r/SolidWorks • u/greyatlas4290 • 2d ago
CAD Is this good enough for a beginner ?
I have started learning sw since a week and iam able to make some easy parts so far is there any way I can get better faster ?
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u/Excellent-Bad2343 2d ago
Good job, make sure to minimize feature tree usage so that your work is easy to track and revise (in case for dimension change and error debugging). For the first part, I think it’s possible within 14 features. Keep doing that, just remember that CAD is not the headache, it’s the why and how that matters most. Goodluck
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u/SadLittleWizard 2d ago edited 2d ago
Hold on, I gotta clarify this because thatt first phrase is the nightmare of many a designer. When you say "Minimize feature tree usage" you're not saying to have as few features as possible. I.e. shove as much data into sketches as you can... Right?
Edit: adding this because I'm about to get busy and won't be able to engage for awhile. Will probably forget to come back after that.
TL:DR - each sketch and feature should fulfil a single purpose, and display a single portion of design intent. Shoving many things into one sketch more often then not causes confusion on the design side of things, as well as can make the design intent fragile. A well organized FT is a robust FT and a robust FT will be easier to understand and modify when it is eventually passed from the original creator to other designers and engineers. That said, feature tress need to be well organized, or else they will be just as confusing as an over stuffed sketch. Use folders to organize features together that are all relevant to the same piece of design intent. I usually break my parts into 3-phases. Reference, Core Geometry and Refinement.
Reference Any reference datums (axis, planes, etc) that are not derived from your geometry should be kept at the top of the feature tree before any feature occurs. There are often sketches in here that drive the reference datums in a way that allows global variables to readily adjust design intent further down the road.
Core Geometry Core Geometry features should only have dependence on prior features as is necessary to maintain design intent. Avoid fillets, chamfers and drafts during the core geometry phase. When you finish your core geometry your part should looked like what would be made if manufacturing had no limitations.
Refinement Fillets, Chamfers and Draft are the big ones here. These features usually serve two purposes. First, breaking edges so they aren't so harsh on human hands. Second and most importantly, altering your core geometry such that they can actually be manufactured. Fillets fit square corners to ball end mills, draft is nessesary for mold release.
By organizing your feature three this way, you keep 90% of your future adjustments within the Core Geometry folder. If built well very few things in the Core Geometry folder will ever break unless you are making impactful alterations to your design intent. Instead the only things that will break will be your refinement features, which is often just reselecting edges and faces rather than the mess that broken sketches can be. On top of that, when you pass your parts along to other designers and engineers the intent and alteration of your file will be significantly easier. They should be able to glance through your FT folders and readily grasp what features are where in a matter of minutes.
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u/SamanthaJaneyCake 2d ago
Agreed on basically all of this except the point about sketches. It really depends what you’re making. At my first job I did fitout design for superyachts, some assemblies having several hundred parts. By and large they were all driven by a plan and elevation sketch off of which all the base geometry was referenced. Thus, by looking at just the two sketches you knew exactly how it was going to come together, could intuit finishes and materials and could adjust the entire assembly proportionally with ease.
Then naturally there came the base geometry, then the finessing and addition of manufacturing geometry etc, which largely aligns with your workflow.
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u/Joejack-951 2d ago
Yes, I can’t stress enough the importance of layout sketches. Rather than go into 15 different extrudes, I can open one sketch and adjust parameters all driven by logical dimensions. Better yet, using the same layout sketch for driving every part of an assembly, I can make simple tweaks in a few sketches and rollout all those changes to every part automatically.
Yes, a ‘heavy’ layout sketch can be cumbersome to draw and may take some time to figure out by the next user, but when used properly they can eliminate so many time-intensive back-and-forth updates to parts.
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u/lead_injection 2d ago
Let’s unpack that first sentence more. Are you implying that the complexity of a part should live in the sketch with less features in the tree?
Because that would be wrong.
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u/greyatlas4290 2d ago
Thankyou verymuch I needed this as I was feeling pretty low cause I started late and felt like I was falling back in my class but anyway the first one was actually a bit difficult for me and I just wanted to challenge myself right after doing the simple crankshaft part so I couldn't find any ref video of this particular part but I just used chatgpt to guide me at certain points and had to figure out by myself most of the time so yeah that made the tree very big and also it had a lot of usage of ref planes
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u/Elrathias 2d ago
And try to always leave fillets for last, they cause so so sooooo many rebuild errors when changing dimensions unless you are absolutely god damned anal about where and what edge you dimension from.
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u/roguedecks 1d ago
I think you’re getting ahead of yourself and skipping the basics. Looking at your tree, it’s rather long for these simple parts. Pause, take a deep breath, and reflect on the parts you modeled. Learn to consolidate features and become more efficient. I wouldn’t start looking for more complex parts to try to make. Work on simple assemblies, do a skeleton sketch, define a master model, work with equations/dimension sharing, etc.
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u/greyatlas4290 1d ago
Yeah you are right I still need to minimize the amount of clicks I just tried to do a difficult one to just test my ability to use some essential tools but it didn't go the way I wanted it to go
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u/Powerful_Birthday_71 1d ago
Put a bit of effort into best practices, but sometimes you just gotta speedrun shit. You learn a bit from both approaches and end up finding a healthy middle ground. One of the best tests is letting someone else work on your files.
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u/Single-Ad3402 1d ago
I would agree with roguedecks as well as saying try to find some more personal orgnization and flow in your work. Having more group sections can make it easy to track problems later on like having all your planes built in one grouping area if possible. It would also be a good step forward to consider practicing DFM approaches to help consolidate features!
Overall I think this is really good for how soon this is!!
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u/RangerMach1 1d ago
For only a week, I think that's damn good work. Are you taking classes or is this on your own?
