[daedalus]

Hi,

I have been using solidworks on and off for about 2 years now, and am perfectly capable of getting around it and doing the basic things i need it for. Im completely self taught, and i get the feeling i barely scratch the surface with regard to what the package can really do. Recently work have offered to pay for some training materials of my choice, and i am looking for suggestions. (DVD would be my preference, but web would be fine, i just cant spare the time for courses).

We are going to get the new 2008 release soon, so ideally im looking for something that covers the new features in that.

Also i have some experience with cosmos products, but someone who covers those in more detail would be useful.

So far the best ive found is the solidworks professional bundle at solidprofessor: http://www.solidprofessor.com/products.asp

[JerryFlyGuy]

Also check out "I get it" for solidworks. at myigetit.com it has a yearly subscription of a couple hundred bucks for the year... I don't use it but some people love it..

[tnik]

I heard good things about myigetit.com but sucks that you can only purchase bundles.. ~300 bucks for the office premium bundle and looks like your buying the same thing over and over (eg. a drawings tutorial for SW2005, SW2006, and SW2007). I might spend the 100 bones on the basic just to see how good it is..

[daedalus]

Actually i had mistakenly assumed the $600 package included the other dvds. When adding up the cost of what i was after its looking at 1400 ish, which is a hell of a lot for a few dvds worth of video.

The content on igetit looks to be a lot more complete, and seems to cover virtually everything. Its a shame they dont have any CAM courses, but i dont really need to cover that for work, just something im interested in.

The only upsides i see to solidprofessor are that its mostly shot in 08 (which is the version i will likely be running shortly).

Ok, didnt quite realise that when you drop $500 on courseware at igetit your only getting 12months access, then it all goes away. Maybe the dvds are a more worthwhile investment (in terms of having a reference library).

[DareBee]

SolidWorks for Dummies is also a great reference bible.
The "for Dummies" series is very highly acclaimed.
igetit is a very good tool, always up to date, and compared to VAR training/updates it is reasonably priced.

[ROB C]

http://www.amazon.com/SolidWorks-200...5157278&sr=1-9

Best $80 bucks i ever spent
Highly recommend

[PaulH]

A good friend of mine went to an official SolidWorks 2008 class earlier this week. He said that it pretty much matched the tutorials that come with the software, but you have someone to ask questions of.

Based on that, I would suggest going through the built-in tutorials until you understand them and buy one of the books recommended above. That should sufficiently jump-start your brain.

[sinasi11]

thanks for solid link.