Free Solidworks?

[animus_nero]

Hello, my name is Nero--I guess you could say that I am new to Chief Delphi.

In the past, we've mainly used pen & paper for our designs, despite the fact that we have a fully-equipped CAD lab in our school. We've decided to integrate CAD/CAM/CAE into our engineering process next year.

I've spoken with our CAD teacher, and he recommended we use SolidWorks.

A quick search on Chief Delphi yielded this http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=57957.

Apparently Autodesk offered a student edition free to FIRST teams two years ago.

Is this still available?
If not, can my team procure a free copy somewhere else?

Additionally, are there any online tutorials or training exercises offered on the net?
Which would you recommend?

Thanks in advance.

P.S. We would be using our CAD lab's software, but unfortunately relations between our Head Coach and our CAD teacher are...strained at best

[Cory]

Originally Posted by animus_nero

Hello, my name is Nero--I guess you could say that I am new to Chief Delphi.

In the past, we've mainly used pen & paper for our designs, despite the fact that we have a fully-equipped CAD lab in our school. We've decided to integrate CAD/CAM/CAE into our engineering process next year.

I've spoken with our CAD teacher, and he recommended we use SolidWorks.

A quick search on Chief Delphi yielded this http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=57957.

Apparently Autodesk offered a student edition free to FIRST teams two years ago.

Is this still available?
If not, can my team procure a free copy somewhere else?

Additionally, are there any online tutorials or training exercises offered on the net?
Which would you recommend?

Thanks in advance.

P.S. We would be using our CAD lab's software, but unfortunately relations between our Head Coach and our CAD teacher are...strained at best

Send a private message to Marie Planchard. She works for Solidworks and distributes free educational licenses to FIRST teams.

[EricH]

I think you've got something confused here.

Autodesk Inventor is typically provided to FRC teams for free.

Solidworks is not made by Autodesk. It is made by DSM Solidworks. It is also usually available to FRC teams at a very low cost, if it isn't free.

Inventor =/= Solidworks, though if you know one, the other is fairly easy to pick up.

[marccenter]

During the FIRST World Championship conference in Atlanta in April a few boxes of the Solidworks student versions were handed out on Thursday around noon during the Chief Delphi Web Hug.One box contained a bunch of student copies. I know this doesn't help you right now, but you may benefit from this information next year if the same thing happens again.

[animus_nero]

@Cory

Sent her a message, I guess we will see...

@EricH

Ah, thanks for clearing that up.

I've taken a look at inventor, doesn't seem to be as robust or "feature-saturated" as SolidWorks.

Where is the program offered at discounted rates?

@marccenter

Hmm...

Hopefully I'll remember this next year.

Thanks for the timely responses--to be honest I was a bit surprised

[Andrew Schreiber]

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/educati...cs-contest.htm may be of some interest to you. Not sure about much more than that. 397 has traditionally used UG but I personally use a student edition of SolidWorks.

My suggestion, if you cannot get SolidWorks for free I would use Inventor, most teams have a free license of if and for most applications it is more than adequate.

[Joe_Widen]

http://students.autodesk.com
If you have a college email, you can download many of autodesk's products from that site for free, granted its a student edition. I don't think very many people at all take advantage of it.

[rfolea]

Is there a CAD library for Solid Works that provides all of the FIRST KOP items like the FIRST Cad Library (http://www.firstcadlibrary.com/)

Or, better question, does Solidworks support any of those files types? (IGES, STEP, SAT, INV)?

(Apologies for the stupid questions -I'm a software mentor that is trying to get some kids into this mechanical CAD stuff)

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Originally Posted by rfolea

Is there a CAD library for Solid Works that provides all of the FIRST KOP items like the FIRST Cad Library (http://www.firstcadlibrary.com/)

Or, better question, does Solidworks support any of those files types? (IGES, STEP, SAT, INV)?

(Apologies for the stupid questions -I'm a software mentor that is trying to get some kids into this mechanical CAD stuff)

http://www.3dcontentcentral.com/default.aspx
Most KOP models are there in a multitude of formats along with lots of vex parts.
Here's the link right to those parts, since they can be a pain to find.
http://www.3dcontentcentral.com/part...brary/140.aspx

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Jeff Rodriguez

http://www.3dcontentcentral.com/default.aspx
Most KOP models are there in a multitude of formats along with lots of vex parts.
Here's the link right to those parts, since they can be a pain to find.
http://www.3dcontentcentral.com/part...brary/140.aspx

Originally Posted by rfolea

Is there a CAD library for Solid Works that provides all of the FIRST KOP items like the FIRST Cad Library (http://www.firstcadlibrary.com/)

Or, better question, does Solidworks support any of those files types? (IGES, STEP, SAT, INV)?

(Apologies for the stupid questions -I'm a software mentor that is trying to get some kids into this mechanical CAD stuff)

Jeff's suggestion is the easiest, since you can get the files already in SolidWorks format. However SW will import STEP files from FIRST Cad Library just fine (although they will lack the "meta data", such as material, density, etc).

[ttldomination]

Thread Bump. .

Animus_Nero, were you able to get a free version of Solidworks from somewhere?

On an older thread, http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=57957 , it is said that we can just email SolidWorks requesting software and they'll happily give us some...