Rich Hall’s BLOG

 ” The good you do today, people will often forgot tomorrow; Do good anyway.”……..!!!!!!  This is the tag on my next guests email.  When you look out on the SolidWorks Forums, you’ll find him there.  When you log into SolidWorks Geeks, you’ll find him there.  At these sites you’ll find him as well: Yahoo SolidWorks group, Google SWcad group, Comp.cad.solidworks, Angelsix forum and the MNSUG yahoo group.  “I comment/contribute on these groups/forums as I’m always learning a new thing and wanted to share what I have learned during my life time.“  In this edition of Educators Corner, I will be talking to Deepak Gupta (DG).  Deepak currently works with a multi-national company in their design centre in New Delhi, India.

DG: I used to visit engineering colleges and industries to train students /people. I was involved in this training while I was associated with a SolidWorks VAR.  I am planning to start my own training school (part time).  I have a 4 year advanced diploma in Die & Mould from Indo Swiss Training Centre, Chandigarh, India. 

Check out Deepak’s Webpage Boxer’s Blog 

Deepak Gupta

RH: Do you have any industry experience? 

DG: I have around 8 years of experience working in different companies and on different products.  I have been in design, R&D, production, tool room and vendor development.

RH: What led you to become a trainer and why SolidWorks?

DG: I wanted to learn SolidWorks for myself and this led me to be involved in training others.

RH: How long have you been training?

DG: I did that for almost 1 year.

RH: What SolidWorks certifications if any do you currently hold?

DG: CSWA, CSWP, CSWPSMTL (For details of these Certifications, see the SolidWorks Certification Site)

RH: What are your classes like when you train?

DG: All the students were 18+ and include Engineering students, Industry beginners, 2D Cad users and 3D Cad users of software other than SolidWorks.

RH: What is your preferred teaching method? 

DG: Providing useful examples while demonstrating commands/options.  I prefer using practical examples from industry and day to day life while training.

RH: What curriculum do you teach?

DG: I make my own curriculum depending on the user level and needs.  I usually teach the basics of SolidWorks depending on the need.  I will teach sheet metal, surfacing, weldments and animation, but just a basic overview of the these tools. 

RH: What is the prevalent industry in your area that would eventually hire a SolidWorks trained person?

DG: Mechanical industries mostly involving design and analysis work.

RH: Have you attended SolidWorks World? 

DG: Not yet. Was planning to this year but due to some personal issues I could not make it.

RH: Do you feel that there will be continued support for teaching SolidWorks and CAD drafting skills?  If so, is it short term or long term support?

DG: Yes and it will be long term support.

RH: How important do you feel that teaching CAD/drafting skills is for the future of engineering and industry in general?

DG: It is very important.  Today every industry needs trained/skilled people and no one has time and funding to train employees after they are hired.  Some one needs to do this job (training people) and this has to be done at the institutional level.

RH: What are the biggest challenges you face in teaching SolidWorks/drafting?

DG: Sometimes the people using other 3D software packages start comparing the options in the software and start making opinions of the software compared to SolidWorks

RH: What are some goals for your future?

DG: I will keep working in my present field.

Deepak,

Thanks for your time.  I really appreciate your input and am glad to know there are other passionate SolidWorks people around the world!

Rich

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As I try to cover SolidWorks education from different perspectives, I sometimes wonder just how committed the folks at SolidWorks Corporate are.  Well let me tell you about two of the guys.  Jeremy Luchini and Mike Puckett are the guys behind the SolidWorks Certification program.  Recently Jeremy and Mike made visits to some young and impressionable SolidWorks users and made a difference.  Check out Mike Puckett’s Blog and read his account of these visits.  I love these quote from Mike’s story: “Its great to see these kids so excited about engineering at such a young age.” Mike said, speaking about some students involved in the  UsFirst Robotics Competition.  A later visit to still more students at Greenville High School in Marc Nelson’s class spawned this quote from Mike, “One student even asked if they could turn in an assignment after the weekend just so they could use the new home install they had just received.”  Talk about inspiration!  I appreciate what these guys are doing personally and what SolidWorks is doing Corporately to support the next generation of engineers.  If you appreciate what they are doing as well, leave comments here or on Mike’s blog.

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It’s time for another installment of the Educators Corner featuring SolidWorks teachers and educators.  Today I’ll be speaking with Bill Casnovsky, a well known SolidWorks User Group leader and SolidWorks World presenter.

Bill on his boat

Richard Hall (RH): Hi Bill. What is your background?

Hello everyone, I’m Bill Casnovsky (BC). I have a BA in Industrial Design from Michigan State University. I currently teach (Adjunct Assistant Professor) at Austin Community College & I’m a lecturer at University of Texas.  I am the group leader of the Central Texas SolidWorks User Group in Austin, Texas.  We have a meeting coming up on March 19th.  If you are in the Austin area and would like to attend, contact me by email at bill@cazdezign.com

RH: Do you have any industry experience? If so what and/or who with? 

