Never use shortcut when learning a software. My experience of learning a new FEM software that is always popping up and figuring in most of my posts now is a testament of the fact.
Within short time I have learnt a great deal on this software, yes even my collogues wonder that I know more about this software than the person who has been touch with the software for last one year.
Yesterday only the guy came to my desk and saw that I was doing something in the FEM software and he wondered, “hey, can we do this in this software? I didn't knew that ?" This came from a person who for the last 6 months was working on that software. I saw he relied on toolbars while I knew where this commands were in the menus, he usually did those stuff through toolbars
So what are things to watch for. Use menu items than the toolbars. yes toolbars are shortcuts but relying on menus means you will expose yourself to many other commands. This brings the other options to notice.
Same thing goes for dialog box inputs. In the dialog box don't just blindly fill in the default values explore. Try all the fields. Fill in unexpected values. See the error message the software throws up. understand the meaning of defaults.
Once the tutorial is over don't stop your exploration there. Continue it as you go along. Usually tutorials teach about one aspect of the tool but there is no harm to move ahead.
Explore instead of plotting displacement plot von stress or instead of vector plots try counter plots. Change the direction of load or boundary conditions. For me the tutorials does not end until I am tired of the model.
Yes all this takes time but even if you don't get anything important out of it but you are always learning and your mind picks up little pieces that are helpful and It also helps your mind to get used to the tool.
Do you do any of this stuff in your learning of a new tool?
