Two specialties one trade: industrial production or construction and civil works

Technical designer is one education, but two very different daily lives. One draws machine parts, robot cells, and production equipment; the other draws houses, roads, bridges, and supply lines. According to the Education Guide, the education typically lasts 3 years and 6 months: a basic course at a vocational school of 20 or 40 weeks (depending on where you come from) followed by a main course of 2 years and 6 months where you alternate between school periods and training in a company.

On the basic course, you learn the common foundation: technical drawing, CAD, sketching, mathematics, and working methods. Then you need an apprenticeship with a company — it could be a design office, a consulting engineering firm, a production company, or a public administration. On the main course, you choose a specialty, and school periods become more specialized. You get paid during the entire apprenticeship, and the education ends with a final exam (journeyman's exam) where you show that you master the profession's documentation tasks from end to end.

Here you work with technical documentation for the manufacturing industry. According to the competence goals in the training regulations, you must be able to produce all types of technical drawings within the manufacturing area according to applicable standards, prepare documentation for CE marking — parts lists, assembly instructions, manuals and safety instructions — and you gain knowledge of Industry 4.0, digital twins and virtual commissioning of production equipment.

• 01Work drawings and assembly drawings of machine parts and components.
• 02Part lists, requirement specifications and GPS (Geometric Product Specification).
• 033D models, renderings and animations for documentation and sales.
• 04Simulation 3D printing of prototypes and file export to other CAD systems.
• 05Quality documentation according to the company's quality management system.

Here the weight lies on the building's documentation: plan, section and facade drawings, details, material lists and material for building case processing. The competence goals include among other things BIM throughout the building's life cycle, 3D scanning of buildings with post-processing of the point cloud, GIS for maps and geodata and documentation for local planning and authority approval. The school subjects count topics such as the building regulations and fire requirements, drainage installations, supply lines, surveying and assistance tasks in construction management.

Many technical designers work further as drafters and documentation specialists in industry with consultants contractors or in the public sector. The education is also a solid foundation for further education — for example building constructor production technologist or other technical higher education where your practical experience with CAD standards and project documentation gives you a head start from day one.