BC: Yes, many years experience.  I had long stint early on working in a Consulting firm. I was a Corporate Designer with Motorola & Lockheed Martin. I am currently doing business as CAZ DEZIGN, where I do Consulting Product Design. 

RH: What led you to become a teacher? 

BC: I felt like I would like to provide instruction to others based on my many years in the design industry. 

RH: Why do you teach CAD with SolidWorks? 

BC: SolidWorks offers CAD tools that are powerful and easy to use in CAD and Mechanical Design. 

RH: How long have you been teaching? 

BC: 4 years 

RH: What SolidWorks certifications if any do you currently hold? 

BC: No current certs – have taken advanced SolidWorks classes in Modeling/Assemblies and many classes in CAD including GE Calma, CADDAM and Cadkey. 

RH: What are your classes (age range and/or skill level) 

BC: I have students ranging in age from 19 to 50. Most have no SolidWorks experience.

RH: What is a typical classroom day like for you? 

BC: I make lesson plans, lecture in class and work interactively with students working on assignments. 

RH: What is your preferred teaching method? What method of teaching SolidWorks have you found to be successful?

BC: My preferred method is to introduce students to SWX tools and then encourage them to work concurrently with me as we go step by step through part, assembly and drawing assignments.

RH: What curriculum and industry standards do you teach? 

BC: I designed my own class content and teach my material using ANSI-English & Metric drawing standards.

RH: How do you use the SolidWorks Educator resources and curriculum in teaching your class?

BC: I do not use them.

RH: Do you have any work from the students you are able to and would like to share? (pictures or models)

BC: Sure. I have a special assignment during the semester that permits the student to be very creative. I can share some of those student solutions. (I will post these as Bill sends them to me)

RH: What industry do you teach for or what is the prevalent industry in your area that would eventually hire a SolidWorks trained person?

BC: In my class, I expose the students to product & mechanical designs created via machining, molding & sheet metal. Industries out here use designers in each of those fabrication methods.

RH: What universities or community colleges are nearby that your students would attend and pursue a course of study with SolidWorks application? 

BC: Austin Community College & The University of Texas

RH: Have you attended SolidWorks World? If so, what was beneficial from a teaching standpoint? 

BC: Yes, I have attended 4 times. I found that meeting/networking with other teachers and attending the technical breakout sessions very beneficial to teaching. Observing good presenters at SolidWorks World really inspires me to try things back in the classroom.

RH: Will your school board or current school be willing to fund a trip for you to SolidWorks World?

BC: Given my adjunct status, I doubt it. However, presenting at the conference is my ticket to getting there.

RH: Knowing that most school systems are in desperate financial situations, do you feel that there will be continued support for teaching SolidWorks and CAD drafting skills? If so, is it short term or long term support?

BC: Austin Community College is celebrating its 35th anniversary, this year. Solidworks has become a core requirement to obtain a degree. Students are also able to pick up classes in AutoCad, AutoCad Inventor & Pro E. This college is fully committed to teaching CAD skills.

RH: How important do you feel that teaching SolidWorks/CAD/drafting skills is for the future of engineering and industry in general? 

BC: Absolutely essential! In addition, ACC likes to recruit teaching talent from the industries in the area primarily to insure that the CAD/Drafting skills remain pertinent and relevant.

RH: What are the biggest challenges you face in teaching SolidWorks/drafting?

BC: Each class is unique and filled with students of various skill levels. A big challenge for me is to find the sweet spot, each semester, that keeps the fast learners challenged and the slow learners inspired.

RH: What are some goals for your future and do you always plan on teaching?

BC: I want to continue with my Product Design Consulting business, slowing to part time as I near retirement. I also wish to continue teaching part time so I can help prepare students who will lead our country to new horizons using Engineering and Design.

Bill,

It has been a pleasure speaking to you about this most important of subjects.  I look forward to the students results from you class as I’m sure everyone is.  Thanks for your time and I hope to see you at a SolidWorks event soon,

