My take is this, if you want to be designing work you should be in that field....if you want to be producing work designed by others you should be in that field. But living and working in one, and trying to do the work of the other is a garanteeeeeeed loser.
In my world, we recieve engineered drawings, and we produce a finished product as it's called out on paper (or email or a crayon drawing on a piece of cardboard). Personally I wish every engineer on the planet would start calling out larger and larger welds, that would of course mean more income for those of us that make those welds.
Everyone has a function in the supply chain including the eor, the welding contractor and the janitor sweeping the floors.
JTMcC.
Well, it happened. We put the first 8 frames into production this weekend and the plates which will connect the members in the field are shot. 3/4" gap, and they are supposed to be slip critical. The excessive heat imput casued by the overspecified weld caused significant distortion. It's the designer's baby now.