu or from a handbook how to do something. The only thing that may come up is trying to picture a 3-D object in a 2-D orthographic view maybe. Everything else you don’t really have to think about much; it’s all about following standards of practice pretty much i.e. put a title box here, a scale over these, dimension lines go like this. I imagine it may not even go into 3-D modeling, especially since it’s a 1 credit course.</p>
<p>I bet you can find most of the information you’ll learn in the course in an autocad for dummies book. Anyway, as aibarr said, you’ll probably pick up most of this stuff along the way.</p>
<p>hmm… I just noticed that there was no mention of autocad or software in the OP. Any idea if this is a hand drafting course or an autocad course?</p>
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I think it’s going to be a hand drafting course. I was just wondering how much hand drafting M.E.'s do in their jobs.</p>
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<p>Approximately none. You’ll do hand sketches, but in this day and age, no hand drafting. Still, a lot of people think that if you can hand draft, then that’ll help you with drafting in general… So you’re going to learn what you need to put into AutoCAD, but you’re not going to learn the specific computer functions you need to put it in there.</p>
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I’m a solidworks guy, but I’m not that good at visualizing some stuff to model with the program. (I’m good at the specific computer functions though). I was really hoping the hand drafting course would help me with that area.</p>
<p>Yeah, it sounds like it might help. Figuring out the specific computer functions is the easy part, and the hand drafting class <em>should</em> teach you the visualization sort of stuff, or would at least give you some practice on visualizing things.</p>
<p>Take an art class this spring or during summer breaks at your local art school, Community College. I personally found that spending $300 per credit hour for art drawing to be a bit high at S engineering school. The compensating part is that his nude drawings are now worth about $200 apiece as parents. </p>
<p>My cousin in law, does biomechanical stuff, and he always does hand drawings when he does presentations. He needs to show what is important and minimize what is unimportant.</p>
<p>I really hate to draw. I’m actually not an artist. But I do love drawing with tools (ie ruler, protractor, etc) and making measurements. I’m actually quite neat with those. I guess I’m just not creative enough.</p>
<p>Well, I took Engineering Graphics 30 years ago, and unless things have changed enormously you’ve underestimated this class. Our class was 2 hours 3 times/week. We spent exactly 3 hours of that total doing nothing but lettering (drawing letters). We did do quite a bit of drawing, but it was all in connection with the problems we had to do. We spent about 90% of our time doing orthographic projections. They might show 2 views of a ellipsoid embedded in an irregular pyramid, and you had to come up with the third view. It was not an easy class and many people struggled. It did develop those thinking skills a lot.</p>
<p>While in college I also took a high school night school class in drafting, for fun, and there was zero overlap with the Engineering Graphics class.</p>
<p>I wonder how many of you current students have taken CAD type classes in HS? My kid’s friends took one and they found it easy, which makes me think it was easy for most kids, not just the talented ones. I’d love to hear about it!</p>
<p>Treetopleaf, thanks for the reply. Did you happen to use what you learned in the graphics class outside of school?</p>
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<p>If it’s a one-hour credit course, then I’m not sure it’s the same thing as what you took… Engineering Graphics as a field has changed pretty dramatically over the past thirty years. These days, if you have to do a weird series of projections of things like ellipsoids embedded in irregular pyramids, you take five minutes and do a 3D computer model of it and make the computer do the projections for you. Sure, it may be the “cheating” way out, but it results in less ripping-out-of-hair. ;)</p>
<p>My high school CAD class was pretty easy, but I had already taken a hand drafting course, so I was only learning the commands and the program. It was just applying what I had learned previously to the computer.</p>
<p>Yeah, our class was definitely pre-computer. And yes, a one hour course wouldn’t be as involved. The content might be similar, though. Maybe you could visit the bookstore and check out the text that they use?</p>
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<p>Well, we learned the best way to draw an arrow head, and I was able to show this technique to an occupational therapist who has kids draw arrows. She was amazed! (it was pretty funny).</p>
<p>We spent some time learning how to design screws (giant tables in huge books - who knew they were so involved??) and I’ve never designed a screw :)</p>
<p>More seriously, I can’t say I used all that much of what I learned in college in a direct manner, but the mental training was always helpful. I took the Engineering Graphics class as a junior with mostly freshman (due to a change of major) and I didn’t struggle in there, but many of the freshman did. I attribute this to the 2 years of engineering school I’d already had - my mind was stronger by then.</p>
<p>One other note - the “intro to engineering” HS teacher says he prefers his intro students not to have had CAD before taking his course, as they want to start drawing right away and he want them to think about the designs first.</p>
<p>Yeah. It’ll be a one credit course, but class time will take four hours per week (that is, 2 hours for 2 days each week). It’s a rip off, I know.</p>