How To Learn More About SolidWorks In Less Time

solidworks-tips I know you woke up this morning just rearin’ to be an overachiever that knows absolutely everything possible about solid modeling and then how it relates to the molting season of yaks. All I can tell you is that yaks molt once a year and the wool is woven into blankets and tents. Also, the smell, not that great. So with that out of the way on to solid modeling.

Cause learning is fun
Learning about a new SolidWorks feature can be fun, especially when it helps you improve your design and the time it takes to do it; Figuring out how to go about learning new features is kinda like gathering smelly yak fur, not fun.

There’s books and training courses which are good when you have a bit of time to go through them, but to ramp up on some features even quicker and throw complete understanding to the wind, there’s three things you can do right away to learn more about SolidWorks in the least amount of time.

Break it
Try to anyway. What are the extents of what SolidWorks and your hardware can handle? How many patterns of a pattern of a revolved spline can you create before SolidWorks locks up? How long can you make something? How many bends can you put in a single sheet metal piece?

Maybe it’s useless, but you get to know limitations and how the software works a little better.

Draw a Line
I like how simple SolidWorks can be amongst a lot of the more complicated functionality. Many times it’s hard to figure out where to start when you want to learn how something works. I’ll start a line and go from there. If I want to mess with learning more about sheet metal, I’ll head to the Sheet Metal Features and try everything I can with each one.

You can run in to roadblocks pretty dang quick trying to figure out a setting. That’s fine because it creates questions. Write them down and ask someone that knows a little more about what you’re trying to do.

Rollback through a part
This is by far the quickest way to learn how something is done. In the FeatureManager just use the rollback bar to go back to the first feature, look at the sketches and relations and see how it’s all laid out. Trade some parts back and forth with some colleagues and you’ll find one more way to learn different and better ways to do something. You’ll also find this is a great way to fix errors.

This is one of the first things someone that has some experience with SolidWorks will do to a part he didn’t build because it quickly shows what the person had in mind when creating it.

Here’s an example I enjoyed doing. It’s a door handle. Rollback through it, see how it was done. Let me know what you think about it or if there’s a better way to do it.
Download Door handle