During week 4 of my summer placement, I started answering calls during the busy parts of the day, worked on providing a voice over for one of our videos and prepared for the specialised Mold tools certification.
Hello, you’re speaking to Chloe.
I began the week shadowing members of the support team as they responded to clients’ questions over the phones. I learnt to distinguish which questions I could answer with the knowledge I have built up so far and which questions I would need some help from the technical team to resolve – so I would be able to deal with clients’ questions efficiently. I found using Team Viewer extremely useful to get an understanding of what the customer was trying to resolve and to demonstrate the solution on the customer’s screen. I answered questions on installation (communicating that if programs such as Bonjour are installed to a newer version, they need to be uninstalled before the SOLIDWORKS install), sketches, drawings and assemblies. Since SOLIDWORKS has a broad functionality, every day is a learning day for me.
Innova Systems are an active company when it comes to publishing educational information from blogs to Twitter tips to videos. The ‘Ask The Experts’ videos provide detailed step-by-step methods on how to use a specific feature in SOLIDWORKS, inspired by calls from real Innova Systems customers. I am finding these videos really useful for my studies. This week, to try something new, I volunteered to produce a voice over on one of the new short videos.
When not responding to customers’ questions I used my spare time to work through the SOLIDWORK’s tutorials and the Mold tools manual. This manual guides you through an introduction which includes: surface concepts and imported geometry; running “Import diagnostics” for any problems that occur when importing a model; doing draft analysis; creating parting lines between the pull of draft; shut off surfaces so a mold can be achieved; parting surfaces; and using the tooling split feature.
The Mold Tools exam
I took the Mold Tools exam on Thursday, consisting of five questions: one on shut off surfaces; one on repairing an imported model; one on draft analysis; and two questions on creating a Mold and then finding the weight. The exam was fairly straightforward – lots of practice with the Mold tools section in the command manager proved very helpful. Mold Tools is a useful and intuitive tool – making it simple to add draft and to create complex molds for production.
My plan for the coming week is to carry on taking calls to solidify and use the information I have gained over the first four weeks on my placement. I will also start on the Drawings manual and tutorials. Finally, I’m looking forward to meeting and supporting a work experience student.
Make sure to check back for week 5 of Chloe’s blog here
Chloe’s SOLIDWORKS tip of the week:
The ‘normal to’ tool is extremely handy for modelling parts and assemblies. Clicking on a plane or reference and clicking the ‘normal to’ tool will rotate and fit the model to the screen and to the view orientation normal to the selected plane or feature.
