Mastering SOLIDWORKS Visualize and Creating the FIRST Global Challenge Field

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One of the main roles of any SOLIDWORKS EDU intern is to work directly with our company’s partners. We get to create some very cool marketing content using our personal skills along with DASSAULT SYSTEMES software. One of the most interesting opportunities I have had as an intern for has been working with FIRST Robotics and the FIRST Global Challenge.

If you are familiar with the FIRST Robotics Competition, an advanced robotics competition for high school age competitors, then you can think of the FIRST Global Challenge as the Olympic equivalent. FIRST Robotics is an enriching and inspiring opportunity for high school age competitors to gain a lifelong interest and appreciation for STEM. The FIRST Global Challenge consists of game play inspired by pressing real world engineering challenges, and is played in an Olympic style with teams representing their individual countries.

As they say on their website, ”The FIRST Global Challenge invites each country to send a team to compete in our robotics Olympics, which takes place in a different nation each year. Themed around the greatest challenges facing our planet, including the 14 Grand Challenges of Engineering identified by National Academy of Engineering, each year a different challenge takes center stage in an effort to foster understanding and cooperation among the youth of the world as they use their abilities to solve the world’s problems. The challenges we face as a global society need to be solved, and the next generation can meet the task — together.”

The First Global Challenge 2019 took place in Dubai, UAE and featured 188 participating countries teams.

Because SOLIDWORKS EDU is a sponsor of the FIRST Global Challenge, intern Lucas Hansen and myself were given the opportunity to work directly with the FIRST Global team. We were tasked with finalizing the SOLIDWORKS assembly of the 2019 playing field, creating an eDrawings model of the playing field, creating technical field drawings, as well as creating SOLIDWORKS Visualize renders of the field to be used both as promotional content as well as a visual representation of the field for competing teams.

One of the most rewarding aspects of working as a DASSAULT SYSTEMES intern is not only the opportunity to learn from a highly skilled group of peers, but to also be given the opportunity to put your newly learned skills to great use!

While I already had a strong background in the use of SOLIDWORKS, Drawing Tools and eDrawings, at the time I did not have much, if any, practice in the use of SOLIDWORKS Visualize. Thankfully, however, my fellow intern Lucas was already quite skilled in the use of SOLIDWORKS Visualize. Lucas referred me to MySolidworks for initial training purposes and we then dedicated a whole day in getting me up to speed in the use of Visualize. With Lucas’s help I was able to create a realistically rendered model of the FIRST Global 2019 Field using my newly found set of skills in SOLIDWORKS Visualize.

 

SOLIDWORKS Visualize and access to MySolidWorks are included with SOLIDWORKS Education Edition and SOLIDWORKS Student Premium. If you are a student or mentor on a FIRST Robotics team, you can apply to become a SOLIDWORKS sponsored team today!

Ben Horton

I am an intern and a mentor in the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab here at the DASSAULT SYSTEMS Waltham campus. Currently I am studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. I am also the Vice-President of the Society of Automotive Engineers at UMass Lowell. My interests include building racecars, petting dogs, being a maker, and going on adventures in my Outback!