In my previous life as a CAD Designer, SOLIDWORKS Simulation training was always something that was super intimidating. I remember sitting in meetings with Quality Engineers asking me if I can run different studies on the parts for them and immediately shaking my head no and pushing the project to someone else in my department. Whenever someone asked if I wanted to learn about it, for some reason I always thought it would be way over my head and declined. Now as a Solutions Consultant at TriMech, I had the opportunity to actually sit in a class taught by one of our Elite AE’s and it was an awesome experience.
What I learned in SOLIDWORKS Simulation Training
The SOLIDWORKS Simulation class was a three-day long event where our days were split between lectures and actual hands-on use of the program. The lessons built off one another and I learned so much about not only how to simply set up a Simulation Study, but also why we do some of the things we do, and a lot of best practices for making sure our studies give us the results we need from them.
Before taking the class, when someone said model meshes, I knew it had something to do with triangles, but after day one I felt like I had a much better understanding of not only what a mesh is, but also what a tetrahedral is, and what to look out for when creating a model. Knowing how these meshes work will impact all my future design intent on any CAD model I make going forward.
Another part of the class I found incredibly interesting was learning how SOLIDWORKS Simulation works with different SOLIDWORKS file types. There are a lot of different types of designs you can create in SOLIDWORKS. Of course your team might have a common standard part file that uses extrusions and fillets, but you also might be working with thin-walled parts, or maybe you work with welded structures so you’re constantly designing with Weldments. Simulation works with all of these different designs, and the Simulation class not only talks about them but lets you test out example parts of many different scenarios. I haven’t even mentioned the deep dive we did on running simulations on assemblies, which was another large part of what we learned.
I wish I could go back a few years ago and say yes to SOLIDWORKS simulation training because it really is an awesome product. It’s not over my head and anyone can learn the basics with a little help from a good instructor. I thoroughly enjoyed the class, and highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to get their feet wet in the Simulation world.
