I'm trying to learn Solidworks in my free time and find I learn best from video tutorials that go through the construction of a simple object from scratch.

Does anyone know a good site for these? Most on youtube are amateurish with obnoxious music, the rest are "pay for membership" $100 per year websites.

Have you tried the tutorials in Solidworks? They're a pretty decent jump start. I think there's a tutorial selection on one of the right-hand panes. There are videos on their web site too.
http://www.solidworks.com/sw/resourc...-tutorials.htm

That's the thing mate, the tutorials in Solidworks for a simple "Part" creation are worded terribly! When you follow the instructions exactly as shown, the desired part doesn't get created properly. You're left struggling with trying to navigate the rest of the program as the instructions ramble on elsewhere.

Perhaps it's just me, but I'd prefer a tutorial from someone outside of Solidworks who explains it to newbs.

It's been a little while, but I followed the tutorial and got the part as described. I do recall I had to start over once after missing a step or making some mistake, but I did end up with the correct result. SW is not an easy program to learn, but most CAD programs aren't intuitive at first. Give it another go and maybe it'll make sense.

+1 for the tutorials. I used them way back in 2002 when I started using SWorks, and they led me through well enough. Back then though I think there was an accompanying booklet too?

Dear AeroRoo:

The PIPE Here, a fellow CAD fan and just getting used to SolidWorks 2000 myself - I'm a VERY long-time user of both AutoCAD (have a licensed copy of AutoCAD 2009 LT here at home) and the popular-with-modelers DesignCAD environment, within which I do most all of my model aircraft 2D drafting, and I've using both for something like TWENTY years on each platform, with eight years worth of workplace use from 2000-2008 with AutoCAD.

When I can find the time to get practiced with it, SolidWorks 2000 seems to be a great environment to get things done within, even with the dozen-years-old version I was able to acquire. Thanks to a long-time fellow CAD buddy I was able to get the official "Getting Started" manual for SW-2K, and do up the "forty-minute running start" 3D electronic cube-shaped enclosure that the manual uses to get people used to how SW does things.

There ARE a trio of website that have some good procedures for SolidWorks challenges, like mine with doing screw threads in SW.

There is the "About SolidWorks" site that handles the screw thread challenge and other potential "quandaries" with SW, another is at "Tutorial Hero" with LOTS of pages containing SW help (some 670 pages in all) and yet another site, this one in "blog form" at "SolidWorks Legion", which mostly seems to be focused on the latest and greatest in SW, but COULD still have some very useful tips "here and there" in its info pages.

I may have been around AutoCAD and DesignCAD for some two decades now, but I've also been UNemployed for four years as of TODAY (September 19, 2008 was my last day of AutoCAD work) and after seeing so many SolidWorks want ads in the Eastern Massachusetts area, I felt I HAD to get access to some vintage of SW to get used to HOW it did things, and do it with a focus on RC hardware for my own needs, mostly for familiarity with what I'd be drawing up in 3D, and to get used to using SW in any manner, in the easiest way possible with my home PC. The sort of stuff I'd like to get going on with SW would be for the sorts of parts needed by the knobby RC radios ("single-stick" or "cuddle-box" style of RC transmitters) I have to use in the RC flying hobby. I'm also intending to make critical hardware items for such knobby radios, like designs for rudder knobs, joysticks and other control hardware both for building more of my own knobby boxes, AND to make those parts (almost all of my own design) available someday to fellow knobby radio lovers.

I'm just hoping that those three linked SolidWorks tips sites can be of some help to you...even my copy of SW-2000 seems to have most, if not ALL of the commands mentioned in those web-text tutorials, and when I can have some time away from my job search...or with the evening-time income tax preparation classes I'm currently taking just to have SOME sort of job in the USA after 2013 gets going...I'd dearly love to get back to some SW practice, and really "get a handle" myself for how SW can accomplish the things it can do, solely through self-instruction in it on my own home PC!

Yours Sincerely,

The PIPE....!!

SW 2000? What a vintage! It's a shame, as the newer versions have a lot of built-in help to convert AutoCADers to SWorks

Just go to Youtube and type into the search box the things you want to find out about and add 'solidworks' and the year of your version.
Huge amounts of free info out there.