Microstation>Autocad

I took it in college before I changed my major. That was a long time ago though.

Here's my opinion. If you have an interest, sign up and take some classes. CAD guys can always find a job.

Heck I already have the job, just wanting to make it more involving and make myself more marketable.

I usually take the kitchen equipment drawings and draw all the hoods and exhaust and make up air connections in my drawing. You probably deal with all the other kitchen equipment also but it's not that hard once you get the basics down.

Certificate in CAD (AutoCAD), Mastercam, Bobcad and Corel Draw here. It's definitely a plus to have, I'm the only one in my department able to sit down and help draw layouts and my boss loves it. It's also another fall back to a job if need be.

Started in car and went to the field

We do all the design and build for the walk in coolers and freezers

Have sister companies that do all the kitchen equipment and a lot of their required drawings are block formats for footprints

Elevations, plumbing, and electrical connnections mean everything for the kitchen

What Walkin company?

Fact

Years ago I did the same thing, fell off of an antenna, got hurt and couldn't climb anymore, so I proposed to the Engineering group that I would work for a week for free to try and learn CAD. Within a week, I picked it up and moved into Design. Waveguide Integration Design for Uplink Earth Station Antennas, sounds fancy but it's just the rectangular tubing carrying RF to and from the antenna to the control room.

If you could get a copy of CAD, and someone to show you the basics, I bet you could get to where you need to be without taking classes.

I know I could get to where I need to be on my own. But the point of doing it is to expand my job role, which would require some sort of actual credentials like a certificate or degree in it lol

Go to Tarrant County College and enroll in basic auto cad classes at night class each symester.
The simple stuff will get so boring, but the later classes will teach you how to xref images and how to clean up an architects cad file when you get it. The cad files you receive from them are so crammed with info you don't need - you need to know how to manipulate those files to just get to the Kitchen layout. That can be so frustrating. So start from the beginning and just go thru all the autocad classes they offer.

I use:

Cadence - printed circuit board design and chip design
AutoCAD - mechanical outline, heatsink and cooler designs
Pro-E - assemblies
PackageWright - physical component design

You might get exposed to all of these when going for the Associate at the community college.

I use AutoCAD at the house for architecture doodling.

I'm surprised they even do CAD classes. Most people who use CAD for a living got on-the-job training and had to learn on the fly. The problem is that there are so many different kinds of software and it doesn't do you much good to get trained in one of them and then have to use a different one on the job.

You can definitely figure it out. Lots of google searches and I would join an engineering forum to get help from. That's about all you need. I'm sure a class would be useful, but classroom training is almost never as valuable as real-world training.

Learn one and all the rest are just variations.