Peaches117

Bio

About me

I'm a high school junior participating in the Running Start program through EvCC. Running Start is a program where juniors and seniors in high school can take classes through a participating college and earn both college credits and high school credits. This gives them the ability to obtain an associates degree at the same time as a high school diploma or obtain credits for transfer to another college or university. My hobbies include soccer, 3d printing, airsoft, FRC (First Robotics Competition), and video games.

My Wikipedia interests

I use Wikipedia as an educational tool and plan on continuing to do so. I made this account for a class and will continue to use it for said class but otherwise I will probably just be looking at others work. As I am not an expert in anything I will not be making edits to anything I do not know a lot about.

Article evaluation

I've been using SolidWorks for 4 years with a main focus on creating parts for 3d printing. However I am in no way an expert on SolidWorks and wanted to learn more so I visited the SolidWorks article on Wikipedia, and found three aspects of it worth commenting on: the outdated citations, some missing information on what kinds of files it can save and use, and how the article under-represented the tools in the program, notably those used for evaluation.

Citations

While there are plenty of citations in the article, many of them are old and cite data that was a little old even when it was first used. For instance, the fiscal year revenue data was from 2011-2012. While that was new information when it was cited, 2012, it doesn't apply in the current year.

Missing file formats

The article gives good information on how each project is stored defaultly, and gives an example of how it can be saved as a .step file for use in other cad programs, but doesn't tell the other ways a file can be saved. I often use the .stl file format for use in 3d printing slicers. It seems like it would be very simple to add in the other ways projects can be stored and/or used elsewhere.

Under-representation of tools in evaluate

The SolidWorks article has good explanations on many ways to use the program, including the how to make a part, an assembly (collection of parts), and drawings (printable drawing of part or assembly). However it does not mention the tools in the evaluate tab, which allow you to measure, view in different ways, and simulate different scenarios within the program. This is an important feature and should be represented as such.

Summary

This article has lots of good information regarding the history of SolidWorks but lacks on up to date information about the actual program. Many of the sources are outdated along with the information from them and some information is either completely missing or very lacking. While there are things to learn from the article it definitely needs more and newer information.