1st Gen Lunchtable Thread - General Discussion

SolidWorks is fairly intuitive really, bet you can find loads of good intro courses on YouTube. It's pretty much industry standard for mechanical and structural stuff so lots use it. I took a few courses in High School, one nice thing about SolidWorks is that it builds on its features but generally doesn't change its old ones dramatically or remove any, so even if you learn from a tutorial that's older it'll still fully apply.

 

I figured as much. I feel id prefer a traditional course style learning curve with it but Youtube University is always clutch. That's one reason I wish i would have pursued Mechanical instead of Petro though.

 

I'd be willing to bet there's a university or two that publish the course work publicly. You could probably follow along, I can show you how to get SW2024 for free.

 

I thought Solidworks had links to tutorials on their site?

I only say that cause I think I recall seeing a list of links when I had last downloaded SW.

 

They have a pretty robust help and support document section. Pretty much every tool or feature has a good write up but like actually figuring out when and how to implement the tools is kinda up to the user. It won't tell you what tools to use to make a part, it'll just give you a list of tools and how to use the tools.

 

That's what it was

I remember my download included every application they offer, so there was a plethora of tutorials available which was overwhelming at first glance

 

I don't know of any off hand, but a big advantage to going with a real course would be software access.
As a student you should get like a year of free access, vs if you're just doing it through youtube university you'll probably have to buy yourself a full personal license which is like $3k.

 

You can pretty easily get the SEK version (2 years) free any time you want, lots of Unis and Colleges publish their keys publicly and they're not seat based so they don't notice when randos take up a license.

 

I'm intrigued

 

I'll PM you later

 

And actually now that I'm looking around, they offer a "Makers" subscription for $15/mo or $48/year
https://www.solidworks.com/solution/solidworks-makers

 

That's the cloud based version, sacrilege

 

The 3DEXPERIENCE version at least has a full install and CAM

 

You haz milling/plasma/laser?

 

no
one day though

 

I used to be much more skilled at it and have lost those skills with the years. I can whip up the tools I need for work pretty easy. Weldements was my bread and butter for years, even did some advanced stuff with FlowSim for modeling thermal characteristics in airflows. Forgot most of it now.

But solid works is very powerful and very intuitive once you understand how it operates. I would use free resources to learn the basics. If you want to go beyond that there are places that will train you further, it's what I did. Usually working professionals to sharpen their skills.

 

CNC mill

 

Lets go in on one, I got $100 if you can cover the rest

 

It's on my wants for the future, even if it is a CNC adapted knee mill, that would do more than I need and still be multifunction

 

SURE THING