<p>Had a quick question for you guys - how often is CAD used in engineering? I know civil engineers use it quite a bit, but do any other professions? I want to major in mechanical engineering, but I would also like to focus a lot on programming/working with computers. I know the best approach would be computer engineering or something along those lines if I want do do computer programming but I don't want to solely focus on that. Will it be possible to do some programming and use CAD while majoring in mechanical engineering?</p>
<p>In the engineering world, it seems like there are CAD users and there are non CAD users.</p>
<p>Certain engineering positions (design engineers) use CAD extensively. I think it gets rather boring after a while. Non-design positions don’t use CAD very often. </p>
<p>AutoCAD has a reputation for line drawings and is used more by drafters than by engineers.</p>
<p>I don’t think most engineers do computer program, although there are certain mechanical engineering positions that do.</p>
<p>at Purdue for ME, you have to take CGT 163 which is basically an autoCAD class or so I am told.</p>
<p>Every position I ever held as a ME required at least some programming skills. I had positions in design and in analysis. CAD is used extensively in industry, as almost all design and analysis work is done on computers these days, but how much each individual uses it varies by position. It is a safe bet that for almost any ME position you will need to know at least basic-level programming. CAD is on a case by case basis.</p>
<p>AutoCAD is hardly used anymore in major companies as it is very limited. It is a 2D modeling program in a 3D world. Much more common are ProENGINEER, CATIA, Unigraphics/NX and SolidWorks. Chances are you will learn one of those in your ME curriculum.</p>
<p>You don’t really need a BS degrees to do heavy CAD work, and a lit of companies rely on cheaper labor with 2 year degrees to fill their CAD monkey jobs. MEs tend to work on the design process itself, including whatever physical/mathematical principles and knowledge capture techniques (usually in the form of macros) are involved. Another common use of CAD by MEs is in conjunction with FEA and CFD programs/codes.</p>
<p>Sigh, I’m weird - I love using AutoCAD. Of course, I liked typing in high school, too.</p>
<p>I never said that AutoCAD was useless though. It is just not very useful for what the major companies (Boeing, Ford, etc) need out of a CAD/CAM program. They need 3D models that can interface with things like ANSYS or Abaqus, which is something that AutoCAD just can’t do.</p>
<p>I use solidworks in one of my classes pretty extensively. It’s a metal casting modeling class and we use it to make the models before sending it over to ProCast software.</p>
<p>All told the licenses for our one semester of software for our 6 person class cost over 50k. Thanks VT!</p>
<p>Well that is a sigh of relief! I actually didn’t know there were so many CAD softwares. I would like to learn and use any of those programs really, I just have a big interest in computers and that type of work, I was worried ME would limit me to different areas not involving CAD. If I want to focus mainly on this part of the ME field (CAD and designing things), what part of my curriculum should I most focus on if my school doesn’t offer some of these designing courses?</p>
<p>Try taking an elective in a computational class like finite element analysis. It will show you what kind of numerical tricks are going on in the background of some of those analysis software packages. Other than that, your best bet is to pick one of the traditional main areas of mechanical engineering (thermal fluid sciences, mechanics of materials, dynamics) that interests you most (you will explore each one when you take required classes) and then focus your electives on learning how to do computational stuff in one of those areas. You won’t find a job that is just computational in general, they are all going to be geared towards computational structures or computational fluids or computational dynamics or other similar subfields.</p>
<p>Sounds like fun. Thank you for your help!</p>