When I first started to do drafting in college, I figured out that I needed to be accurate on every part of the drawing process. If you are not detailed oriented, then drafting is not for you. There are some drafting jobs that only want the bear minimum. This means no tolerances, deminsions, or Bill of Materials (BOM). This is probably not going to be a high paying job. Now if you are detailed orentied then drafting design might be for you. Here are some thing that I know now that school didnt teach me.

1) Most schools teach details, they might show you how to come up with a calulation of some sort. In my experience the engineers do most of the calculations and hand them over to you. If your a design draftsman then you might have to do some major calulations, like finding the center of gravity of a design for lifting perposes. The best payed drafters can draft and design. This makes that person a more valuable to the company.

2) If you work with a decent size company then they probably have a sales department. This can help a great deal when trying to make a BOM. This can be tricky if your doing it by yourself because your company my have thier own part numbers and vendor part numbers. In this case I like to use excel to do my BOM. Excel is easy to import into autocad and solidworks. If your using something more advanced like Inventor, then it is possible to creat your assembly just by pushing a button. Now remember you still have to name the parts you made and input the part number. If you can get this far then you can output BOM rapidly.

3) When your working with a small company, there probably going to need you to do more than drafting. Right now im doing three different jobs, including drafting for one company. If anyone can get the oppertunity to do multiple job duties with one company, then you can understand the processes that go into manufacturing. Understanding the manufacturing side of what your drawing will help you do two things, 1) Helps with understanding of processes, 2) Understanding of types of welds, bolts, nuts, thread sizes, pipe sizes, materials, and components. Understanding these is key in labeling your drawings. If you have to create BOM's then this will help you make sub-assemblies easier, Take a look at the drawing below for an example of what this is talking about.

http://simpleyarddesigns.com