CAD Administration Protects Your Company’s Investment in Technology

I spent some time as the CAD Administrator for a photonics company. I really enjoyed that position. I got to do tech support, work with the IT guys, work on design projects, write company procedures, and help people whose primary skills were in conceptual design, not necessarily in fleshing ideas out in CAD. I also evaluated, purchased and implemented a PDM product that deployed throughout the company. I ran a service department within the company that provided drafting, overflow design, and technical writing to the rest of the design and manufacturing departments. I have to say that I really enjoyed that job, and if I were to take another “go to the office” kind of job, that would be it. It was one of those companies that took a huge hit on 9/11.

Before and after that job, I worked for resellers where I enjoyed most of what I did, from tech support to implementation consulting, sales demos and design contract. What I was really doing when working for resellers was mentoring CAD Admins. Helping establish policy for CAD usage at a company. Finding optimized procedures for particular common design problems. Solving installation problems, OS conflicts, identifying modeling errors that cause rebuild issues, assemblies that take too long to rebuild.

The CAD Admin, in addition to being internal tech support, really is the one person who makes sure that the company’s investment in engineering tools is paying off. This is the guy who has to make decisions like standardizing the interface customization, coming up with new macros to speed task-specific workflows, making sure your file management system is efficient and fool-proof, coordinating training and hardware selection, establishing best practice, connecting CAD to up- and down-stream applications such as rendering, analysis, conceptual design, electrical tools, manufacturing, marketing, everywhere. As a CAD administrator you’re involved in everything.

Some time back, probably 2009 or 2010, I wrote the SolidWorks Administration Bible, most of which I’m sure is obsolete by now. Looking at Amazon, it looks like someone is making money off of this book, it sure as heck wasn’t me. I think you can still find them for the original $40 price on Amazon as well, not sure who would be paying these crazy prices for such dated information. Still, if you’re a new or aspiring CAD administrator the info in the book is valuable, and you can adapt a lot of it to 2018 situations.

I’ve been privately contacted by multiple people asking how to become a CAD administrator. The answer is kind of complicated. There has to be an opening first. Maybe you have to convince your boss that there needs to be an opening, and you might need to be armed with some local horror stories, or at least the plausible threat of a close call. More than anything, you have to be able to characterize the things you’re trying to avoid with either money or time cost. These are things that a VP or CEO are going to listen to and understand.

But before you can get to that point, you have to have several things going for you. First, you have to be a decent technical leader – the rare combination of a technical wizard and someone technical people can connect with. Second, you have to have more than passable technical writing skills because you’re going to wind up writing specs, procedures, proposals, etc. Third, you also need to have a sense of the value of the company’s money. Do you really need to have 20 seats of Professional all on maintenance with simulation licenses for people who don’t use simulation? Do you really need to train 15 people, or can you train 2, and then bring them back to train everybody else? Do you really need Boxx computers with the video card that scores 2% higher for 2X the cost, or will Dell refurbs actually do the job just as well? Reality vs elitism is a tough thing for some people. You’ve got to prove yourself first, and once you have, you may get to buy status machines for a few people. This is all non-CAD stuff that CAD Admins have to deal with, and it is all directly related to getting value from your company’s dollars, and proving your worth to upper management.

Do you have a story of when a CAD admin did save or would have saved your company from the loss of a lot of time or money?