J. Brouwer (United States)

J. Brouwer has over 40 years of engineering experience as a contract engineer with a wide variety of defense and aerospace companies. Since being introduced to CAD in 1982 he has accumulated over 54,000 design hours on 3-D CAD, 10,000 on ComputerVision’s CADDS 4X and the remainder on IRONCAD, ZW3D and variety of other PC based CAD programs.

He also provides the following services:

1. Engineering Services, including Engineering Design, 3-D modeling, drafting, CNC programming and complete integrated system management.
2. Plastic Product Design: Providing fully 3-D wireframe, surfaced, solid models and detail drawings if required.
3. Mechanical Design: 3-D design of mechanical assemblies.

Interview with Mr. J. Brouwer

1. What kinds of clients do you serve?

   I support companies that do not have an engineering department. I provide mechanical and plastic product design.

2. What was the most interesting CAD project that you ever worked on? What made it interesting?
   What challenges did you face?

   It was a project for Boeing. They were making models for testing. We did the F-22 and Osprey — who gets to work on project like this? It was a few years ago and we had to make 3D prints. Just making sure the solid/surface models were complete. The work was done in Ironcad and a Hybrid CAD system.

3. Of the software tools that you use, which is your favorite and why?

   IronCAD is my tool of choice because of its ease of use and great flexibility, but I also use a hybrid CAD system when a project has to be broken down to wireframes and surfaces. I have used most of the Pro/E paradigm systems: Pro/E, SW, Inventor and Solid Edge, but never have really got proficient with the Pro/E paradigm.

4. What trends are you observing in the market for CAD services? How have these trends affected
   you, and how are you responding to them?

   Much of my work is reverse engineering requiring working from scanned data. It requires a Hybrid CAD systems to work with this data. I also get called in when the project is a mess and they need it cleaned up and get the parts made.

5. What do you like about working as an interim CAD draftsman or external CAD consultant working on a time-bound project?

   The freedom it offers.

6. Have you ever provided CAD consulting services remotely, either via phone, the Web or email?
   Do you use any screen sharing tools (like Webex, Skype, or GoToMeeting), and are they effective?
   What kinds of questions and problems could you tackle remotely?
   Are there any issues that you feel are better handled face-to-face?

   I started telecommuting years ago when we used phone handset modems. Using CADKEY, I would sent the files back and forth. I use all of the programs you have mentioned. Most of the problems can be handled remotely. Face to face is always important at every milestone, even though I have done projects where I have never met face to face.