Solidworking

I have Solidworks on the brain! I've been preparing for my 1st midterm on Monday these past few days so I thought, why not write a post about Solidworks! I have never taken a computer modeling class up till now so at the beginning of this class, the software was very vexing and frustrating for me. It certainly had a steep learning curve for me. But while it's extremely disheartening at times when you just can't get the reference plane at the right angle, it's also extremely satisfying once you complete the design. It's like a miracle for me each time and I always am in awe that I somehow fuddled my way through it.

Before signing up for my class, I had three options for 3D modeling: Autocad, Solidworks, and Pro-Engineer. In terms of pricing for each of the softwares, Pro-E and Solidworks are about $5,000 per license. Here's a good article summarizing the pros and cons of 3D modeling softwares: http://www.design-engine.com/stories/battleofthebands.htm

Although any of the three mentioned modeling softwares above should be adequate for design, it looks like most job postings for mechanical engineering at least prefer Solidworks or Pro-E experience. But, from what I was told by other engineering professionals, once you learn one it's easy to pick up another.

The text book we're using in class is called "Introduction to Solid Modeling Using SolidWorks 2008".


I really like the text book. Each chapter introduces a concept they're try to teach, such as Parametric Modeling Techniques, and they have a step by step tutorial providing great screen shots of the actual software program for you to follow. After that they have several exercises for you to complete using the techniques that they demonstrated. Of course I'm sure most texts are as streamlined and coherent as this, but some printouts my professor gave us to work off of were horrible in terms of clarify and comprehension which made my appreciate this all the more. There's a student software access that comes with the textbook so you can activate the program for a limited period of time (I believe it was 4 months or so).

So here's a few examples of what can be done in SolidWorks. So far we've just learned how to construct individual parts, I think assembling multiple parts together is the second portion of this class.

Bundled with this student edition software that I'm using, we also have eDrawings, or something like that. After we make a part we can import the dimensions and the part itself as a 2D drawing like below.




So, I guess that's about it from me about SolidWorks for now. Here's some cool links for more information on this nifty software program.

Main Site: http://www.solidworks.com/
Blog: http://gabijack.com/
Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolidWorks