3 super practical tips for improving your catia solidworks productivity

When i was in NAL working as project trainee engineer. There was a cad engineer Prasant. he was master in cad skills. i have never seen a person more skilled,in solidworks that he. Apart from my design work,in my spare time i played around with solidworks. He was my problem guide whenever i got stuck.

So in this post i will highlight 3 things i learnt from him about CAD design. Basically he worked on solidworks but this things are equally applicable for the other cad software's like catia, unigraphics or pro/e.



First know what you want to design.

Before you sit before a computer to design, design the thing in your mind. If you need to design a compressor hub, first rehearse the steps you will do mentally. This is what he always did, before even touching the mouse. And then after that in the CAD software he just implemented his rehearsal. Yes it needs practice but i have how this little exercise improved his efficiency.

Dimensions are important

Yes dimensions are important but prasant never used to bother about then in his first attempt in design. He used to take rough approximation and carried on with the main design work. Then when he was satisfied with his design approach, he took the work of filling in the dimensions and the constraints. This also helped him reduce errors as now his focus was on dimensions and he is less likely to miss read 5.3mm to 5.8mm.

Simply begin

This is the one thing that i have always heard from him. If a design look complicated. Find a place to begin and without further delay begin without bothering how to finish. Just begin. I liked this approach of his and before being overwhelmed by the design task, he just took one bite at a time and in no time gained the insight to do the design.

So these were the 3 practical tips i have learnt from prasant. Apply them to your design work. And for those who are begining there journey in CAD sofware can keep them in mind while getting started. What are your tips to increase your CAD , design productivity? Do share in comments.