How to train students in SolidWorks

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Chris Endres

No matter how much time you take to "teach" (I presume everyone sits down in a room and goes over a topic), not everyone will retain the information or be able able to demonstrate their skills effectively.

The way I learned was by watching upperclassmen design for hours on end and by practicing whenever I had the chance. The best time to learn CAD is by practicing, I started by designing and building an FTC robot for 2013, then I moved up to drive bases, then to more complex assemblies like swerve.

The past few years, I have logged over 1000 hours of leisure CAD, that is just sitting down and designing whatever I thought of. By doing this, I learn something new almost every project.

So overall, it would be a good idea to show students the basics and good practices, then set them free.

Our advanced mechanical class is currently designing FRC sized robots to play (a scaled version) of the VEX Nothing but Net game, I can tell they are all learning a lot.

As a fellow graduate of the "watch upperclassmen and then try it myself" school, I suppose I'm a bit biased when it comes to thinking this works well.

There are a couple of schools to teaching CAD, I find: One is the "learn CAD as a program, as can be applied to all sorts of projects", and the other is "learn how to CAD robots for competition". It's a good idea to ask yourself and your team which camp you're in. It's a common issue I find in a lot of materials external to FRC-- sure, I can now create a helix cut with parametric pitch and depth, but how can I actually CAD a robot? How do I import parts from McMaster/VexPro/AndyMark/etc? What's the fastest way to CAD the chassis our team is most comfortable with?

Online programs are lovely for getting a grasp on CAD theory, but effectively modeling in six weeks (or three days) is a different beast, and it requires not necessarily the broad knowledge the tutorials will give you, but more in depth knowledge of specific features and practical concerns that come up in FRC. It's important to balance the two in any curriculum for teaching students, and I think that a mix of one-on-one teaching and extracurricular experimentation is a good way to get that mix in FRC. The one-on-one part can be useful in teaching the less common/more specific tools for FRC, and the personal experimentation can help broaden your horizons.

I think one of the biggest things to make sure every student coming in knows is that learning CAD is not easy. This is professional grade software that takes a lot of time to learn well, and you need to be willing to put in that time to be ready for build season and work afterwards. Showing up for an hour or two for a few weeks before build season is not going to put your team in a position to use CAD effectively or help you actually learn how to use the software.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by cadandcookies

There are a couple of schools to teaching CAD, I find: One is the "learn CAD as a program, as can be applied to all sorts of projects", and the other is "learn how to CAD robots for competition". It's a good idea to ask yourself and your team which camp you're in. It's a common issue I find in a lot of materials external to FRC-- sure, I can now create a helix cut with parametric pitch and depth, but how can I actually CAD a robot? How do I import parts from McMaster/VexPro/AndyMark/etc? What's the fastest way to CAD the chassis our team is most comfortable with?

Online programs are lovely for getting a grasp on CAD theory, but effectively modeling in six weeks (or three days) is a different beast, and it requires not necessarily the broad knowledge the tutorials will give you, but more in depth knowledge of specific features and practical concerns that come up in FRC.

I completely agree with this sentiment; in the short time that one is in FRC, they have to learn how to design for FRC well, not just learn how to use the CAD program.
I learned by practicing CAD on my own more than anything. I think that that's the surest way to be proficient in thinking for yourself and being confident in your ability to CAD.
That being said, I'm definitely going to recommend the RAMP videos along with some of the others posted here for teaching with next year. To get people started in CAD, before they are familiar with SW tools, I feel like those types of tutorials would be perfect.

[Chris is me]

Teaching people how to use CAD tools decently takes a couple of lessons over a few weeks. Teaching people best practices takes longer. Teaching people how to actually do detailed design for FRC takes far longer, and really requires several years' experience to get okay at it.

Honestly, doing full CAD of a robot isn't something a few students are going to be able to do with 2 or 3 weeks experience in a class. For a lot of teams that have some mentor involvement, a good approach can be to gradually transition over a few years to a student detail designed robot rather than teaching and letting them go for it cold. The first year, have the students do design work high level through prototyping and sketching concepts, but have mentors do the gritty detailed work of actually drawing and assembling the parts. Second year, as you get more of a chance to teach the students, have them start making brackets, plates, smaller assemblies, etc. while reserving mission critical designs like gearboxes and system integration to the mentors. Third year you can really get close to a full transition with mentors playing more of a design management role. The key here is that even when mentors do CAD work, students need to be involved - at the very least do some modeling on a projector so students can see and comment.

