Quote Originally Posted by eamo1978 View Post
Just though id say hi, Im Eamonn and am new to the forum. I did my apprenticeship in cnc milling and stopped at the same place for twelve years before going on to operate cnc lathes and then work in a cam office on nx and vericut for a year. Am now working as a manufacturing/cam engineer using solidcam and solidworks on which ive had next to zero training so hopefully over time i can have a few questions answered on here and maybe even help someone too.

Hi Eamonn,
Shout away if you have any questions on SW or SC. To be honest though your best bet is get a laptop and sit down next to a workstation with SW on it. Then go onto youtube and look up Solidworks tutorials and go through the tutorials one after another. Watch a minute or so, then do the task on your workstation and pause and rewind if you don't get it first time. Most tutorials are about 10 mins and the first 30 will give you 90% of the stuff you need so you can get up to speed over a weekend no problem.
Similarly Solidcam professor is quite good for learning SC.
SW and SC are excellent programs but they can break your heart at times if you only know 50% of the programs. Deleting entities that are related to others can cause problems that need experience to spot so as you are starting off, save very regularly and you can always close and reopen at the last saved point if you hit a spot of bother. (which you will, trust me).
I still use the tutorials at times to refresh myself if I need to do something out of the ordinary but in general you will only get proficient in both packages by experience.
Best of luck with it,
Noel.