Last year I put a lot of effort into improving my solidworks skills. Some of what I say will apply to any modeling software and some will be solidworks specific.
Doing product design – your 3D modeling skills are critical, useful at every stage from early ideation to finalizing documentation. The 3D model is at the heart of what you create, and the central source of what you communicate. With its role so central, this skill is a high leverage point to improve your skill set and deliver value in your company.
Most people who learn 3D modeling have some formal training combined with a lot of practical experience. The experience is essential, but more than just experience is required for mastery. 10 years using solidworks can be 10 years experience, or it can be 1 year of experience repeated 10 times. Purposeful learning is the difference between getting stuck in a rut and moving forward.
I think there are three main areas of improvement to go from decent to excellent. They are: 1) Design Intent, 2) Speed Hacks, and 3) Full Use of Features. It is possible to never explore these and still be a heavy solidworks user. However, each of these areas will magnify your efficiency and effectiveness.
Improved Design Intent
Capturing “design intent” means modeling in a way that creates not just the geometry but the intent behind it, for example modeling holes on center rather than 4″ from the edge. improving the design. Design intent allows the software to do smart things like respond to changes in the design. Getting good at this can save you hours and days of time when you get to the inevitable rev change(s). It also can allow you to easily create families of designs by modifying small variables rather than starting from scratch.
With a history based modeling software like solidworks, your output is not really the model, it is the design tree. Think of yourself not as a modeler but as a programmer. Your job is to create a “program” using the language of solidworks that will consistently rebuild and that meets your goals. This mindset allows you to make choices for a robust design that will be useful in the future.
Some important tools to explore for this are: reference planes, variables, equations, sketch relations (fully defined please), mirror, feature patterns (linear, circular, sketch based), envelopes, multi bodies, and feature options. Learn the ins and outs of these and when to use them appropriately. Some tools to use sparingly are fix, move face
Some severely underused tools in solidworks that dovetail with the programmer mentality is renaming features and organizing them in folders. Code without comments is crappy code. A clear feature tree is the equivalent of well documented code. It will help others (or yourself 5 months from now) understand why things were modeled a certain way and how to make changes in the future.
All of these best practices cost modeling time up front. Sometimes that isn’t worth it, but more often than not it is. It usually saves you far more time in the future. Also, with the appropriate speed hacks they can be faster in addition to being more robust.
Speed Hacks
There is the fast way and the slow way to use solidworks. The slow way is what we all learn first with a GUI – mouse clicks – hundreds of them, to navigate menus, select, confirm, etc. Not only does this take time but it opens you up to overuse injury.
The fast way is by taking advantage of the speed hacks built into the software, these are: mouse gestures, s key menu, hot keys, search bar, and macros.
Each of these has their place, though some are better than others.
Full Use of Features
Solidworks is a software package with a lot of features. There are almost always multiple ways to accomplish the same thing. Learn what all the tools on the ribbon do. Also sometime a new feature comes along that instantly saves a bunch of time (tab and slot for example) by automating a process. I recommend making a list of all the feature in the ribbon you don’t know how to use then learning a couple a week. I also recommend every yearly release, reading through the “what’s new” posts by the resellers to keep up with any new tools or improvements that could help you out.
Conclusion
Solidworks is multifaceted and powerful. It is easy to learn how to “just get it done” using the same tools over and over. Like having only a hammer, screwdriver, and pliers. By digging deep and purposefully learning the software, you use an entire garage worth of tools that will save you time and result in a better output.
Design intent, speed hacks, and using all the features are 3 specific areas I recommend for getting major gains in modeling productivity.
Resources
Below is a list of the resources I have found most helpful.
- Mastering Solidworks – book by Matt Lombard. This is hands down the most detailed book on solidworks. Matt does an excellent job at communicating all the ins and outs while keeping things approachable. All his books are good, though many are out of print.
- dezignstuff.com – blog by Matt Lombard. He writes on more than just CAD but has many jewels. Also created an excellent surfacing course.
- VAR blogs – the Value Added Resellers often have good blogs. Always worth checking out the list of features in the yearly release. GoEngineer, Javelin-Tech, TriMech are all onse I have used.
- Solidworks blog – tons of articles. Better for searching than for directly reading.
- YouTube – find the good channels to follow. There is a lot of junk as well. Excellent for finding a quick how to video on a specific technique.
- Solidworks forum – tons of good discussions.
- Solidworks tutorials – these are included within the software. Helpful for pure beginners or for rarely used sections of software. This is where I learned about DriveWorksXpress which allows you to automate part creation.
- Solidworks manual – you’ll often end up here after a google search. Don’t read it, use it like a dictionary to look things up.