How to Organize a CAD Workshop for Engneering Club at College?

by minhkhoitrannguyen in Teachers > Engineering

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How to Organize a CAD Workshop for Engneering Club at College?

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To increase the skills for our members in the SUNY ESF Engineers Without Borders/ Engineering for a Sustainable Society, I decided to organize this CAD Workshop.

Also anyone outside the club interested in this skill could also register to join.

Supplies

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Because this is an event, so you need the following things:

  • Room to hold the workshop
  • Free software/ websites for everybody to use
  • Workshop agenda
  • Workshop training exercises


Because most 3D modelling software licenses are really expensive, so I found Onshape website (attached picture of the model I designed on Onshape), which allows you to do 3D modelling for free with a user interface that is really similar to SolidWorks.


For the exercises, you can get them online for google but do remember you must consider the difficulties of the model because your learners are just beginners. To help you understand and assess the difficulties of 3D models, you could see this youtube channel.

Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulttc_2p4DY&list=PLrOFa8sDv6jcp8E3ayUFZ4iNI8uuPjXHe

Preparation for Workshop by Answering Following Questions

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In the agenda, you will try to answer the following questions:

  • Does your workshop happen in 1 day or several days?
  • What is the level of your learners? Beginners, Intermediate, Advanced? As it will affect the difficulties of your exercises
  • What is the number of people you plan to have?
  • Do you have licenses for CAD software for everybody to use? If not what are the alternatives?
  • What is the one thing that make your events distinct?


Our club predicts that most of our learners will come from SUNY ESF, which is not an Engineering intensive college. Thus, the level of interest in the 3D software will not high. Although Syracuse University allows students to obtain free licenses for CAD software, it will be a lot of paperwork and this will discourage our learners from registering for the workshop. So to make things easy for our learners, we decide to use Onshape website like the Supplies section above.


For our circumstances, because SUNY ESF has good partnership with Syracuse University and Syracuse University allows ESF students to use 3D printing for free (limits to 150g of filaments per week), so we decide by the end of the workshop, our learners can print their model for free

  • In the end, who doesn't want to create the model they design by themselves right?

Design the Agenda

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By answering the questions above, you will have an idea for your CAD workshop. Next step is to design the agenda and the slides for the workshop.


The way we do this is:

  • Have 3 workshops: 1 to have a quick introduction to CAD software and do some simple practice, 1 to do extensive modelling, and 1 is for Assembly design.

From that we will prepare the PowerPoint slides as follow:

  • For the first workshop, focus on the workflow, and the user interface of the CAD software.
  • For the second workshop, focus on teaching the functions for 3D modellings such as Extrude, Extrude Cut, Revolve, Linear and Circular Patterns and finally Lofted.
  • For the final one, let people design several parts and teach them how to mate these parts together. Also, try to integrate the concepts of Tolerancing and dimensioning too.


The attached picture is a sample of the first workshop.

Announce Your Events on Social Media

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This step means you will announce your events on Social Media to let people know about your events. In the attached picture was our club's Instagram where will announce the upcoming events on story.


Also try to see if your college has an Instagram page where it posts general school events. If yes, try to contact them to ask if they are ok to advertise the CAD workshop. For our school, SUNY ESF, we have ESF Student Success Engagement Instagram to post school events. So I just contact them to ask them to post the CAD workshop on their Instagram too.

Reservation of the Room

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Usually, every college will have a system to allow students or clubs to reserve the room for their events or club meetings. For my college which is SUNY ESF, we reserve the room on this website, basically just fill out the following information:

  • Date and time that organize the events
  • Contact information of the person who is in charge on that day
  • Event capacity
  • Event description

I think this information will be required for any room reservation for every college website. Please make sure you plan this information ahead to process it faster.

Voila! Just Wait for Your Workshop to Begin

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Finally, after all the hard work, you need to relax. Start to practice hosting the workshop with your club members to receive comments on how to improve it. Also make sure to write out an email to direct people on how to find the room, and register for the necessary website/software.