ben_travis Posted November 4, 2008 Report Share Posted November 4, 2008 I am currently aiming to change my career path a little, and the direction I am hoping to head in will generally require some experience / knowledge of Solidworks 3D cad software!I have experience with 3 or 4 Software programs for draughtsmen - primarily architectural - and this said I am pretty competent with most programs and can learn them quickly.However, i have not had the opportunity to use Solidworks and would like some information about its interface and whether it is difficult to understand / use!! Also if you could let me know how long it took you to become of a good user of the program!I am currently looking at the Solidworks website, and having a wee gander through there, but if anyone could point me in the right direction for some possible tutorials / helpful websites, this would be greatly appreciated!tabenny boy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted November 4, 2008 Report Share Posted November 4, 2008 Solidworks is a pretty straightforward and powerful tool. It tends to be fairly windowsesque in its GUI, with nice little buttons indicating the extrude, shell functions etc and for solid modelling you'd be able to pick up the basics in a week or two, probably less if you're already clued up on other 3D CAD programs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walleee Posted November 4, 2008 Report Share Posted November 4, 2008 its got its own tutorials in the help file, my uni is so shit that they used them to teach us, i had used it for two years previously at college and feel confident that I could model almost anything accurately.It's so handy for making assemblies and drawings if you want to manufacture a part too, but yeh, get a downloaded copy of it, and have a mess around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted November 4, 2008 Report Share Posted November 4, 2008 PMd you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Motivator Posted November 4, 2008 Report Share Posted November 4, 2008 It's pretty powerful and nice to use. The built in FEA is not bad either, if it had a fracture mechanics aswell that would be amazing.I've used AutoCAD a lot, which is probably my favourite and also spent a year using Solidegde, which is a cheaper version of Solidworks but minus a few features. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted November 4, 2008 Report Share Posted November 4, 2008 It's pretty powerful and nice to use. The built in FEA is not bad either, if it had a fracture mechanics aswell that would be amazing.I've used AutoCAD a lot, which is probably my favourite and also spent a year using Solidegde, which is a cheaper version of Solidworks but minus a few features.Much the same, Im primarily designing on autocad and for simple sketches its much quicker, however get to an assembly spread over 40 drawings all with further sub assemblies and it gets to be an absolute b*****d to keep a track on things.Ive used the built in FEA a fair amount, it is severely limited in what it can do (no assembly or weldment analysis) but it can give a rough idea of the design if you can model the the loads correctly - its basically a demo of the full FEA package.Fortunately we have just had a 3 1/2 axis cnc mill and a cnc lathe installed at work, coupled with solidworks should produce some interesting bike/motorbike based foreigners Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Egg Fried Rice Posted November 4, 2008 Report Share Posted November 4, 2008 My school just introduced this in there comps and just bought a copy off my teacher for £5 so i can play around with it at home!But apparently its very industrious and used in alot of top companies!I was looking at the orange county choppers (american chopper) website and there are jobs going and most of them state MUST have experience in solidworks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walleee Posted November 5, 2008 Report Share Posted November 5, 2008 My school just introduced this in there comps and just bought a copy off my teacher for £5 so i can play around with it at home!But apparently its very industrious and used in alot of top companies!I was looking at the orange county choppers (american chopper) website and there are jobs going and most of them state MUST have experience in solidworksi'd imagine if you want a job in CAD, regardless of what your doing, you'll pretty much have to be proficient in using both autoCAD and Solidworks, as forteh says, i'd also use autocad for very basic stuff, maybe making a drawing of an existing part, for designing though, solidworks is the way forward. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OD404 Posted November 5, 2008 Report Share Posted November 5, 2008 i'd imagine if you want a job in CAD, regardless of what your doing, you'll pretty much have to be proficient in using both autoCAD and SolidworksOn the job front, I wouldn't be confident in making that kind of statement. I can assure you that larger companies tend to use software such as Pro-Engineer or Catia, mainly due to them having better Product Lifecycle Management features. Granted Solidworks does have a PLM feature, and while it has been getting better with each new release, it is still a little way behind.For a job in CAD, you need more than just the ability to use a certain software, being a competent designer is probably the first and most important thing you need, irrespective of software experience.Solidworks is a very good package, I used it a lot in my previous job. It is very easy to get to grips with and learn CAD with. It is definitely the most user friendly package out there at the moment and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to have a go with CAD. However, it does have limitations, and as your models get more complex, the quicker these limitations