Re: How effective is SW training from VAR's?

Wow Ed. Can of worms officially opened!



First let me say that this is definitely something that needs to be
discussed.

I love my VAR (no jokes please) but after attending quite a few MasterCam
training sessions it became evident that I would want to be learning SW on
my own. Bo said it perfectly, the class is only as good as its weakest
participant and I as well, while in the MC training course, became so fed up
with the people that thought that they could show up and "be taught" MC
without seemingly ever trying to use the software. I would spend an hour
after every class with the teacher to get answers to questions on things
that weren't covered in class because we ran out of time because of the one
guy who "just can't get this to trim!"



I did have a one year subscription to the I.Get.It website a while back, and
thought that it was very informative. For myself it was great because I
could get some training at my pace, right now, in the things that I don't do
everyday and I didn't have to go anywhere.



I also believe that the Podcasts could be of great benefit to the SW user
community. It always amazed me that the SW community didn't (don't) do more
in the way of tutorials. Coming from Rhino, there are many Rhino tuts all
over the internet. Now presumably there are more SW professionals and more
Rhino students, and as students maybe they have more time (?). I should also
say that there are people that are VERY selfless in their willingness to
make their discoveries public. Ed Eaton, Matt Lombard, Scott Baugh, Rob
Rodriquez and TOP (The Other Paul) are just a few that come to mind. But I
think that we all have an area that we are competent in, and could do a
little tutorial. I don't mean to say that this would take the place of
"training", formal or otherwise, but it would go a long way in being able to
find a "specialized" lesson when you needed one.



Just some ramblings,

Muggs




"Ed" <ed.thompson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1156844578.639107.325310@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
This is where video podcasts would be a boon. If in addition to them
you could tie in a table contents as well as a transcription of the
lesson material for text based search it wold be an ideal environment
for teaching SolidWorks.

I absolute agree that a good index is essential and is the weakness of
this approach so far. What is needed is a method to "jump" to a specif
file and "time" in a wave or podcast. Then we could be able to go back
and review the details when needed.

I agree with you that VAR's have very little incentive for podcasts
because they can easily be shared by users. And SolidWorks probably
has little incentive because removing a revenue stream from your
resellers is a 'bad thing.'

I believe that SW and the VARs have this perspective. However, the
bigger picture is that the most "effective" CAD system will ultimately
the the "winner" of the CAD market. And easily learning and being able
to effectively use all of the features of any CAD program is a huge
sales advantage. I believe that if SW had a very effective system for
this, that the income from the inproved sales would outweigh the loss
of revenue from classes. I just don't belive that the "class system"
is effective. I have asked our user group a few times, (which has some
long time SW users) about some of the more advanced features and there
just was not much of a response. My conclusion from this is that there
really is a big gap between the capabilities of SW and the user base.

I still have a valid license for Inventor. One thing that has happened
a couple of times is that I would go to an IV meeting where they would
be playing up some great "new" feature. I would then mention this at
the next SW user group meeting an invariably one of the guys from the
local VAR would say, "oh, SW has had that feature for X number of
years!". So, here is the competition, probably making sales on
features that SW Corp. has made investment in but have not received the
benefit of their work. The conclusion is that overall the "class
system" is jut not very effective.


I would disagree that podcasts are only good for "simple" things. In
fact I think the SW help covers all the "simple" stuff very well.

Again, there are some very good examples of podcasts from
Mountain-Wave.com.

There have been some great comments and replies and while we may not
know the best way to solve the "training" issue, I believe that it is
very important for SW to come up with a a better system which could
have a tremendous impact on sales.


Ed



.

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