Tutorials - From a drawing to a cutting example

[Rogue]

I never watch videos of people showing you how to use a program. They're almost exclusively slow and inefficient. If the program in not intuitive then I find the 'paper' tutorial, or help file. It's so much easier and quicker to just skim that document to find the required information than follow a video.

Everyone has their own way of learning. Sometimes you just need to see something happen. I'm not a big fan of video tutorials for software in general but they have a useful place alongside written tutorials. There have been a few things that just didn't make sense until I saw it done.

If by "slow and inefficient" you mean that the tutorials do not take the shortcuts you use, then you are missing the point. Learn first, get fast later. As long as the tutorials are not giving blatantly bad information then they are fine. Once someone has built up some experience with the software, they are ready to learn the shortcuts.

There are some very good video tutorials for SolidCam that I found to be an excellent complement to the written materials (and can be found here if anyone is interested: http://www.solidcam.com/solidcam-professor.html). Each to their own, one supposes.

[blackburn mark]

There are some very good video tutorials for SolidCam that I found to be an excellent complement to the written materials (and can be found here if anyone is interested: http://www.solidcam.com/solidcam-professor.html). Each to their own, one supposes.

i did a bit of solidcam professer and the tutorials and the help files, it still boggled the s**t out of me for a good while
im not sure good cam software is intuative, soidworks is pretty easy to get into but solidcam is a bit of a **** .... you cant play it by ear at all but it starts getting petty slick once you press the right buttons and twiddle the right knobs :tup: it takes a bit of heart ache and pain first though

(i never could get it to make any sense of my 4th axis)

when i say "good" cam sofware i mean exotic... for doing acrobatic tool paths and all sorts of posh graphics for simulations.... probably a bit over kill for most and very very over priced for us mear mortals :)

[luke11cnc]

I still think it's a good idea

Luke: I'll show you how to do it in person when the time comes. For that particular part you'll probably have to export it from the CAD program as an STL and import into whatever CAM program you choose...

No disrespect. But well all don't have a very good friend like Jonathan to fall back on in the early teething stages.

if I could afford it I would go to night school

I know my son Luke would and learn from a video as that's all he does (watch youtube LOL)

however I know he is going to learn a lot from Jonathan as he looks up to him as a expert and a teacher.

James

[Jonathan]

Hmm, looks like my comment was a bit controversial ...

If by "slow and inefficient" you mean that the tutorials do not take the shortcuts you use, then you are missing the point...

That's not what I meant at all, in fact I don't use that many shortcuts - only the obvious ones. What I actually meant is that it takes a lot longer to attain the required information from a video compared to skimming through a document. In general I would get bored watching someone gradually explaining everything to find what I want. For a lot of things with these programs all you really need is a list of which buttons to press ... e.g Edit->arrange->Put to back. Since that's often included in help files or tutorials I just use one of my favourite shortcuts, Ctrl+F, to find them.

Clearly some videos don't fit my description, just as some help files are not so effective. I could count the number of software related videos I've watched on one hand, and before someone says you can count to 63 on one hand I'm not using binary.

Once you've used a few CAD/CAM programs they're all the same really and generally quite straightforward to pick up, as I indirectly demonstrated to luke11cnc last weekend.

[Rogue]

Hmm, looks like my comment was a bit controversial ...

That'll be me getting the wrong of the stick, then

When you put it like that then I understand (and agree with in many ways) the point that you are making.