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I'm going to be teaching design with SolidWorks in an engineering technology type program this winter.
I'm curious who else teaches it, and whether they have any comments.
I'm also curious if people who aren't necessarily instructors have any thoughts on things they wish they'd known at the beginning, things they wish others knew, things they think are important.
Finally, I'm interested in compiling a consensus on best practice, since it may do students a disservice to rely solely on my own opinions. But I think that's another thread.
Hi,
I've been keeping SW-courses since 2001. I create and maintain the material (about 120 pages inc. exercises for 3...4 days basic course) for the courses myself. I think what is most important is to give good basic skills. Everything is based on them. I mean you don't have to show what you can do with surface tools on basic course...But, tell that they do exist, so they can find and learn them later (or come back to take another course to learn more).
Also, what I find quite important is to show how you can modify the user interface...it makes work so much faster if the UI is customized...for example, I don't use Command Manager at all, because I found tools behind "S" are faster and I get more space for graphics.
Other important stuff (my opinion of course):
So, to get a good, clean start, some of the stuff should be "centralized" so that basic user can't/doesn't have to deal with them (just ends up with mess again, if everyone does what they feel is ok). There's always other more interesting stuff going on when you start using SW, but you should not forget to centralize...what you do at the beginning, can affect your (and others) work many years.
About consensus - there is no such thing :-) But you can always tell people that "this is just my opinion, and there might be better ways for other companies/products". Often, in real life, you just have to find out the consept for something what you're doing....and that might take time.
In every course, I also learn something new! So, be humble .-)
br
Markku
www.sloworks.fi