My ResBaz CADdventure
Guest post by engineering student Mr.Tony Zahtila. Tony is now employed by Veolia thanks to his ResBaz experience.
Hi! I’m Tony and I was a part of the ResBaz CAD teaching team for 2015.
The CAD skills I learnt as a part of the program have since been helpful in creating virtual constructions of the work I do. The best part of using CAD in my work, it’s how cheap my mistakes have become. Sketching up my work and creating a 3D model allows me to visualise what I’m trying to build in the workshop. If I’ve miscalculated a length, or overlooked a geometry, I just change the design specs and I’m ready to build. A nice short-cut to the laborious task of finding what I’ve ordered doesn’t actually assemble.
The software is far-reaching and I can see applications for CAD skills in many fields. If engineers are to become digital blacksmiths, doctors can become digital plumbers. Organs can go flying around on the monitors of health professionals, all towards a better understanding of our bodies, or a doctor’s slightly-alarming idea of fun.. 3D models of the human body would allow for an alternative to the difficult to obtain cadavers with exploded views of our bodies, as well as clarity, versatility, and interaction that’s just not possible with the traditional textbook.
There’s many variations of CAD software and the form it finds itself in use with engineers is not necessarily what the software will look like to other professionals. Pulling and stretching apart, dividing into blocks, sculpting towards roundness, and smoothing coarse materials to see their altered appearance, all of these things can be achieved with CAD software as the focal point.
I believe that the way of the future is interaction between until-now disjointed fields. The distinct lines between medicine, engineering, law, commerce, art, carpentry, and so on, they’ll blur. Communication between the fields will continue to grow as an integral skill. It’s not compulsory that you have an interest in becoming a CAD expert to gain from the course. Knowing the fundamentals will put you in good stead to clearly communicate with a CAD professional who can advance your work. An artist could have a realistic expectation and understanding as to the how their aesthetic piece could be re-worked into a digital symphony of polygons. The possibilities for experimentation are there and very accessible.
The ResBaz team are very friendly and it’s as much a sharpening of CAD skills for students as it is a festival of ideas between people who see the world with different lenses. I was challenged when I heard a visual artist, who had been taking the course and exchanging ideas as part of the group, ask whether it would be possible to ‘pull out’ a corner of a model. To visualise what was being described, imagine pinching some Playdoh and tugging on it to see how it stretches. I’d never thought of this in my exact and neat world of CAD use, I’d hitherto seen CAD as more of a program for making machine recipes.
ResBaz is a fun and engaging environment. People are very friendly and I was able to get along with all the smiling faces and people who were excited to share their own work and to learn from others. I’d highly recommend the CAD course to both people who want to develop their skills into a powerful technique to add to their repertoire, as well as, people who want to understand the basics so they are aware and able to work in a team with CAD professionals.
