In article , "Phil Kane"
writes:

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 15:16:15 GMT, Bill Sohl wrote:

The point is that any industry is always at risk. There is no
guarnteed life expectancy for almost any endeaver. The PC has
knocked down the number of secretaries needed to support
engineering groups.

And created an equal demand for CAD operators who also replaced
drafters.

I don't think it's an equal demand. In most cases, a good CAD op can turn out
the same work faster than an equally skilled manual drafter. This is
particularly true if an existing drawing can be modified rather than drawing
from scratch.

When I started in the design office at (undisclosed former employer), all work
was by hand drafting. Now, in that industry, it is all CAD work - even to the
point that the old linen tracings are usually scanned and treated as CAD files.


And that's for plain old 2D electrical/electronic stuff. The mechanical and
architectural folks are the big shots in that department.

The auto all but eliminated blacksmiths.

And created an equal demand for "mechanics" who today are called
"technicians".

Which title they deserve, considering the level of technology they have to take
care of.

73 de Jim, N2EY