Official Certified SolidWorks Associate (CSWA) Examination Guide

Most CAD professionals today recognize the need to become certified to prove their skills, prepare for new job searches, and to learn new skills while at their existing job. Specifying a Certified SolidWorks Associate (CSWA) certification on your resume is a great way to increase your chances of landing a new job, getting a promotion, or looking more qualified when representing your company on a consulting job.

Official Certified SolidWorks Associate Examination Guide covers the key topics contained on the exam with the aim of helping readers to master each topic as well as the exam itself. The book is more than a collection of practice exam questions because it also devotes attention to the concepts and implementation details that underlie the CSWA process, providing readers with a thorough and comprehensive foundation in SolidWorks.

Each chapter in this book is geared toward helping you discover the topics that are on the CSWA exam, pinpoint where you have a knowledge deficiency, and determine what you need to know to master these topics. Ideal for anyone with a basic knowledge of SolidWorks and engineering fundamentals, this book will help you get the certification you need to land the best jobs, get the best promotions, and become a successful professional.

The first chapter is a general review of the SolidWorks User Interface. The other five chapters in the book address a key exam category. The chapters provide individual short practice tutorials to review the required competencies. The complexity of the models along with the features progressively increases throughout each chapter to build knowledge and to simulate the types of questions that would be provided on the exam. All models for the 110 plus tutorials are on the enclosed CD and are compatible with SolidWorks 2008, 2009, and 2010.

Table of Contents
Introduction
1. SolidWorks 2009 User Interface
2. Basic Theory and Drawing Theory
3. Part Modeling
4. Advanced Part Modeling
5. Assembly Modeling
6. Advanced Modeling Theory and Analysis
Appendix
Index

David Planchard is the Founder of D&M Education LLC. Before starting D&M Education, he spent over 27 years in industry and academia holding various engineering, marketing, and teaching positions and degrees. He holds five U.S. patents and one International patent. He has published and authored numerous papers on Machine Design, Product Design, Mechanics of Materials, and Solid Modeling. He is an active member of the SolidWorks Users Group and the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). David holds a BSME, MSM with the following Professional Certifications: CCAI, CCNA, CCNP, and CSWA. David is a SolidWorks Solution Partner and an Adjunct Faculty member at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the Mechanical Engineering department.

Marie Planchard is the Director of World Education Markets at SolidWorks Corporation. Before she joined SolidWorks, Marie spent over 10 years as an engineering professor at Mass Bay College in Wellesley Hills, MA. She has 14 plus years of industry software experience and held a variety of management and engineering positions. Marie holds a BSME, MSME and a Certified SolidWorks Professional (CSWP) Certification. She is an active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

David and Marie Planchard are co-authors of the following books:

• A Commands Guide for SolidWorks 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007
• Assembly Modeling with SolidWorks 2010, 2008, 2006, 2005-2004, 2003 and 2001Plus
• Drawing and Detailing with SolidWorks 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 and 2001/2001Plus
• Engineering Design with SolidWorks with Multimedia CD 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2001Plus, 2001 and 1999
• Engineering Graphics with SolidWorks 2010 with Multimedia CD
• SolidWorks: The Basics with Multimedia CD 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004 and 2003
• SolidWorks Tutorial with Multimedia CD 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003 and 2001/2001Plus
• The Fundamentals of SolidWorks: Featuring the VEXplorer robot, 2008 and 2007
• Official Certified SolidWorks Associate Examination Guide, Version 2, Version 1
• Applications in Sheet Metal Using Pro/SHEETMETAL & Pro/ENGINEER