Nowadays, it’s not hard to find a college student or recent graduate with SOLIDWORKS experience. That’s no surprise. But what is surprising to most members of industry, both rookie and veteran, is just how young some students are when they make their first sketch, create their first extrude and finish their first part using SOLIDWORKS.

No, I’m not talking college students here–I’m talking about High School, and even kids as early as 9 years old. So why are these future designers and engineers even using SOLIDWORKS?

This can be credited to many dedicated teachers and mentors involved with programs like FIRST. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an organization that helps to inspire our future designers and engineers to pursue careers in Science, Engineering and Technology. They are most known for the high school FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), however, there are many other competitions for children starting as early as age 6.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of serving as a judge for the 2014 South Florida Regional. Never before was I surrounded by so many bright young minds who were so inspired and enthusiastic about Science and Engineering.

So how does SOLIDWORKS fit in to all of this? The main goal of this post is to share all of the resources that SOLIDWORKS makes available to students, teachers, and mentors involved with FIRST and countless other programs. The most important thing to note is that every student participating in FIRST and many other student design contests can have their very own license of SOLIDWORKS. Just follow this link and every single team member can get her or his own license of SOLIDWORKS.

For each competition, an FRC team is given a Kit of Parts (KOP). SOLIDWORKS posts SOLIDWORKS models of this KOP, which is made available to every FRC team. The KOP can be downloaded here.

But it doesn’t stop there. Through the SOLIDWORKS Customer Portal, you can find full curriculum and lessons plans for not just FIRST but SAE as well as many other student projects.

Oh and did I mention that you can download a SOLIDWORKS model for the entire FRC playing field? Check out 3D Content Central to get these files.

The resources and content is out there and readily available. Ask TriMech for these files and you can help to inspire a student to pursue a career in STEM, create an award winning first place robot or give a student their very own seat of SOLIDWORKS.

Interested in learning more about how technology and education work together? Check out our education page.