Dassault Systèmes has sponsored this post.
3D modeling is a fundamental skill for many engineers, but even for the mathematically minded, CAD comes with a learning curve. Few know how to help young people up that hill better than Ben Nuebel, who’s spent two decades teaching CAD at Cherokee Trail High School in Denver, Colorado. As Department Coordinator of Engineering Technologies, Nuebel has taught SOLIDWORKS to thousands of students, many of whom achieved certification for their skills.
We spoke with Nuebel to learn the best approach to teaching 3D modeling, how student learning styles are shifting, and why aspiring engineers need to be exposed to cloud-based CAD software, such as Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Engineering.com: Tell us about your Engineering Technologies department.
Ben Nuebel: We are a department of three teachers who do a variety of engineering and computer science classes. We’ve been using SOLIDWORKS here since the school opened, so dang near 20 years now. We currently have 10 CSWEs [Certified SOLIDWORKS Experts, the top level of certification] as far as students that have come through our program. I’m a CSWE. We have somewhere close to 350 SOLIDWORKS certifications.
We’re not just all about design; we also happen to have a full fab lab. Our program’s really an offshoot of traditional industrial arts, but we’re not building birdhouses. We’re designing stuff in SOLIDWORKS and 3D printing it. We’re fabricating it and we’re really trying to train students for the world they’re going to work in.
What’s your approach to teaching CAD to beginners?
We’re a little non-traditional. The traditional way is you start students in 2D. I still know teachers who spend time doing lettering and teaching isometric drawings and traditional drafting. I love doing traditional drafting, but the problem is that’s not what’s done in industry anymore. So on the first day I get students going into 3D and doing simple extrudes and cuts.
With Gen Z, you really have to sell them on the immediate relevance of things if you want their buy-in. So, we try to get them into doing that type of stuff pretty fast. Then I circle back around, and we go through some sketching tools and try to get the students very focused. When I teach sketching tools, I teach sketching tools. When I teach relations, I teach relations. In the past we went through, “Oh, we’re going to do a big project and students are going to go through it using all these tools at once and then we’re going to expect them to know how to do it.” I try to be very specific: here are the tools, here’s how to use the tools, and here are some real-life examples of using the tools.
We’re approaching one of our first big independent design projects. If you don’t get to design your own thing fast, you lose a little bit of interest. What does every student love? Their cell phone. So, we’re going to design cell phone cases, and we’ll 3D-print those for the students. It will be immediately relevant.
What do students struggle with most when learning CAD?
I’d say the biggest struggles are visual-spatial skills. Sometimes students come in who are A+ students—they know how to study and they know how to do school, but when it comes to looking at something in 3D or having something in your mind’s eye, they struggle. That’s not a skill they’ve had to use before. Just because you aren’t initially great at something doesn’t mean you can’t get good. If you look at any athlete, they didn’t start off just being awesome at a sport. They practiced and gained skill sets that happened to work with them.
Another struggle is getting students past “okay, how am I going to use this now?” Which is why I’m always looking for what else I can show them that allows them to be able to get that immediate relevance of why is this important.
Besides SOLIDWORKS, what other software do you teach?
Through the pandemic we started getting into 3DEXPERIENCE. Now that things at school are back to normal, we’ve pushed to try to get the [school] district to fund both 3DEXPERIENCE and SOLIDWORKS. And that’s because there are some unique things in 3DEXPERIENCE that SOLIDWORKS doesn’t do by itself. And to be very honest, cloud-based CAD is where it’s going. And by not introducing our students to it, we’re doing them a disservice because that’s the world they’re going to be working in. Plus, it also helps out when not every kid happens to have a computer at home capable of running SOLIDWORKS, but every kid could run xDesign [a browser-based version of SOLIDWORKS] if they need to get caught up on some work at home.
Is there a difference in how you approach teaching 3DEXPERIENCE compared to SOLIDWORKS?
There are a couple small differences. One of our other teachers is in an international baccalaureate design class, so he’s actually gone to starting with xDesign because it’s a little bit less daunting of an interface. There are way fewer buttons to click on, which makes it less intimidating for a student just getting into CAD.
The other thing is that there are certain things you can do in 3DEXPERIENCE you can’t do in SOLIDWORKS, or they’re easier to do. Generative design is easier—there are fewer buttons to click and less stuff to set up in 3DEXPERIENCE. Mold tools are easier to use in 3DEXPERIENCE. There are fewer options and it’s a more simplified process to get students started.
Another big one is xDesign being able to deal with subdivision modeling. You can’t do that in SOLIDWORKS. We’re starting to roll out some projects with that. It’s funny, depending on a student’s personality, if they’re more number-minded, we start doing that lesson and they say, “I hate this. Why can’t I just put dimensions on this?” I tell them you need to stretch yourself a bit and learn different ways of doing things, because while it may not be your preferred method of modeling, depending on what you’re trying to model, sometimes it’s going to be easier.
I also have students use the project planning tools in 3DEXPERIENCE. I have them plan from a project-management standpoint as far as dependencies and milestones and tasks and activities and linking them and figuring everything out. Because project planning is hard. How do you get experience in project planning? You plan projects. And the best way to do that is by using the terminology that they would see in industry, so they start getting used to that.
How do you teach students about collaboration?
Last year I rolled out having them use SOLIDWORKS with the 3DEXPERIENCE connector to pull down parts that other people have designed, to learn about project data-management and how that works. And they’re like, “Somebody else is working on it. It’s locked.” So, I explain to them that this is how industry actually keeps track of things so that people don’t start writing over other people’s work. If we just shared this via email, which is honestly what we did in the past, all of a sudden somebody realizes they made a mistake and you don’t have the current version of the part, which creates issues down the road.
I also have a project where students do flat-pack designs and send them to another manufacturing class. We’ve been trying to use the 3DEXPERIENCE connector and the collaboration tools to be able to send stuff back and forth. And not every design is going to be manufacturable, which is a perfectly useful concept for my students in the CAD world to get. Just because you design it doesn’t mean somebody else can actually make it.
Is certification important to you and your students?
Absolutely. Literally, on Day One I’m talking about certifications and why they’re valuable. I have a poster on my door that has a list of every student that’s ever gotten a certification and the level of certification they’ve gotten, with the CSWAs [Certified SOLIDWORKS Associate, the entry-level certification] on top. If they get their CSWA and go into the world, that’s great. But some work their way towards the bottom of the door and find themselves on the CSWE list.
I’ll have kids working together trying to get their CSWE. I tell them stories of former students who are out in the workforce and who are actually using these certifications now. I had one student last year who graduated as the most certified student I’ve ever had. He ended up with 25 different SOLIDWORKS certifications. At the time Mike Puckett [Senior Manager of the SOLIDOWORKS Certification Program] told me that as far as he knew, this was the only high-school student in the world who had his CSWE in mechanical design and his CSWE in simulation.
We also started having students work on their 3DEXPERIENCE certifications, which start off a little bit more knowledge-based than skill-based. So that’s a really good stepping stone for students who need more experience doing CAD or they’re just not fast, but they have the knowledge. We’re hoping to add some more of those certifications and start giving students those opportunities.
Sounds like you really love your job.
I’m very thankful to be teaching here. Some days it’s like teaching in Disneyland because of the tools we have available and the fun we get to have with the students who really get passionate about design.