Are You A CAD Specialist?

[Tcrump47]

I got into CAD 4 Years ago, when I was in 8th Grade. My mom worked for a Solidworks Reseller. I went into her office one day and met the Engineers because I was looking into being an Engineer. I knew at that point I loved Engineering and I had found my passion. One of the AE's introduced me into Solidworks, and I picked it up very quick. After that he invited me to take the Essentials Class. Boy was I happy. There was a room filled with 10+ engineers and me learning the software. The AE that was teaching the class talked to me after and he said I was doing better than he expected and that I was keeping up with the actual engineers. After that I took a few more classes. The beginning of 2013 I got my CSWA as a incoming Freshman of Highschool. I then had no clue what I wanted to do. Then my Sophomore year I was introduced into FRC and have been in it ever since.

[asid61]

Before high school, my dream was to become a marine biologist and study octopuses and mantis shrimp. But once I tried out the FRC team at my new high school, I was hooked in a matter of days. I quickly picked up skills in mechanical handwork, took a machining class, and researched electronics and microcontroller programming on my own. In my sophomore year, I started CADding more and more in an effort to bring the level of the team up by using advanced CAD techniques that we had not used in our 16-year history. But alas, that sophomore year ended in an immobile robot and barely getting into quarterfinals as an inbounder for 2014 (and as a 16-year old team!), destroying the team and myself in spirit. But those of us who continued on to the next year vowed to do better in the future and fix our lacking mechanical department, and so I embarked on a 2,000+ hour CAD journey to try and be the best at CAD that I possibly could be, and I think it was then that I decided that I wanted to be a mechanical engineer.
In the end, I don't think I fixed all the problems, or even most of them. With greater CAD and machining skills came greater complexity and more risks. 2015 had few problems design-wise and turned out to be my favorite and most effective bot, but by comparison 2016 was near-disaster. That being said, I greatly value the amount I've learned through repetitive CAD and reiteration, and not just getting suggestions and tips and answers from CD through the last 3 years (shoutout to the people who commented on my swerve drives in efforts to make them better ). Ultimately, I think the most valuable thing I learned from CAD is that it is the perfect tool for fleshing out ideas, and it taught be so much about the engineering process and thinking outside the box. My spatial skills and creativity have improved leaps and bounds due to CAD, and my experience with Solidworks is one that would be hard to match doing anything else. I'm planning on using CAD and learning more long into the future!

[niklas674]

At the start of my FRC journey, I was convinced that i wanted to be involved with mechanical work, but an opportunity was presented to me to operate our CNC's. Throught this is learned CAM software and a little bit of CAD. The true point of becoming a "CAD Specalist" came at the end of last year. Our long time design head graduated and i was voted in as the new design head. I then committed myself to becoming more skilled with CAD. I took on the project of designing and new offseason robot as well as competing in the F4 CADathon. These two events have really helped me hone my skills.

I look forward to doing robot design for the next couple of build seasons to come and see where we go with them.

[OccamzRazor]

I got started in 2004 using AutoCAD and Inventor in high school until I was introduced to SOLIDOWORKS, ProE/CREO in 2007. 587 used AutoCAD and Inventor while I was on the team so I got used to using it until I went to a university.

At first the learning curve was there for all of them but after I had used all three I settled on SOLIDWORKS as the tool of choice because it was faster, easier to use, and just as powerful if not more as the other choices especially if you are doing sheet metal or weldments.

I helped start my current team in 2010 and made SOLIDWORKS the tool of choice. After being a research assistant, graduating from UNCC, and working in manufacturing for a while I started teaching and consulting with my current employer using and selling SOLIDWORKS. FRC even helped me get this job because my boss knew about FRC because his daughter was on a local team.

I worked from the bottom up and got my Certified SOLIDWORKS Expert (CSWE) as well as my instructors certification which is fairly difficult to accomplish for most users. (Less than 1% of all users have a CSWE) I contribute this to FRC and starting early!

FRC taught me CAD and CAD made me successful enough to land a pretty sweet job at a younger age. I now pass this on yearly to the FRC students in all of the teams in the area.