Any CAD users here?

[nando]

I'm in energy infrustructure design, i don't often get to deal with truly being creative with component design, i just model what the cut sheets of vendors that can't supply 3d models depict and then design larger process assemblies and facility/site layouts and interdisciplinary model incorporation/auditing/oversight. It's damn true about so many engineers, really really smart, but they have no idea about efficient design for hands-on construct-ability. I have become accustomed to working with my teams of engineers quite closely for designs, it can be fun and enlightening at times,... other times it's frustrating when i get left out of the brainstorming loop as often the engineers at my office often preoccupy themselves more with project managing and client RFIs than actual engineering.

for me, calling out tolerances often seems to be more of a lesson in futility than actually useful as field contractors seemingly always deviate to some degree, i design in areas for anticipated field adaptions and vendor introduced variations, out-thinking how others might manage to bugger it all up.... i'm starting to go through as-built processing on 3 separate projects i've designed and then issued for construction over the past three years. On the upside, in the meantime i've been able to dabble with Cyclone and laser scan point clouds a bit, which blows traditional survey COGO point data lists out of the water in pretty much all aspects. Might make the jump to ACAD 2015 sometime soon. 2014+ has some real power now for crunching point cloud data. Recently I find my workload pulling me more toward Civil3D lately as a means of efficiency for me to decrease the dependency of projects on having competent subcontractors. it's not by choice, but necessity. ...Top of concrete elevations can only be accurate to a point of usefulness, steel & pipe dimensions, etc., all subject to temperature expansions, ground heave, frost swell, etc.... you can only be precise to a point of usability. /rant over.

Those connectors looks cool. given access to machine shops, i'd be designing things for my m20, LOL

what discipline are you in? it sounds like equipment or maybe mechanical?

Civil3D is pretty cool, but you'd think you'd get some support from the civil team? lol. or are you doing all of it yourself?

true enough about tolerances especially on big projects. I also have to deal with water which of course varies quite a bit. we're holding a "tight" tolerance on our piles which is +/- 6". lol.

We have an in-house laser scanning team, it's pretty nice to have, although it still doesn't replace field walks (there's all kinds of things I know about the sites that people who have only seen pictures and laser scans don't). can't wait to upgrade our AutoCAD version, we're still on 2011 and the pointcloud support kinda blows.