Italian Students Succeed with Speed using SOLIDWORKS

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IIS Perlasca challenges students’ passion for Design with their own version of the SOLIDWORKS Model mania contest.  IIS Perlasca students recently achieved Certified SOLIDWORKS Associate (CSWA) and Certified SOLIDWORKS Professional (CSWP) as part of our SOLIDWORKS academic certification program. Teachers decided to further challenge their students by organizing their own SOLIDWORKS Model Mania Contest.

The idea behind the contest is to stimulate students to push their SOLIDWORKS competencies even further and have some fun with a friendly competition.

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Teachers were inspired by the SOLIDWORKS World Model mania contest and used 2015 Edition parts for their contest. Prof. Simone Orio developed custom software for the test that would show part drawings to the student, keep track of modeling time, and validate 3D model correctness on the basis of part weight,  input by the student. You can have a look at the interface here:

Professor Orio software application came in very handy because students participated in the contest at different times (some were involved in classes, some in sport competition finals like football (soccer) or volleyball.

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The aim of the contest was modeling the part in the shortest time.
First place went to Mario Zanetti (15-minute time), second place Alex Badini (19,5 minutes), third place to Enrico Zanetti (22,3 minutes).
This  video shows Prof. Simone Orio and the three students.
Simone commented: “I had so much fun looking at how students were challenged: I can understand how much work there’s behind Model Mania parts because they’re made to have users think about strategy to use and design intent. It’s not easy: some students took 1 hour to finish the part.  Ten (10) students belonging to two different classes participated in the contest and I was amazed by the results: some students that performed well in SOLIDWORKS certifications took very long time to finish the part, while others that scored less in certifications did very well in the contest. In this case probably students with good speed of thought were more advantaged respect to those that were more academic and best in modeling the part.”
You can have a look at the solution of the original SOLIDWORKS Model mania contest here.

Most of the students were challenged by the three central cuts with fillets. I found out that a winning strategy was dis-sectioning the part in small feature rather than using fewer features with complex sketches.

 

Thank you, Ing. Alessandro Tornincasa, from SOLIDWORKS Value Added Reseller, Nuovamacut and Professor Orio for sharing with the SOLIDWORKS Community.  Marie

 

 

Marie Planchard

Marie Planchard

Senior Director, Early Engagement, 3DEXPERIENCE Works at Dassault Systemes
Marie Planchard is an education and engineering advocate. As Senior Director of Education & Early Engagement, SOLIDWORKS, she is responsible for global development of content and social outreach for the 3DEXPERIENCE Works products across all levels of learning including educational institutions, Fab Labs, and entrepreneurship.
Marie Planchard

@marieplanchard1