[Collin Stiers]

I have no experience directly with solid works, but I have used autodesk inventor a lot. In that what I have found works best is learning by doing. When i learned CAD through a course at my school it was pretty much "here's the toolkit, here's projects, do them" This was a full year course, so we had plenty of time to mess around, and it seems that you may not have that time. If you primarily use sheet metal, the Sketching tools/ 2D design tools seem like they would be the most useful, once you get the design draw out most of the work is done. Another thing I would recommend is having the people who make the CAD's be the same people who make the designs, it's much easier to get something from your head into CAD than it is to have to try and have the designers communicate to the CADers and potentially have something lost in that process.