One suggestion I might make if you're just starting out and plan to make this a career, start a portfolio of your work. I printed out copies of things I worked on in a couple of SW classes I took and started a portfolio. Then as I've progressed through my career, I've taken isometric view screen shots of various projects and added them to my portfolio so that as I've interviewed for new jobs, I had something I could show to the people interviewing me as an example of what I've done.
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u/Mobile_Helicopter261 2d ago
What kind of courses are you taking ? Also, are you good operating a with computer? I personally think you are doing great, but I don’t know much about it. I am in the process of learning as well.
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u/greyatlas4290 1d ago
Iam just using my old ThinkPad for now and I pretty much learned everything so far from YouTube and a bit of references from textbooks
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u/primenikon 18h ago
Part looks really good. Your modelling will become more efficient with experience. Please save the file. As soon as I saw the name Part1* my heart sinks, all this work could be lost in a blink of an eye. My first step is to always save the new empty part, that way I hit CRL+S regularly between features. Keep up the good work.
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u/Joe_Engineer 2d ago
Looks good. A good way to improve is to find some Solidworks parts you like and to go through the feature tree and see how the model has been created. Essentially reverse engineering someone else's model will unlock for you other ways of modelling.
In terms of best practice, keep the features simple, make it easy for either future you or someone else to be able to pick up the model and change it easily, and think about design intent. What I mean by design intent is think about what parts of the design might be modified in the future and create the model around that. For example, creating a sketch in a way that would make it easier to make a design change later on.
You might already be doing this, but another good way to learn quickly is to recreate 2D drawings in a 3D model. This helps you understand engineering drawings quicker and gets you used to orthogonal projections and dimensioning.
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u/Far_Consideration288 2d ago
Looks really good for a week, great phase for practicing basic features and sketching.
An advice would be when designing a part actually think on how each thing or feature is going to be manufactured (Design for manufacturing DFM), it will actually make you automatically use less features and get the optimal result, and gives you a better understanding on how and where to start designing.
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u/Privat3En3my 1d ago
Nice. Get drawings from model mania and attempt on your own. Afterwards watch the videos to see how the parts can be modelled with the least sketching and features possible.
Then look up a machinist to work with for DFM.
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u/Several-Custard3124 1d ago
My first question would be. is it correct? Anyone can model poorly, doing it accurately is the real skill.
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u/greyatlas4290 1d ago
Yes it is i later referred the video to check if I have done the right way the only problem I had was in extrudedcut 7 where I didn't understand what the error was
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u/Proton_Energy_Pill 2d ago
Very good indeed for a week's learning!
Have you come from another CAD program?
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u/greyatlas4290 2d ago
No actually I just had basic understanding of 2d and 3d sketching and converting them into orthographic views sketch I might have done a few simple basic parts but ntg more I just followed YouTube
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u/notreallythis1111 2d ago
That's great for one week. Also, once you get good with all the features, tabs and tools;start measuring the time taken to complete these model exercises.
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u/greyatlas4290 2d ago
Yeah this one took well over 2 hrs trying to figure out everything myself from just the sketch alone which was a night mare to visualise without a 3d view
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u/notreallythis1111 1d ago
It happens in the beginning, I used to spend 4+ hours just to figure out half of such 2D to 3D exercises. For now, Important thing is that you tap into the "best and right" way of making a 3D model from 2D drawings. Because sometimes in real world you'll be making changes to your previously made 3D model in real time, and delivering the revised one on same day or even in few hours, where going back to a certain step to make changes without ruining your entire hard work is very important. Good luck.
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u/Joejack-951 2d ago
Are all your sketches fully defined? I see one part with an update error which I’d instantly flag as an issue on any CAD model submitted to me for comment.
Anything else is impossible to judge especially with parts in isolation. Good models can be refined easily because they are designed in a way that you don’t need to chase each change down the line, for example by using layout sketches and multi-body parts. If you want to be a better CAD/product designer, focus your efforts on learning how to use those techniques.
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u/greyatlas4290 2d ago
Yeah it was an error from extruding the tip of the long arm I didn't know what was wrong and It didn't really cause any trouble after popping so I thought I can just ignore it
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u/Joejack-951 2d ago
Never, ever ignore those errors. One of the major things missing from most tutorials and something I’ve always felt separates casual CAD users from skilled ones, is the ability to quickly sort errors like this. Some will be easier than others and some will require way more effort than you’d think. But it’s an essential skill for CAD design.
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u/v0t3p3dr0 2d ago
If your entire design tree isn’t black, stop what you’re doing, figure out the problem and fix it.
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u/nextlobrob 2d ago
How come. You must've great understanding about mechanical designs already or other CAD programs. How are you learning, share resources please...
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u/greyatlas4290 2d ago
I did have basic understanding of making easy parts and sketches I just refered some youtube videos of the desired tools I wanted to learn and just started
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u/Mustard_boiii 1d ago
that depends on the forces and constraints to your project. it’s not about looking good it’s about being functional and manufacturable
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u/UnlikelyCalendar6227 1d ago
Holy feature tree. It’s a good practice to start labeling everything. How do you know what boss extrude 4 is or cut extrude 7 or sketch. I label everything what part I’m sketching, label every fillet and chamfer to its size etc.
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u/greyatlas4290 1d ago
I will start labelling the new solidparts that I will be practicing I made this at midnight and was already tired it was Sunday so I didn't get enough time thankyou
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u/karolisMtb 12h ago
Thumbs up for a good work. If I am not mistaken I would add filet to the very end where needed
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u/Powerful_Birthday_71 2d ago
Pretty good for a week.
Keep going, more, more complex.
Learn surfacing.
Know that DFM is when things get real.