And so the journey begins. 

Commandment 1 – I am your classroom lord and wrathful God of education and I will always lead your from the front, not the rear.

Throughout the past 10 weeks we have worked together to ensure that we are prepared, we research, we solve problems, we engage the team we have created, we make things simple….

Over those same ten weeks I have been preparing for two 1 hour presentation of a worldwide audience.  Your research presentations were based on the style of research that I used to make these presentations.  I triple checked criteria to ensure that I had all of my notes in order, that my presentation would fit 45 minutes and would fully engage the audience.  Throughout both of my presentations I will be the expert, that being said I will use my audience for about 30 minutes of my time.  They will answer questions, they will provide feedback, they will share experiences and best of all they do not even know it.  Knowing that I am going to present 2 topics to anywhere from 50 – 150 people from all over the world I had to do my research.  Oh, and by the way that is 2 hours of being in front of those people.  I need to ensure that I am at the top of my game.  My preparation included research from when I began my career at Northwest Technical Institute.  I listened to and heard the students day by day.  I am using my experience with you all as the premise for my GD&T presentation.

Many of you experienced the pain and suffering I went through to make my presentations come to life.  Commandment 4 – I will punish thy minds because the more thy struggles in training the lest thy bleedest in industry. 

The preparation for this event is grueling, stressful and rewarding all at the same time. 

The stressful part is making sure all of my plans are set.  Hotel room, flight, schedule as well as making sure I do not end up in San Diego with only a pair of boxer shorts. 

Reward comes from some doors that have opened up for me in the last couple of weeks and doors that I am working on opening up to the students and alumni of Northwest Technical Institute.  I am hoping to meet and line up opportunities that reach beyond the borders of the Midwest.  I am hoping to schedule peoples time to visit the school and discuss what their companies do and where student like you would fit into their organization.  Last but not least – the greatest reward is knowing that I worked hard to make a great product that will not only teach something but open up great discussions where everyone can participate and create a moment of exponential knowledge.

More to come from San Diego.

Wow,

Over the last 24 hours I cannot tell you all how much I have enjoyed the http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/solidworks/! online group. My 2nd semester class was able to get much needed information on how to spec out a helical gear on a CAD print in a matter of minutes (About 78) and Matthew Lorono–one of the fine person’s moderating the group with me–recently launched the SolidWorks Legion blog site. There is currently a post from him about Design with intent and Horizontal Modeling which I found to be fantastic. I will question him on a couple of his points, but his intent in this post is loud and clear. Use best modeling practices to ensure changeability, ease of creation and an overall stable CAD database for all to use.

Chris

COSMOS? What is this COSMOS?

COSMOS is the fully integrated finite elemental analysis tool for SolidWorks.

Finite Elemental Analysis what?

Finite elemental analysis is a numerical analysis system that calculates the Stress/Strain (among other things) on all of the cool designs you come up with here at NTI and as you enter the work force. In other words, will your design live up to the abuse they will receive in everyday use?
This is one of the ways engineering departments validate designs throughout the design process (From beginning to end). As you begin your designs you may have a concept on which you will pursue. With tools like COSMOS you can begin immediately validating these concepts to ensure that when it becomes time to spend $50,000 on a prototype you will have a good idea that your design will work properly and ultimately ensure a quality product.

So you may be asking why I am talking about this. Well, yesterday afternoon, Vince Adams from SolidWorks Corporation stopped by after an eight hour COSMOSWorks User Group Meeting to tour the school and speak with the students. Vince is the product manager for the COSMOS products at SolidWorks Corporation. In this position Vince oversees the ongoing development of COMSOS products. This includes visiting the COSMOS customers worldwide to understand the FEA needs that these people deal with everyday and incorporate those needs into the next generation of COSMOS products.

For NTI a visit like this means we gain some fantastic insight into the SolidWorks/COSMOS customer base future employee needs. As Vince spoke to the students, he mentioned that knowing how to analyze your designs and incorporate analysis into your design process is quickly becoming a necessary skill set for students like you entering the workforce. Tools like COSMOS will help you all to be able to do this with little knowledge of the mathematics behind it. Although Vince was quick to note that understanding the mathematics involved in FEA will make you better at these analyses.

Vince spoke at great length about many topics of which I will blog more about in the weeks to come. I do want to thank Vince very much for this visit and hope he will return in the future. For those of you how are interested in doing some research about FEA Vince Adams has a book published with Abraham Askenazi of Buell motorcycles called “Building Better Products with Finite Element Analysis w/ NEi Nastran Software and Tutorial”. He noted that this book talks more about the analysis process and less about the mathematics. By the way, Nastran is another FEA package I believe was designed by or for NASA. (Not 100% sure on this)

More to come…

All, Today (Oct 16, 2007) NTI began our 1st CSWA exams. So far I am very impressed with the results both in total score and in broken out categories. In speaking with others that have taken the exam and some inside knowledge of the test the anticipated pass rate ranges between 50 – 75%. As of right now, we are within that rate.

After taking the test myself I truly believe that this test could easily be used with any CAD modeling program out there. The test is geared more to the students’ ability to interpret poor sketches and develop accurate models from those interpretations. Those who will be taking this test next week should abide by these recommendations: take your time – you have 3 hours (use them), pay attention – to the entire problem and question, double check your answers, but do not over analyze them, and finally, , it has nothing to do with your GPA and this time around it is free.