Get the game playable as fast as possible.. this is the exact thing that I want to tell anyone who is interested in learning a design or analysis software. Reading and learning shouldn't be the bulk of it. You have to make sure you get to the basic design stage as fast as you can.
Begin delivering.
When I began learning solid works, I was playing by making cubes, glass, bowl etc but as soon as I got the sense of the things. I went straight to my design team member and asked him to give me a real life data for me to play around.
He was generous and he gave the coordinates of a centrifugal compressor he cad modelled. And I began cad modelling a real life compressor model. Had lot of hiccups on the way but was finally pleased with what I made. On hindsight, I know that my approach of getting to play with solid works as fast as possible was the trick that propelled me latter to be a part of the design team of
so whats the take away in all this..
Set a minimum amount of time that you will just do the exploration. Make this commitment before you begin on a software. Once you have fixed a time. then half it and carry on with this constrained target. Once you complete the knowing the software. Jump into to play with some real thing. if its catia, get your hands dirty of some real project, if its hypermesh, get a real life model to mesh.
This is the best way to accelerate your CAE tool learning. Nothing will teach you better than working on some real problem. No tutorial will stretch you that a real problem at hand can. So if you are sitting to learning a new CAD tool like catia, solid works, ANSYS or nastran, just remember to get the software playable as fast as possible.
