[fox46]

I work for a heavy equipment manufacturer that deals with large wheeled vehicles.

Generally there are two career streams that deal with CAD. You can be a CAD technician/draftsperson, or an engineer. The difference is essentially how much responsibility you have in the design process.

As a draftsperson you are usually in a supporting role to the design team- CAD is your job. You are responsible for creating drawings from models, managine ECOs (engineering change orders) and maintaining a database of electronic information.

As an engineer, you are responsible for the design of a component or assembly directly. CAD is only a tool that you use to visualize, communicate and validate your ideas. It is only a small part of the job as you must also ensure that the design can perform as expected which includes doing a lot of research, hand calculations, stress analysis and communication with the customer.

It comes down to what you enjoy. If you like simply working with the program then a draftsperson job is for you. If however, you enjoy the creative process and developing a solution to a problem, then I would recommend an engineering career path.

As for the mouse, the workstations we use have a standard mouse or trackball depending on personal preference (I use a mouse) as well as a dial based track pad which controls your views and has a number of programmable buttons for shortcuts.