Acad

Hi Guys

I'm currently midway through a BEng with the OU and, since I have over 20 years scaffolding experience, scaffold design is an obvious option for me to consider. However, autocad is unfamiliar to me and any advice on how best to learn more about it would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Dave

Practice, practice and then practice some more. I was taught one system, then re-invented it to draw three times quicker.

The main things i used when i started off were lots of construction lines and lots of polylines.

The question is, do you have a copy of Auto-Cad you practice on?

AshReactive said:

The question is, do you have a copy of Auto-Cad you practice on?

Click to expand...

This is the important part. There are oodles of (free) online resources for learning but until you can put pen to paper, so to speak, it'll all be like a foreign language.

Thanks for the response guys. ...I have no experience of cad at all; I am attending a residential school next week where it will be covered briefly. I was looking for advice on what to purchase in order to practise with.....

Youtube's a good place to start.

If you go to the AutoDesk website you'll be able to download a free trial of the latest software.

Getting a copy to practice on is the most important thing. When I did my BEng 9 years ago we didn't do any formal training in any drawing software, we were expected to go and learn it ourselves, so I feel your pain!

You dont have to use AutoCAD, but in my opinion it is the best. Some people use Google sketch up which is free.. (I haven't seen a professional construction drawing to BS 8888 using it yet though!) you could try Microstation.. there are loads. But ultimately, AutoCAD is best in my opinion.

Going back a second, before you work out how to use AutoCAD you need to understand exactly what a drawing should look like. Many people miss this seemingly obvious point! BS8888 is the British Standard for 'Technical product documentation and specification' and provides best practice guidance for the production of construction drawings. Many Scaff designers don't even know this exists. You can tell the ones that do, as they drawings all look very similar, as depicted by the code.

So, going back to how to use AutoCAD.. I would suggest two things:
1. Find "LYNDA" training video's online. They are as good as any.
2. Ask people on your course if you have access to forums or discussion boards etc - chances are there is a professional draughtsman on there, you would learn more from them than anyone. Professional draughting is a dying art, they could teach you in one day shadowing more than you could learn in a month of online tutorials!

Also.. fair play for doing the BEng through OU, the hard work will pay off. If you ever need any assistance, call our office and ask for Ben.

I found just doing the learing programmes within the package were a good way to get started. Once you've got the basics you'll create your own shortcuts on how to represent things.

Drawing in Model Space is the easy bit - getting something that looks half presentable on Paper Space is the hard bit (and most important bit in my humble opinion). Presentation is one of my pet hates - I always try to get our guys to draw in the same style with the same format / notes and presentation etc. Having learnt on an old fashioned drawing board some of those skills were drummed in to me!