Technicians and associate professionals · code 3118

Draughtspersons

AI can draw the first version. Getting every detail right is still a draughtsperson's job.

Seven of the eight tasks are mostly out of AI's reach, including CAD drawings and wiring and layout diagrams. Copying artwork onto printing plates it barely touches.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Draughtspersons prepare technical drawings, maps and illustrations from sketches, measurements and other data, and copy final drawings and paintings onto printing plates. Tasks include - (a) preparing and revising working drawings from sketches and specifications prepared by engineers and designers for the manufacture, installation and erection of machinery and equipment or for the construction, modification, maintenance and repair of buildings, dams, bridges, roads and other architectural and civil engineering projects; (b) operating computer-aided design and draughting equipment to create, modify and generate hard-copy and digital representations of working drawings; (c) operating digitizing table or similar equipment to transfer hard-copy representation of working drawings, maps and other curves to digital form; (d) preparing and revising illustrations for reference works, brochures and technical manuals dealing with the assembly, installation, operation, maintenance and repair of machinery and other equipment and goods; (e) copying drawings and paintings onto stone or metal plates for printing; (f) preparing wiring diagrams, circuit board assembly diagrams and layout drawings used for manufacture, installation and repair of electrical equipment in factories, power plants and buildings; (g) creating detailed working diagrams of machinery and mechanical devices, including dimensions, fastening methods and other engineering information; (h) arranging for completed drawings to be reproduced for use as working drawings. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Draughtsperson - Technical illustrator Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Cartographer - 2165 - Surveyor - 2165

drafter
printed circuit board designer
clothing CAD technician
3D printing technician

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

65 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Minimal Exposure

274 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 34.8 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 34.8 = 65.2.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Minimal Exposure”: A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't.

This job rates 26.5 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Draughtspersons 65

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

Producing working drawings in CAD.
Digitising and revising drawings.
Technical illustrations.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

Checking drawings for errors and clashes.
Coordinating between engineers and trades.
Knowing how things are actually built.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

Building information modelling.
3D printing preparation.
Checking AI-generated drawings.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Medium

44 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 71 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

27 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 23 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

27 How
hands-on

23 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 4 US jobs .

finger skill 35.3 · hand skill 31.2 · cramped spaces 3.2 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 48, against an average of 35. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

48
Operating computer-aided design and drafting equipment to create, modify and generate hard-copy and digital representations of working drawings

Low
46
Operating digitizing table or similar equipment to transfer hard-copy representation of working drawings, maps and other curves to digital form

Low
39
Arranging for completed drawings to be reproduced for use as working drawings.

Low
38
Preparing and revising working drawings from sketches and specifications prepared by engineers and designers for the manufacture, installation and erection of machinery and equipment or for the construction, modification, maintenance and repair of buildings, dams, bridges, roads and other architectural and civil engineering projects

Low
34
Creating detailed working diagrams of machinery and mechanical devices, including dimensions, fastening methods and other engineering information

Low
32
Preparing and revising illustrations for reference works, brochures and technical manuals dealing with the assembly, installation, operation, maintenance and repair of machinery and other equipment and goods

Low
28
Preparing wiring diagrams, circuit board assembly diagrams and layout drawings used for manufacture, installation and repair of electrical equipment in factories, power plants, and buildings

Low
15
Copying drawings and paintings onto stone or metal plates for printing

Very Low

8 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you: 71
AI does it for you: 44

Sidekick wins, by 28 points.

How good a match is this?

6 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 3121, 3122, 3123, 3124, 3125, 3129

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.07% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 3 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should draughtspersons be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

This job is changing. Operating CAD, digitising, reproducing drawings, working drawings, detailed diagrams, illustrations and wiring diagrams all rate Low. Generative design and automated drafting are advancing, so the role shifts towards checking, modelling and coordination.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” family, averaging 65. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →