Author Topic: SolidWorks free for veterans  (Read 6469 times)

Offline kvom

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SolidWorks free for veterans
« on: October 06, 2014, 18:59:40 pm »
Found out recently that US veterans can get the Student edition of Solidworks for $20 shipping fee. You have to download and sign a form, then upload that plus a scan of the DD214.

I have been playing with Cubify Design for a while and have generated some DXFs from it for use in CB.  The learning curve there wasn't too bad and it will be interesting to see how much of it will carry over to SW.  So far I only machined one simple 3D file generated by Cubify however.

Here's the SW page to start from.  https://store.solidworks.com/veteran/default.php

Offline Dragonfly

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Re: SolidWorks free for veterans
« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2014, 22:11:37 pm »
Funny, I regularly visit http://www.veteranstoday.com
Have 16 years of military service but not in the US Army, so no bonuses :)

Offline coolant slinger

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Re: SolidWorks free for veterans
« Reply #2 on: October 06, 2014, 23:04:21 pm »
I have Cubify also. But that sound like a great deal. I once bought a full blown version of Mastercam online for $30. But never could get the darn crack file to work. It came on a CD disc in the mail. It did look a little strange with about 5 or so stamps on the envelope. I think it came from Timbucktwo or somewhere far away. Couldn't read the jiberish on them. No disrespect to the veterans. Thanks for what you all did for us. Good luck on the Solid Works. Hope it pans out for you.

Offline lloydsp

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Re: SolidWorks free for veterans
« Reply #3 on: October 06, 2014, 23:09:12 pm »
FWIW, that's only a 12-month license.  After that, you'll probably be 'hooked' and they'll be able to sell you more 'drugs' at thousands of dollars... $4K!!! plus $1300/yr for support and upgrades!

Please, no.  I don't want to start using something I might really end up needing, only to find I cannot afford it.


Lloyd
« Last Edit: October 06, 2014, 23:21:40 pm by lloydsp »
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Offline Garyhlucas

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Re: SolidWorks free for veterans
« Reply #4 on: October 06, 2014, 23:28:36 pm »
My current employer had a college student design a product using the student version of Solid Edge.  It marks every file in a way that causes it to print the words Student Version across all drawings.  If you use any of those parts, assemblies or drawings in a regular version they get marked the same way.  We got SW to convert them all by insisting that we couldn't afford a seat of SW and redo all the drawings, unless we got a the files cleaned.  They finally relented and we bought a seat.

So as a law abiding college student already bent over and taking the big shaft with tuition they aren't going to help you pay your way by working as you learn.  However if you live in India we are good with you actually doing work for US companies using cracked software and charging $2 an hour for the work.

The college students files were somewhat problematic. They had taught him lots of tricks using SW like local patterns and how to model threads etc.  What he didn't learn was that you should model just like you actually build things.  And simplification of parts is really important unless you need the detail to make that part.  So his models were huge, he hadn't built a library of purchased parts, his naming conventions were an abomination, and he hadn't worked at putting useful information in the part files, like the actual part number.  So in the end I almost needed to start from scratch anyway.

I have a young mechanical engineering student working with me now.  He's eager to learn, stuck around tonight so I could teach him some more welding techniques.  I told him I'm going to need a really large hypodemic nurdle to teach him everything he needs to know to actually be a competent mechanical engineer!
Gary H. Lucas

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Offline dwc

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Re: SolidWorks free for veterans
« Reply #5 on: October 07, 2014, 06:13:40 am »
FWIW
I am  a Alibre/GM-Design user who has moved up from what was Alibre PE (now Cubify).
I have had to use SW and Inventor recently and was surprised at how clumsy they both seem to be in comparison to GM.  Of course the underlying concepts are all the same so for me the interesting thing is user friendliness.  GM/Cubify is a full fledged mechanical desgn software which can do anything that SW or Inventor can with a much easier to use user interface.
I also found that both SW and Inventor are much less stable.  I can't say that GM never crashes, but if it is once a month it is alot.  I am seeing Inventor crash several times a day and SW was only somewhat better.
Try out SW, but don't write off Cubify/Geomagic too quickly.  Personally, if I have the choice I prefer to work using GM.
SW and Inventor both have much better marketing machinery behind them, but that doesn't help in getting the work done.
Don