<p>What is more important for engineering, specifically mechanical engineering?</p>
<p>For Engineering, either would work well I guess. But if your focus is on Mechanical Engineering, then I’d definitely advise CADD. Programming would be of more use in EE, I assume. CADD though is useful for designs and whatnot that you would do in Mech Engineering.</p>
<p>Now, I’m not an engineer, but from what I’ve heard/experience, that’s what I figure.</p>
<p>thanks nEdgaR! Thats what I thought, I just wanted to make sure. Will any actual mechanical engineers answer please? :)</p>
<p>I would completely disagree with nEdgaR. As an ME myself, it is useful to know CAD, or at least how it works, but it is indispensable to know programming in any engineering field today. I spend a lot more time at work programming macros to get ANSYS to do what I want than I do making CAD models. Most companies have dedicated CAD modelers who have essentially a two-year technical degree. The job of the ME’s is to use those models in engineering analyses, which usually involves programming. Any ME program you take will teach you CAD, because it IS important to know so that you know what you are dealing with, but in your career, more likely than not you will use programming more often than doing actual CAD.</p>
<p>Programming is something that you’ll likely pick up along the way, for your classes. CAD is something that nobody will teach you unless you make a specific effort to learn CAD. You’ll end up needing both. I’d go for the CAD class.</p>
<p>Myself, I’m not an ME, but I am a structural engineer, which means I do the same sort of design-y stuff as MEs do.</p>
<p>I taught myself AutoCAD over a period of many years (when I first started working, in 1986, it was still all manual drafting). I wish I’d had classes in it! I have taken a couple of continuing ed classes at a local university that have helped. There are SO many shortcuts and tricks to learn that will save you a ton of time. Kind of like the cheats in a video game.</p>
<p>AutoCAD and Maya is probably way more important for engineering.</p>
<p>CADD is probably more important if you’re working a traditional ME job that requires it. Many MEs get placed into other engineering areas. One of the MEs I work with, who is actually a systems engineer now, only took CS in college for his benefit. We develop software for naval combat systems and understanding aspects of programming has helped him tremendously.</p>
<p>I would say go for CAD.</p>
<p>Programming is probably important, but you just can’t learn enough about it in one semester to make taking a course in it worthwhile. You would need several courses to be able to bring something useful to the table at a job.</p>
<p>I imagine CAD is more restricted in scope than “programming” in the general sense, and as such, you could probably get more in-depth knowledge about it than your average Joe. Also, I imagine fewer people know something about CAD than do about programming. You would be getting more bang for your buck because it’s a less competitive skill, and you’d be able to cover it better.</p>
<p>The other thing about learning CAD is that it also teaches you how to visualize things, how to look at drawings, what engineering drawings look like… It’ll give you some familiarities that you would only otherwise get from being in the field for a little while.</p>
<p>Programming, particularly in Excel and MATLAB, are going to be useful for the entirety of your engineering career, and in far more applications than CAD will be found in. This doesn’t mean that you need to take classes in how to program as an engineer, but you should definitely use the programming tools offered in your classes and become familiar with them.</p>
<p>Oh, I agree that you should pay attention and be good with computer applications like excel, matlab, etc. I’m just saying that in my opinion, the opportunity cost of taking a real programming class is probably too high to justify doing it. Not because it’s not useful, it would just require more of an investment than a 1-semester course.</p>
<p>I am going to restate this. Any major ME program that I have ever heard of will REQUIRE a CAD class as part of the curriculum, and a basic programming class as well. You really don’t need to take any classes beyond those, to be honest.</p>
<p>And a “traditional” ME job does not sit around doing CAD all day as some people here have suggested. Us ME’s consider it an insult most of the time when you are expected to just be a CAD jockey all day instead of doing any real engineering work. There are several main pillars on which the discipline of ME is based. The only one of these that really requires you to know a ton of CAD is if you do mechanics of materials. In any of the other ones, such as thermofluids and controls, CAD isn’t that useful. However, in ALL of these disciplines, you will need programming. Be it simple scripting or hardcore programming, you will need to be proficient in some kind of programming.</p>
<p>But back to where I started, most if not all ME programs these days require a class in both CAD and programming, and if they don’t, they are doing you a disservice since both are such cornerstones of industry these days.</p>
<p>boneh3ad, so if I wanted to work with thermofluids (which I do), then you think that I should take a programming class rather than a CAD course in high school?</p>