Rich

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A few years ago I was asked to start training all the new engineers as they came into the company.  This training included company proceedures, processes, drafting and SolidWorks.  Company proceedures and processes were no big deal since everything was written down in company documents, but how to do the other?  I had no idea what to do or how to teach, train or instruct in the remaining areas even though I have years of experience in them.  At that time I began to think about how this could be done efficently and correctly.  The first thing I implemented was a priciple that I learned from helping my wife get her masters degree in early childhood education.  That priciple was the use of observation of the students to figure out their learning “style”.  Every person has a learning “style” and they fall into 3 primary categories: Visual learner (a person who learns by seeing); Auditory learner (a person who learns by hearing);  Kinesthetic learner (a person who learns by touching or doing).  This principle is know popularly as the VAK principle.  Once I observed how each person learned, their “style”, I could taylor the training courses and exercises to reach each type of learner.  Let’s explore the VAK principle further.  On of the best definitions of learning styles is available from the website presented by Don Clark in the section Learning Styles & Preferences.  Once you understand the VAK principle, you can begin to implement it to recognize each students learning style.  There are several free VAK tests and one is included on Don Clark’s site on this page Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Survey.  In another self test from businessballs.com, 4 test methods are examined for use with determining learning style.  The 4th method has several good questions which allow a through testing of a subject.  Give this a read and try it on a couple of students and see if it works for you.  If this helps or doesn’t, send some feedback so that others can learn from various trials.  If you would prefer to send comments via Twitter, comment to @richard_hall and I will capture them and post them.  Stay tuned for more at the Educators Corner!

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What do you do with three beautiful, happy, smart daughters?  Well I guess you love and take care of them.  It’s amazing to me how children interact with one another, how they play, share, show affection, show NON-affection and the myriad of other things that they do on a daily basis.  I am blessed to be able to see and share in this along with my wife Amy.  Our family doesn’t sound that much different than a typical one.  But, this is where I tell you the story of how our family came to be.  Late 90’s, Dr’s office in Birmingham, AL, “we don’t know why you can’t have children, maybe if you had married someone else you could”.  Wanting children is a powerful drive in the psyche.  We can’t have biological children so what do we do?  Thus began the odyssey that became our family.

In February of 1998 I was on a business trip in Canada and my wife planned to fly to Vancouver to meet me for the weekend of our anniversary.  It was also Chinese New Year and we chose to have dinner and ended up in a Japanese restaurant full of Chinese folks celebrating the New Year, (talk about providence).  It was this weekend that we decided to adopt.  Once home we started our search for ”how to do it”.  We looked at domestic and international adoption including Russia and more former soviet countries, and several Asian countries including Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and China.  We researched the rules and regulations, read about the kids and potential issues.  Once we found out how difficult domestic adoption could be with all the pitfalls of the “biological parents” we decided to adopt internationally from an orphanage.  But where?  China looked like the best possibility but we were under the minimum age to adopt there, but then the rules changed and they lowered the min. age.  We were in! Well sort of.  We still needed to find out how specifically to do it.  Enter a chance encounter with a family who had adopted from China.  We met Doug and Joyce Love and their lovely daughter Molly.  They were even facilitators for Chinese adoption!  We processed our U.S. paperwork, completed our home study, were fingerprinted, were fingerprinted, were fingerprinted, oh and did I mention that we were fingerprinted?  Well finally everything was complete and mailed and well….done so then the wait.  This was November of 1999.  It had taken 9 months to process the papers.  The lucky part was we met 3 other families who where using the same facilitator and we became fast friends.  We were notified that we would travel together to China when the time came.  And we waited.  Through the months of waiting, we 4 couples got together several times.  We met the Chinese lady who would be our guide in China.  Her name was Lilly.  And we waited.  Finally in August of 2000 we got a call, our dossier was in the matching room and we shoud know something soon.  We got a call that our referral was being emailed and it had a picture!  I was at work and Amy was at home.  We opened the email and counted to 3 and opened the attachment and this is what we saw!

Katherine Garland

Julia Marcelle

Julia Marcelle (Marci), Julia for my mother and Marcelle for my wife’s other grandfather, came to us a full of life rambunctious 2 year old who could dance.  She livened any room she went in to and as we found out from the International Adoption Clinic in Birmingham, AL, her eyesight and health were not as bad as expected for a child with albinism!  Great, now how about that boy!  Once Marci is settled in we can start looking again. 

 

October 2004 at a Halloween party at my mothers house.  “Amy, you look pregnant” my mother said.  Impossible,….. the Dr. said…… 1 week later and 6 pregnancy test including 4 sticks, one office visit test and 1 blood test…we were pregnant!  Funny how life throws the greatest miracles at the seemingly most inopportune times.  8 1/2 months later, July 9th 2005, we went to the hospital in labor and delivered Lillian Grace Hall the following day.  Lillian and Grace for my wife’s great grandmothers.

Lillian Grace

So here is where I stop this little story and tell you that God has many blessings awaiting us in life!  We just need to believe and go with the flow.  Our experiences of adoption and China go much deeper than what I want or care to write here, but, if you are interested in adoption from China, send me an email (rich_hall@richardwhall.com) and Amy and I will be glad to talk with you!  Come check out our local adoption group site Families with Children from China.   

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