<p>You’re qualified to give your opinion, bonehead, but that doesn’t disqualify other posters. Let the OP decide who he wants to listen to.</p>
<p>Right, but other people giving their opinions are basing it on hearsay and “my friend’s brother’s cousin” kind of stuff. Then there are some people who are civil engineers talking about how much they use CAD, but that doesn’t apply to this poster’s situation, as he wants to be a mechanical engineer, and specifically study one of the areas of ME that doesn’t overlap with civil almost at all. It is not that I am trying to **** off these other people, but I feel strongly as though they are misleading the OP because they are either citing information from the wrong background or are basing it on third or fourth party information. They are entitled to their opinion, same as I am, but I am here on this site to help people out, and I feel like I would be doing abcdegsds a disservice if I get drowned out since I have the exact background that he is looking to pursue. If someone with the same background (or even with a familiarity with that background) gave their opinion with concrete reasons and it differed from mine, then it would seem like a different situation from me, but I feel like people who are not as familiar with his situation are giving him bad advice (though I am sure that their advice applies wonderfully to their specific field).</p>
<p>I agree that your advice is particularly weighty since you have first-hand experience with this sort of thing, but other people are making good points.</p>
<p>(1) In high school, very few people know what they will end up doing, much less what their specialty will be. A CAD course would be good for him in case he changes his mind later on.</p>
<p>(2) Programming is the sort of thing that, unless you are prepared to invest more time in it, might be better to pick up on a per-application basis. I feel qualified to talk about this, since I have taken programming classes and applied that knowledge to other fields. I don’t see how a general-purpose programming class would help terribly.</p>
<p>(3) If you disagree with somebody’s advice, the proper way of addressing that is by disagreeing and asking for evidence in support of their claim. Provide evidence of your own to show their claim is lacking substance. Usually, it is not considered good form to point out that they are not knowledgeable about their claims. Ultimately, the reason for this is that you really don’t know who is more qualified.</p>
<p>I guess just to defend myself from point 3 (since your first two points are perfectly fine and valid), I never said (or at least never meant to say or imply) that anyone was less qualified to give their opinion or to have an opinion, but I do imply that some of their opinions are, while perfectly valid, not the best advice in this situation. They hold weight in all their respective situations, but sometimes people tend to extend their advice and opinions a bit beyond where they really apply. That is my only point. In no way do I mean to imply that anyone in here is or isn’t qualified to offer advice, and if I have come off that way, I apologize.</p>
<p>I wasn’t insulted. I think boneh3ad makes a good point! Structures is different from thermofluids.</p>
<p>Short: Both are useful, but a formal class in programming is much more essential (in my opinion) than a formal class in CAD.</p>
<p>You should probably know both. However, in my experience, basic CAD (especially solidworks) is pretty easy to pick up. You may not be as good at it as the people who do it full-time, but that’s why many companies hire full-time CAD people. Oftentimes the people who do a lot of CAD also have more machining experience and can help you figure out if your part is actually machinable. </p>
<p>However, good programming can take more time to pick up. I strongly recommend taking some formal classes in it. While you can just pick it up as you go along, much like you can CAD, you will likely miss out on a lot of basic programming theory. If you miss this, there’s a reasonable chance your code will do what you want, but look like complete crap.</p>
<p>I am also an ME and I agree that a class in programming is a better choice than a class in CAD.</p>
<p>Firstly, should you decide to change your field of studies, chances are you could still benefit from the programming. Also, CAD is not going to give you much insight into ME related material.</p>
<p>CAD (esp solidworks) is easy to pick up if you spend enough time doing it. </p>
<p>Programming is a very important part of mechanical engineering. And the more you know the easier it will be for you. If you want to do thermofluids, you will come across some exciting equations and complex calculations that you will want to put into the computer.</p>
<p>How it worked at my college was we took a few matlab and comp sci classes. I had to learn C and MATLAB, although I only use MATLAB. In upper level classes, you will have assignments that will require you to write some code to complete the assignment.</p>
<p>I think that a lot of people on this board are confusing CAD technologists/draughtsman with mechanical engineers.</p>
<p>Dont worry about finding jobs. With thermofluids, you should be able to go into renewable energy, as well as HVAC, nuclear etc.</p>
<p>Another point: if you end up in a job that requires lots of CAD, your company will probably be willing to send you to a two or three day intensive CAD class for the program you’ll be using. If you suddenly need to program and have no experience in it… you’re SOL.</p>
<p>Just my 2 cents. I have shadowed mechanical engineers in the past and came to the conclusion that knowledge of CAD was pretty important. HOWEVER, I do not believe they were in thermo. They worked primarily with piping on large storage tanks but I don’t think they would be considered thermo guys. I never saw them run any programming. But these are just my observances due to the fact that I was shadowing them. Certainly nothing in depth.</p>
<p>But something that I also noticed was that they had CAD specialists. It seemed as if the MEs would do a rough CAD sketch and then give it to the CAD drafters to fix and pretty up for the clients. So the MEs didn’t need to be super sweet at CAD, just average. My advice would be to get a basic understanding of CAD so you can represent your ideas efficiently. I mean if you can’t ilustrate you ideas then your uselesss. Although, judging from the MEs in thermo here, I would be sure to have a solid idea of programming before I even began to meddle with CAD. I actually use CAD a lot and I’ll admit that CAD wouldn’t be hard to pick up. So dive into programming now and then whenever you have spare time later on you can gain basic CAD skills.</p>
<p>To chime in with bonehead (I’m a fellow PhD in Thermal-Fluids):</p>
<p>It really depends on your field. As a TFS guy, I’m more into Fluent/COMSOL and hardly touch CAD. Within the industry, a working CAD knowledge (Solidworks/AutoCAD/ProE) is good but not pivotal. Most engineering programs make you take a class or two on CAD anyway.</p>
<p>Unless the company specifically requires you to know it, there will typically be drafting specialists who’s sole roles are to CAD prototypes. </p>
<p>One thing about specialized training. From an industry perspective, it’s always good to have a working knowledge of programming/software but not be a full fledged guru. I have seen many guys who are masters of X-software and end up getting stuck in that role for years. That might be great for some people but I know that debugging CFD all day would make me go crazy…</p>
<p>abcdegsds,</p>
<p>In my opinion, TFS (Thermal-Fluid Systems), have the best job opportunities out of MechE fields and most engineering disciplines. TFS is VERY versatile and spans everything from circuit-design and MEMS, biomedical engineering, HVAC, the oil/gas industry (especially for heavy-oil steam injections) to full fledged rocket aerodynamics. </p>
<p>Now make no mistake that TFS is versatile but VERY tough. Dealing with the Navier-Stokes equations all day and compressible flow will give anyone a headache.</p>