Any ideas for at-home jobs for Autocad knowledge?

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I've enjoyed looking at everyone's questions/comments... My dream is to buy at least 40 acres (but as much land as I can possibly afford) and "live off the land" as much as possible. I can be pretty self-sufficient, and will probably be looking at raising sheep, spinning wool, weaving, etc as a means of outside income. I am looking at Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and possibly Northern California.

My question involves my life partner, who may have a harder time getting used to the kind of life I'm dreaming. So, I'm hoping someone can give me ideas for how he can make money using his skills and passion for drawing with the Autocad programs. He has taken extensive classes, is very good with, and truly enjoys working with Autocad, but has no "real" job experience with it.

Any ideas, no matter how wild, may at least get our creative juices flowing enough to come up with a workable plan.

Much Thanks

-- robbie in So. CA (rraley@sbcglobal.net), April 19, 2002

Answers

Well I know zip about AutoCad, but my hubby is an engineer, and last summer while he was home between contracts, he helped the City here set up their GPS mapping with AutoCad.

-- CJ (sheep@katahdins.net), April 19, 2002.

I work in the entertainment business, on the production side, and if I had any autocad skills at all I could get quite a bit of work drawing lighting plots and ground plans, and I could do it all from home.

-- Elizabeth (ekfla@aol.com), April 19, 2002.

check out elance.com

craigslist.org is another source for freelance work.

gonna be pretty tough without any references, experience and portfolio of work to show prospective clients.

-- Dave (multiplierx9@hotmail.com), April 19, 2002.


think "Log Home Building Companies". many are located in a rural setting and may be more friendly to the idea of telecommuting than some in need of cad. build 14 or 2000?

-- B. Lackie - Zone3 (cwrench@hotmail.com), April 19, 2002.

I'm a design engineer and my experience with AutoCAD is that it's usually used by very small manufacturing companies that can't afford the more expensive programs. These are the same companies that usually only have a small handful of designers and USUALLY (not always) can't afford to bring on someone with no work experience. Most of the larger companies use CATIA, ProE, PDGS (acutally being gradually phased out now) IDEAS etc. A great deal of designing is done in 3D and the 3D capabilities of AutoCAD is extremely limited. I learned CAD by starting with AutoCAD and started my job nearly 10 years ago using AutoCAD but about 8 years ago our company got rid of the program (by the end we were only using it for 2D drawings) as the data was difficult to translate and it just didn't make any sense to keep it any longer for our (usually) complicated 3D work. If your life partner enjoys AutoCAD I'm sure he'd LOVE some of these other programs (many of them aren't difficult to learn once you learn how to use CAD programs in general) and he's going to be more likely to find a job willing to take on someone with no actual work experience using one of these other systems (they're in MUCH higher demand). After getting some initial work experience then he's more likely to find a job willing to let him work at home. Good luck! I sure hope it works out for you.

Lisa (who would LOVE to work at home - or anywhere else for that matter - doing ANYTHING but CAD about this time in her life........)

-- Lisa- MI (formyacds@aol.com), April 19, 2002.



He can draw house blue prints and sell them on the web. My brother does this and he makes about 80.00 per hour on a blue print. now he doesnt work 8 hours a day on them but if a person advertised some he probaly get lots to do dale

-- dale (dgarr@fidnet.com), April 19, 2002.

Thank you to everyone for your ideas! You've given us great food for thought. I love communities that work, and I really wanted to express my appreciation to this one! Blessed Be!

-- robbie in So. CA (rraley@sbcglobal.net), April 23, 2002.

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