YDS Cad course

Hi all,

Has anyone any direct experience with the YDS CAD course and an opinion of the Rhino training provided? Were the areas covered as per their website and were they covered sufficiently?

I have tried to get some information via search on the forum without much luck.

Andrew

Hi Andrew
I am currently working my way through their CAD course and my impressions are overall very positive.
They way the lessons are presented is quite wordy - it can take me a while to understand what it is I am supposed to be doing, but after initially finding this quite frustrating, I now like the way it is done, as I have to think about what it is I am trying to achieve, rather than just follow a step by step guide like a lot of lessons.
I find I often have heaps of questions, or need more explanation of a topic, in which case, a quick email to their instructor, Nathan, results in a very quick and helpful response. The feed back on submitted tests is also quick and helpful, with lots of usefull additional tips that I might not have thought about.

I have currently reached lesson 5 of 10 and all the lessons so far have covered the modelling and fairing of different hull types, blending in different keels etc as well as calculating some basic hydrostatics.
The remaining lessons look to be covering things such as adding cabins/ deckhouses and masts, as well as producing "good looking" 2d drawings from the models, construction details and further stability calculations.

Overall, the content seems to be quite comprehensive, and the help and feedback via email has been very useful.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Chris

Thanks for the reply Chris - exactly the type of info I needed. May I ask how versed you were in Rhino before you took the course?

Andrew

I went through most of the YDS CAD course several years ago and in general found it to be good. As Chris mentioned Nathan is quick to respond and quite helpful. The written course material and exercises were varied somewhat in quality. Most were good but there were a few glitches which were frustrating. Nathan was very helpful in resolving those. As with any course it was based on the knowledge, methods, experiences and biases of the course creator. At the time I bought the course buying the course qualified the purchaser to buy Rhino and related software from YDS at the student rates, so the total cost for me of the course plus the software was about the same as the software by itself.

I also bought the Baseline Technologies tutorials which provided an interesting and different approach to that of the YDS course. It's not an approach I use as such but it was worthwhile for me to go throught the material.

Before starting the YDS course I spent time going through the tutorials which come with Rhino, the tutorials in the User's Manual as well as the Level 1 and Level 2 tutorials. They take some time but are excellent.

I'd had a play around with version 2 (I think) back at uni too many years ago to think about, but basically I came into it with no prior experience.
I went through the level 1 manual to learn the basic commands but that was it.
I think a bit more prior use would have helped me work out what to do with less backup, but Nathan is very good at explaining the subtleties in getting some of the commands to do what you want (or giving entire alternate methods).

I have just received a long illustrated email from him with corrections and tips for lesson 4, where I appear to have made a hull look like a crinkle cut chip! Seems this fairing business is much harder than I first thought!!

Thanks guys - much appreciated.

Note for self

I just looked up this course info Andrew, at

http://www.macnaughtongroup.com/ydsform1.htm

it seems like good value. I am tempted to go for it myself.