<p>Yes. Programming will be more useful. You’re going to have programming, in some way, shape, or form, in most of your upper-division courses, several of your lower-division courses, and a LOT of your graduate courses, if you go to grad school. You can’t avoid learning programming.</p>
<p>You can, however, avoid learning spatial orientation, and a lot of engineers I know really don’t know how to sketch out what they’re thinking, which is something you HAVE to be able to do… particularly around clients. It’s a skill that, unlike programming, is not going to be taught in any other courses, really. Bon3head, you’re lucky in that UIUC and comparable programs will require you to be proficient in CAD, but a lot of smaller programs concentrate far more on the theoretical and completely neglect the practical, figuring that you’ll pick it up later. Often, we did, but CAD, drafting, and general design drawing was something that all of us who went through Rice civ when I was there still kind of feel like we’re lacking in.</p>
<p>It’s just something to consider.</p>
<p>Yeah, that makes sense, aibarr.</p>
<p>Me personally, I am also a thermofluids guy, so much to the point that I am headed to get my Ph.D. in that are starting in about a a month. CAD is only useful for me for a couple things. For one, it does give you a better spatial idea of what is going on spatially and how to represent those things, as aibarr said, and that is definitely invaluable in industry and in life in general. Although I suppose that it is possible to pick up similar spatial intuition in other classes (like somehow I did it in calculus, go figure), that is very dependent on what kind of learner you are, whereas learning CAD will always teach you that.</p>
<p>The only other thing that CAD is useful for in fluids is that if used correctly, it can be used to make models for ICEM/Fluent/CFX/Hydra/[insert cfd package name here] which can then be used for cfd analysis. Still, that is a fairly minor advantage because as a thermofluids engineer, you will most likely not generate those parts on your own very often, and will more than likely get them from a more mechanically oriented engineer, who would have got them from some CAD monkey. Really, it is just helpful to know how it all works so that you know how to tweak things and just for general knowledge of how the process works.</p>
<p>Programming is very useful for a thermofluids engineer, though, because so much of thermofluids is done using estimation and brute force computational methods that not knowing how to do at least basic programming would be a serious handicap, and not knowing how to do fairly robust programming is even a slight disadvantage.</p>
<p>If I had to pick between the two, I would definitely focus more on programming, but without neglecting the CAD. If you can only take one class, I would suggest taking programming and then trying to teach yourself the basics of CAD (Unigraphics or ProEngineer in my opinion) using online tutorials or books. As a thermofluids guy, you won’t need an extreme in depth knowledge of CAD like you would programming, but having a little bit would be helpful.</p>
<p>Sorry that some of this was redundant, but it needed to be said after some of the opinions given higher up in here.</p>
<p>like someone mentioned, what you can learn in the timeframe of a semester or a bit more is limited for programming, learning how to work with autocad or solidworks will likely amount to something more.</p>
<p>I’m not in mechanical engineering but i heard somewhere that as a M.E. you should be able to either use CAD or be a great drawer.</p>
<p>I know one guy who chose the path of mechanical engineering solely because he wants to do engineering drawings…</p>
<p>I swear, does anyone listen to the kid who posted this? He wants to be an ME, but doesn’t want to do mechanics related stuff. He wants to do thermofluids. There is very little use for CAD within thermofluids. This isn’t coming from someone who “heard somewhere” or knows “this guy” who is an ME, this is coming from a person, me, who IS an ME and who IS focused on thermofluids. I have experience in the industry and in academia, and in both cases, programming is more important and CAD is of secondary importance.</p>
<p>wow boneh3ad, Ph.D studying thermofluids? That sounds pretty intense haha. Thank u so much for the info! I will make sure to take the AP Comp Sci class at my school :D. And one final thing, how is the thermofluids field job outlook (as in industry, not academia)? I’ve heard that since the Big Three are in really bad shape that the outlook for thermofluids isn’t looking too great, since u seem to be an expert, whats ur take on the job outlook in the future (like 5 years from now).</p>
<p>Well the Big Three thing isn’t an issue as long as you don’t want to go into the automotive industry. If you do, then thermofluids isn’t the only thing getting hit. Everything is getting hit there. Thermofluids is a broad topic, and is used in many industries, like aerospace, HVAC, and basically anything that uses any sort of thermodynamic cycle to perform work. The biomedical field uses fluid mechanics quite a bit these days, and circuit companies are HUGE into heat transfer and thermal management. There are many opportunities outside of the Big Three for a thermofluids job. The thing is, you just have to decide which branch of thermofluids you want to do. Are the jobs as plentiful as they were a couple years ago? No. Very few are. But it is still a field whose importance will probably never diminish, and as long as you do decently well in school, you should be able to get a job just fine somewhere.</p>