Obviously said approach does not work for every situation and every team, and some don't like that level of mentor involvement, but I don't think you can really go from zero to full robot CAD in students in just 1 season. I'd love to be proven wrong - please tell me what you do if you accomplish this so I can learn how to better inspire students.

Also, watch 973 RAMP. Everything they've ever released. The ratio of valuable information taught to time invested in watching the videos is through the roof. I think 973 RAMP had possibly the biggest impact of any one thing on the design / CAD habits of my old team.

[Chris Endres]

Originally Posted by cadandcookies

There are a couple of schools to teaching CAD, I find: One is the "learn CAD as a program, as can be applied to all sorts of projects", and the other is "learn how to CAD robots for competition". It's a good idea to ask yourself and your team which camp you're in. It's a common issue I find in a lot of materials external to FRC-- sure, I can now create a helix cut with parametric pitch and depth, but how can I actually CAD a robot? How do I import parts from McMaster/VexPro/AndyMark/etc? What's the fastest way to CAD the chassis our team is most comfortable with?

AMEN. I see so many tutorials with pointless (well, equation driven spur gears are not pointless) parts that have nothing to do with FRC. Just make sure everything is focused on FRC purposes for the best use of time.

[Munchskull]

As a self taught SolidWorks users I have trouble figuring out how teach freshmen from the beginning. It is even harder to teach the concept of design to freshmen to the point where they would be competent enough to design competitive parts and assemblies.

[LuukVoesten4481]

We use the 12 tutorials designed by SolidWorks BeNeLux. These tutorials guide you step by step through the software and after these tutorials our students are ready to take the CSWA exam. All of our mechanical students have certified themselves during pre-buildingseason so we know that they understand all the basic functions you need to design a complete robot in SolidWorks.

[Fields]

My experience with training.

Learned a bit in collage- Catia
Changed to AutoDesk at my first job and had to completely self teach for 5 years. Needless to say I got pretty good with that much time.
Switched to Solidworks at my current job and the transition wasn't too bad. Took about a month to relearn/remake some hotkeys. This was right about the time the rest of the company was starting to transition to Solidworks. A year later we started formal classroom training.

After the first class I went back and deleted all my hotkeys and shortcuts! On purpose.

There are two things I'm getting at here.
1) No matter if you do self taught or class room, I highly recommend redoing the basics a year out to see what you missed the first time. I was bored out of my mind but it really cleaned up some bad practices I didn't realize I picked up form tutorials and youtube.

2) DO try to go though the Solidworks Essentials book/class. Solidworks has been around longer than many of have been alive. Some actions that seem silly or cumbersome, have actually been really thought out and is more robust and faster in the long run.

BTW there are a number of places that will teach students the essential class for free.

[s1900ahon]

From a motivation perspective we've found a couple of things help.

First, the students must understand (discover) the value of using SolidWorks (or other). 1) Easier to explain something with a picture than with words (especially as they're learning the lingo and most can't sketch worth beans), and 2) They figure out they can assemble something virtually faster than physically (I won't even go into how quick it is to "cut" a hole in a SolidWorks part compared to using the edge finder on the mill). So *why* do CAD starts the motivation, and I've found to keep out of the way of a motivated high schooler.

Second, when you have a core of enlightened and motivated students, turn them loose on their peers. This is exactly what happened this summer as our students regularly met at the school or public libraries to teach themselves the material. Awesome to see. If you'd like more details, contact LCJ who led this effort.

[philso]

Originally Posted by asid61

in the short time that one is in FRC, they have to learn how to design for FRC well, not just learn how to use the CAD program.

It seems that many people do not realize that these are two very different skills. This would include people who use CAD in their day jobs and people who manage people who use CAD in their day jobs. Knowing how to use a CAD program is analogous to knowing how to use a word processor. Being able to design well is analogous to being able to write like Shakespeare. It is probably more important to identify and develop team members who can design well.


made correction to analogy