There’s nothing like an impromptu SolidWorks test to get the blood pumpin’. Especially for the job candidate or new hire you spring it on. Strikes the fear of insane modeling practices in them, it does. Plus, it will show you if their completely incompetent or if they just need an extra helping of SolidWorks training up side the head. We have just the test for them here, available for download should you ever need it.
*Spoiler Alert!* I divulge a little of what’s behind the test down below. If you want to take a look at the test before hand, you can download it now.
SolidWorks Design and Engineering Test
Really, there’s nothing to testing someone’s knowledge on SolidWorks. You can throw out any obscure questions on menu options or creating derived feature patterns and find out pretty quick if that person can jack up a top-down assembly properly. This test is more about understanding methodology and the engineering process that may go along with it. In this case, we’re looking at a small assembly, a magazine rack.
The SolidWorks Model Test
The model test is pretty specific to a certain way of modeling assemblies. It’s created top down, but also driven by a parent sketch. A little sneaky, but shows if some one knows their way around the model and how to think in those terms.
The Engineering Test
The engineering portion of the test is nothing dramatic. It’s one sheet with a few questions that gauges a person’s knowledge about designing with manufacturing. It covers points like nominal diameters of fasteners and building in tolerance and you get to throw them for a curve by asking the to write out the maximum stress for a beam in pure bending.
There are many ways to test out someone’s proficiency in SolidWorks. What do you do? What would you add to this one?
