Can any of you Solidworks practitioners out there advise me on any good sources of tutorials, such as Teach yourself Solidworks ( if it is any good ).
My son has packed in the engineering work for pastures new and given me his Solidworks 2006. Damned sporting what?
I have seen items produced by Flackmonkey and others and would like to learn to drive this software. Make a nice change from the crayons.
So any pointers would be appreciated.
Oh, I need to do it at home, so college is out.

Solidworks 2006 comes with a handful of "online" tutorials that can be accessed through the help menu. They are really good for learning some of the basics, and working through them in order will give you a rough idea of what ispossible, and how to go about constructing basic models. AS you progress through them, some of the more advanced features are demonstrated.

The other thing that is worth doing once you have got to grips with the basics, is trying to get hold of some existing models that have been created by other people. Because the history (i.e. commands and features used to construct the model) are saved withing the model, you can "scroll" throught the history, seeing how the model was constructed. Being able to rollback the model to various points, is a great aid for learning how to construct more complicated stuff from basic commands too.

The other thing that is worth a read if you can beg/borrow/steal a copy is the "Solidworks for Dummies" book. It is not bad at explaining various tools and features, and demonstrating modelling techniques. It will more often than not be slightly out of date, as Soildworks release service packs liek they are going out of fashion!

Have you got any idea what sort of work you are wanting to do? Or is it just a case of learning how to drive SW2006, and then seeing what takes your fancy?

I hope that helps, if you want any more specific advice, give me a shout. I use SW2006 in my paying job, and am the company training/help guy, so if you need any more help, I'd be glad to advise (I was going to say for a small fee, but that's a bit cheeky!)

Cheers
Andy

PS. just noticed you are in Anglesey... I work in Bangor!

[Edited on 9/7/06 by bigandy]

Bigandy,
Thanks for the advice.
I don't have anything specific in mind, just loads of car bits. I just thought it would be something to keep the brain from turning to porridge now that I have retired.
I always wanted to be a technical illustrator, but by the time I found out about the possibility of going to art college, I had signed my indentures.
The main question that springs to mind is "Will my computer be up to the challenge?". I have an AMD Athlon 1.25 gig, with half a gig of ram. I assume that I would need a sh1t hot graffics card as well as a shed load of ram. So may have to aquire a new machine first. What spec machine would I need to make this work properly?
Cheers for the help,
John.

HI John,

You'll probably find that your machine will run SW2006, although it will be abit on the slow side, especially when you get to modelling something with more than a couple of features in, or looking into assemblies with more than a couple of simple parts.

The graphics card thing is not as important as you might think. The basic display modes will work on a fairly average Graphics card, If you have one that supports OpenGL, that would speed things up slightly. It is more important for the graphics card to have more processing power than memory too. The memory on graphics cards is good for storing texture data, but not much use when you have to calculate where edges and shadows need to be in real time. The Solidworks website will give a list of graphics cards that are approved and tested to be 100% compatible, and if you want to use some more advanced graphics modes (such as REalview, where the model is effectively "rendered" on the fly, and needs a pretty powerful graphics card).

When it comes to machine specs, then it is a case of what do you want to do? For basic modelling, simple assemblies and fairly small model filesizes, you don't need such an advanced machine. My home PC runs SW2006 fine for smaller assemblies, and that is a AMD athlon xp2800 runnig at 1.24Ghz, with 1Gb ram, and a radeon 9600 Gfx card. This will quite happily cope with a model of a Wren model gas turbine engine (which isn't 100% complete mind).

Having said that, the workstation I use at work has got 4Gb ram, and a beast of an intel processor, along with a ratehr expensive graphics card. At work I am routinely working on rather large assemblies with hundreds of compoenents and some pretty complex models.

