Are You A CAD Specialist?

[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.