Quote:
Originally Posted by Zach O
technology is the future. The reason we have these things is so that we don't have to do it by hand anymore. We can have machines do stress analysis for us, saving us time of going though it by hand. However, the skill of calculating things by hand and sketching by hand is something that we should continue to teach the youth (until my netbook can run Inventor  ) |
I have two thoughts on the value of being able to at least estimate without CAD.
It is very easy to make silly mistakes while using CAD that cause results to be way off. It is quite useful to be able to recognize when things don't make sense.
It is also handy to be able to come up with sensible ideas quickly at the beginning of the build season or of a project at work when many decisions are made without the time to do the CAD.