The point I am trying to make anyway, is that for starting out, you might get away with using what you already have. (try it. if it runs really slowly, or keeps crashing, or the graphics are rubbish, and missing bits) then you will know your PC needs a bit of an update. If you are looking to buy a new PC, then you should probably buy the best you can afford now, to ensure it lasts as long as possible. You should be looking for a minimum of 1Gb ram, and a mid to top line processor.

Basically, the more complex the model, the more processor power that is needed. The bigger the model (in terms of number of components, and complexity of parts) the more memory you will need. As for graphics cards, then I woulkd recommend a SW2006 compatible one (see there website). The problem is that the cheaper GFx cards, are often not compatible, and result in lines dissapearing, and other weird problems, which is annoying!

I think the bottom line is that you can spend a fortune on hardware, but if you are just tinkering, you really don't need to. A mid range home PC will run SW2006 fine, but it is worth getting a compatible Gfx card (and maybe more memory!).

Hope that helps
Andy

PS. link to solidworks website and graphics cards: http://www.solidworks.co.uk/pages/services/VideoCardTesting.html

Link to minimum/recommend system requirements: http://www.solidworks.co.uk/pages/services/SystemRequirements.html

Andy,
You are a star! Nay, a scholar and a gentleman.
Sorry to take up so much of your weekend free time. The help is really appreciated.
I guess I will have a play and see what happens. I should get the Solidworks this week, God willing and if the creek don't rise. I am quite looking forward to it now.
It will be interesting to see if an old dog can learn new tricks.
Cheers for all that. It is greatly appreciated.
You said you work in Bangor. I thought I was all alone out here. Although a guy that works on the other side of the island in Valley has a Westie. I know one guy has a GT40 somewhere on the island. God if it was mine I'd lick it clean!

Thanks once again.
Regards,
John.

[Edited on 9/7/06 by Confused but excited.]

The only real issue with your machine spec may be the graphics card.

I had to replace the old Elsa Gloria with a current nVidia Quadro card, to get the thing to operate properly over longer periods. The Quadro was probably a bit ott, but the achine flies now.

Cheers,
Syd.

No worries! It's good to be able to help every now and again!

Like I say, if you have any more queries, or need some advice/help with anything Solidworks, give me a shout.

Syd is right about a decent graphics card though. The point I was trying to make was that you don't absolutley require a top end gfx card to run fairly basic models. However, when you get on to more complex stuff, it does make a hell of a difference. The compatability charts on the SW website (I linked in a previous post) will show you what gfx cards have been tested, and any limitations that they may have...

If you do decide to buy a new PC, give me a shout and I'll run the exact spec past our work CAD providers, as I'm certain that they offer a hardware compatability check or something that verifies if the machine will have an issues with runnning solidworks or not...

Cheers
Andy

Cheers for the input guys.
I looked at the recommended graphics cards as specified. Very reasonably priced I thought ( he said, lying his arse off ). They were scary! However I have now found a source of recommended cards within my budget constraints. So who knows. I will have to get a new machine though, as I got conned when I bought this one. It was very low priced for the spec and I thought that I had found a bargain. When I opened it up to see what graphics card had been installed, guess what. It hasn't got one! Just one mother board with everything built on. The only upgrade that I can do is add more RAM.
You'd think I'd have more sense at my age wouldn't you? Caveat emptor or what!
THERE AIN'T NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH!
Pappy always said the expensive lessons are the ones you remember best.
It's not all bad news though. My mate has just phoned to see if I want to buy his machine as he is upgrading ( he works for Atos and does web sites in his spare time ), it has a better spec than mine ( I know this one is OK because he built it), for the princely sum of £75 including a 17" monitor. How is that for coincidence?
So this should give me a challenge and keep me happy/frustrated during the long winter nights.
Thanks to Syd for taking the time to give the advice.
Thanks to Andy for all the help, I won't bother you unless I am absolutely desperate.
Is this a brilliant forum or what? I am continually suprised at the levels of skill and competence in so many different disciplines displayed on this forum.
Cheers guys,
John.