You sketch like a girl

This past week, CATI participated in a National Movement called "Introduce a Girl to Engineering." For the past 10 years, US universities, commercial companies, and volunteer organizations have, through individual efforts, attempted to introduce engineering concepts to young women in order to educate them regarding a career in our field.

I am proud to say that I took part in bringing 17 seventh and eighth grade young ladies from Jane Addams Junior High in Schaumburg, IL to our corporate office and provided them a hands-on session with SolidWorks. The session was run by Courtney Freeland, a member of the CATI Technical Team, a mechanical engineer from Purdue University, and a member of the Society of Women Engineers.

None of these young ladies had ever touched CAD, but all of them participate in the GEMS (Girls Excelling in Math and Science) at school, and all volunteered to try their hand at creating 3D geometry.

I am proud to say that each student, after a short lesson, was able to sketch a simple shape, extrude it in to a 3D model, and assign materials and textures. They also learned about 3D printing, and each took home a representative model from our Objet 30 printer.

Having never touched SolidWorks myself, I found myself paying attention and even helping the students when they got stuck. It appears that, after 7 years of telling people that SolidWorks is easy to use, I was finally able to verify it personally.

The coolest part of the day was working with my daughter, Morgan, on her model. She stayed behind after the other girls went back to school to catch the last bus and worked on her model further. She created fillets on sharp edges and created a dome feature on one of the faces, then applied a shell and played with the thickness. I was amazed how much she was able to pick up by herself and how easily she understood her mistakes when she asked for help from one of our Tech Support team.

I would like to encourage all of CATI's customers to get involved in this important movement. Feel free to contact me if you require additional information.