become apparent. I also have a very severe hatred of the FEA software that come bundled with it, which is from what I've experienced, the most limited program supplied with any CAD software.Tutorial-wise you can't go far wrong with the tutorials that come as part of the software's help file, these will certainly give you the basics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davey90 Posted November 12, 2008 Report Share Posted November 12, 2008 Pro Engineer is amazin you might want to check it out aswell as its idustry standard for alot of big companies Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hI-OOPS-CAPS Posted November 13, 2008 Report Share Posted November 13, 2008 its an awesome program, my lecturer who shows us everything is awesome. only problem is my stress levels greatly increase and its hard to concentrate.ill maybe ask him about home study and tutorials etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaun H Posted November 13, 2008 Report Share Posted November 13, 2008 only problem is my stress levels greatly increase and its hard to concentrate.I rememeber when I was first learning and the words "over defined" would make me want to spoon my own eyes out... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walleee Posted November 13, 2008 Report Share Posted November 13, 2008 christ i had some issue with over defined sketches the other day and it f**ked me off so much.Found a 'fully define sketch' button which came in so handy a few weeks back, a lecturer wanted us to dimension and relate all our sketches within a model, all he wanted was the lines to turn blue, so a bunch of guys spent over an hour doing it, not understanding how i done it in 5 minutes.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaun H Posted November 13, 2008 Report Share Posted November 13, 2008 christ i had some issue with over defined sketches the other day and it f**ked me off so much.Found a 'fully define sketch' button which came in so handy a few weeks back, a lecturer wanted us to dimension and relate all our sketches within a model, all he wanted was the lines to turn blue, so a bunch of guys spent over an hour doing it, not understanding how i done it in 5 minutes....Black?And where's this fully define sketch button? Surely it defeats the object of a fully defined a sketch!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted November 13, 2008 Report Share Posted November 13, 2008 I think the auto define sketch tool is new in SW2009, over defined sketches are pretty easy to work around as long as you havent made the sketch too complex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Arnold Posted November 13, 2008 Report Share Posted November 13, 2008 everyone has their own little ways of manipulating drawings, but if i'm going to give any advice, i'd be to do everything as per instructions. don't try and run before you can walk with this kind of thing!i used solidworks when i did manufacturing in college and its great...my cousin now lives in australia and works for an english company, creating solidworks models for them, whilst in a nice sunny environment! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaRtZ Posted November 13, 2008 Report Share Posted November 13, 2008 I was told to use prodesktop in school and 2d design. Then I got interested in autodesk's maya unlimited which is pretty fun, especially animating things. but back in engineering I've had to learn how to use autocad and inventor arghhhOne thing I like with the latest version of autocad is the parts library.... ie click m6 bolt to add an 6 bolt to your drawing so time saving Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OD404 Posted November 14, 2008 Report Share Posted November 14, 2008 To be honest, any CAD program will seem easy to use compared to modelling within an FEA package I'm currently trying to remodel a cylinderhead water jacket manually in Ansys because our ProE models aren't accurate enough and it's a freaking nightmare!! And this is all before it tells me it can't mesh it You designers should count yourselves lucky EDIT:Random CAD fact of the day...Pro Engineer can't draw a proper circle, it ALWAYS produces an ellipse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2sixstreet Posted November 14, 2008 Report Share Posted November 14, 2008 Any particular reason you've chosen Solidworks? A few have mentioned Catia and Pro but also consider Inventor. It doesnt take long to learn the basics of modelling as most packages are quite intuitive. The best advice I can give is think about how you want to create something before doing the first sketch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted November 14, 2008 Report Share Posted November 14, 2008 The best advice I can give is think about how you want to create something before doing the first sketch.When training for ProE2000i at uni we were always taught CDI (Capture Design Intent), that is always build the model so that you can parametrically change things without destroying relationships and buggering up your model Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave33 Posted November 15, 2008 Report Share Posted November 15, 2008 To be honest, any CAD program will seem easy to use compared to modelling within an FEA package I'm currently trying to remodel a cylinderhead water jacket manually in Ansys because our ProE models aren't accurate enough and it's a freaking nightmare!! And this is all before it tells me it can't mesh it You designers should count yourselves lucky EDIT:Random CAD fact of the day...Pro Engineer can't draw a proper circle, it ALWAYS produces an ellipse.most of them do that.. dont they? its because it picks out points my company has pro E and autocad employee 60,000 world wide so i would consider them to be a big company Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.