@jimiller: All solid tips. The real point is gaining the exposure and command of these design tools that will be with them for a lifetime, whether in current form or in some new fangled version. As you well point out, have the base foundation is the critical part, not necessarily having skills in each tool.
A good lesson/opportunity for the younger people who are looking to get an internship. Any skill that you can get for free or a minimal cost that can help you in your future career is great. And when there are so many students competing for the same internships it is always good to have a leg up on the competitors.
And further it's not so important that you know the exact SW of the company that you want to work for. Often employers just want to know that you have the concept and knowledge of 3D and/or 2D skills. As well as employers like to see students who make the effort to gain skills before an internship rather than showing up with experience from the local fast food joint.
Marketing and education go hand in hand. When you get in the working world, it is natural to gravitate to what you know, so it is great to see new technology used in higher education. Teaching students with extinct versions of CADkey, Catia, or Fortran does not really prepare graduates for the real world. The folks at Solidworks definitely know what they are doing in offering software to colleges for students to learn. It also helps students in getting internships in engineering positions before graduation.
No doubt, Jack, this has a huge marketing impact for vendor,s and absolutely, if students get exposure and a comfort level with a tool in class, they'll likely be prone to want to use it in their subsquent professional lives. Nevertheless, it's still a great resource for up and coming engineers and excellent exposure to tools they'll rely on for the remainder of their professional careers. I see a win-win here.
While there are obviously positive things that come from this, it seems that it is really just the next step in the marketing efforts. When I was getting my BSEE about 20 years ago, the big companies at that time were focusing on hardware. We received a number of cool technologies such as some of the first digital o-scopes from HP (I think). The general idea at that time was to get the students to get comfortable with the new technologies and then be making the recommendations in their companies. The year after I had my drafting/CAD course, the school got a good deal and went Autocad all the way, and this was before that product was the default that it is today.
Siemens PLM Software, SolidWorks, and ZCorp are hardly the only design tool vendors stepping up their efforts to foster students' interest and commitment in science and engineering. Hardly a week goes by without some press release coming my way outlining a vendor's software donation to a univership or sponsorship of some design contest. I applaud all of these efforts. Any thing we can do to foster the next generation's commitment to engineering and science pursuits is a good thing.
For 3D printing to make the jump from rapid prototyping to manufacturing, engineers will need to find easier ways to move products from their CAD screens to their printers.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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