Career Archives - Page 10 of 11

SWUGN Summit San Jose coming up quick!

If you are in the Northern California area, you’ve may have already seen an email from one of the SolidWorks User Groups about the upcoming SWUGN Technical Summit at the Embassy Suites in Milpitas. SWUGN Technical Summits are day-long SolidWorks based conferences scheduled about once a month at different locations throughout North America. Each summit generally offers the choice of 10 sessions within 5 time slots. Each session offers a detailed look at particular SolidWorks related topics which are geared towards all levels of experience. The San Jose summit is on March 23, 2010 and will feature presentations by SolidWorks Product Managers, local independent SolidWorks and VAR experts. Among the presenters are a couple of first-timers, Gabi Jack (Bay Area) and Alex Ruiz (driving up from SoCal). I’ll be presenting a session on advanced customization techniques. If you’d like to see a particular customization topic covered in my session, leave a comment here. Right now, I plan to talk about customization of hole callouts, Hole Wizard holes, Shortcut Tool, Mouse Gestures, and Sheet Metal Gage Tables. (I’m also thinking about the Custom Properties Tab Builder, but that is a topic all to its own, so I may save that for another time.)

The cost to attend the SWUGN Technical Summit is only $40. This is a bargain by almost any measure. Similar types of conferences can cost $800 or more. Check out the SWUGN Technical Summit website for session details and registration.

OK, and now for some fun. At the San Jose summit on March 23, 2010, the first person to come up to me and says “SolidWorks Legion is awesome, dude” will earn a free CSWP test of their choice (does not include the new CSWE test). The second person who says that line to me will earn a free SolidWorks hot-cold insulated mug. Don’t try to be the first person and repeating the line twice. 🙂 Also, SolidWorks employees, VAR employees and other presenters are not eligable to earn these items.

Real Rewards program has ended

At the SolidWorks World 2008, there was an announcement of a program that would reward users for bringing in new customers. Though this program involved more than one facet, the spearhead effort appeared via their Real Rewards website. Real Rewards gave rewards to individuals who submitted the emails of their colleagues. These colleagues would then be given the opportunity to receive a free trail of SolidWorks. If SolidWorks was purchased as a result of the referral, the user would receive one of various rewards. The first tier was a box full of goodies. The second tier (for two successful referrals) was a sound system. The third tier was an all-in-one HP printer/copier/fax/scanner. I believe the fourth tier was a fancy monitor. For five successful referrals, the reward was a middle of the road computer.

Due to my previous articles, I submitted over 100 referrals (all of which were requested by commenting on my blog). Out of those, there was 2 actual sales. This is actually more than I expected. Though a modest success for me, the program was not so successful overall. According to Bill Taylor of SolidWorks Corp., the volume of participation was very low. Though SolidWorks did conduct market research with promising results before starting this program, they found that participation was no where near expectations.

So the program ended in mid-2009. Unfortunately, the Real Rewards website was not taken down until December 2009. This means that I was merrily submitting a few requests for trial copies that never received a response.

There are new offers available from SolidWorks Corp. There is an education trial version of SolidWorks which is available for students. Also, a recent discount program was selling SolidWorks Premium practically for half price. Check out the SolidWorks website for current offers.

Stump the Chumps submission form

See if you can stump the chumps with your SolidWorks questions at our session in SolidWorks World 2010:

Stump the Chumps question submission form

Also, if you have files to submit as part of your question, please email your question and files to stumpthechumps@gmail.com.

SolidWorks is easy to learn

Based on my recent unscientific research, SolidWorks seems like it is an easy application to learn. In one poll, I asked for preference of educational choices for new employees not familiar with SolidWorks. A second poll asked how current users actually learned SolidWorks. The results are a little surprizing.

Of the respondents to the first poll, just slightly over 50% said they would teach SolidWorks to new employees on the job by mentoring them. Just under 50% said they would send their employee to VAR classes.

In the second poll, the overwhelming majority stated that they are self-taught in the use of SolidWorks. Some questions comes to mind. If SolidWorks is so easy to learn, do the VAR classes serve any purpose? Or, is it that the VAR classes are so ineffective that one is forced to learn on their own?

My own experience in sending new employees to VAR taught introductory SolidWorks classes have yielded mixed results. They do not seem effective in many cases. In fact, the VAR classes actually seem to be turning off some individuals to the use of SolidWorks. It may be that there is just too much information crammed into the short 3 to 5 day courses.

SolidWorks is easy enough to learn without classes. Classes should simply be used to provide a head start. Instead, in some cases they seem to have the opposite effect. Maybe the classes need to be broken down a bit. Perhaps the introductory class can take a slower pace and focus on core skills over the 3 days. Then, more complex skills can be taught in an intermediate class over another 3 days. (The current advanced classes offered by VARs would likely remain the same.)

How did you learn SolidWorks?

In a previous article, I recently asked for the opinions of others about the best methods to train new employees for SolidWorks. So far, the response is split between “on the job training with a mentor” and “VAR taught introductory courses”. This is a bit of a surprize given the emphasis placed on VAR based training these days. Do others question of the value of VAR training? Is it effective? Or, is VAR training just not worth the costs or the time away from work? My own experience is that VAR training classes do not necessarily give the best benefit to new users.

The responses made me curious about something else. How did current SolidWorks users learn the software?

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Value of training options for SolidWorks

For me, SolidWorks was a fairly easy application to learn. In fact, I am self-taught for the most part. I learned it progressively over a couple of months because it was necessary for my jobs and I had to do it. That was over a decade ago. These days, that may not be an acceptable option. Users often need to hit the ground running. Not every situation is the same. Even still, I’ve created a new poll to get the opinions of others. Imagine you have a new hirer at your company for a position that required the use of SolidWorks, but they don’t have experience with the software. How would you handle that?

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