SolidWorks助力一个农民梦想成真

寂静回声

“I grew up in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania,” is how Dane Moorhead describes his childhood to me.

But to little Dane, that wasn’t a problem. All he wanted to do when he grew up was become a farmer or a firefighter. But then he grew a curiosity about how things worked – and, more importantly, how he could make them better.

This intrigue only grew stronger when his parents brought him to a fly-in, where pilots converged for waffles and offered people rides in their small planes. Dane and his parents hopped into a four-seater, a Cessna 172, and soon enough, they were cruising through the clouds.

“The pilot let me fly the plane,” Dane remembers enthusiastically, “and so I did, and it felt like fifteen minutes, though I’m sure he was actually in control the entire time,” he laughs.

In high school, he got his pilot’s license, and Dane describes his first solo flight as incredibly stressful until he landed and realized that he could really fly.

So, it was no surprise when it came time to select a major, Dane chose aerospace engineering. He’d only briefly thought about becoming a professional pilot before deciding that engineering would be more exciting – which says a lot about how excited he was to study engineering. Dane picked up and moved from the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania to Wichita, Kansas, for school.

Even though his first semester turned out to be “a slap in the face,” he was thrilled to start a new adventure and found his footing within a couple of months. A big part of that was joining the university’s Formula SAE team, an extracurricular club in which students design formula-style racecars from scratch.

That was when he was first introduced to SOLIDWORKS. He’d previously used some 3D CAD in high school, but a different software.

“The club leaders gave me the license and the built-in tutorials and said, ‘Here’s the software we use, sit down and figure it out.’”

And so he did.

“I really liked how user-friendly SOLIDWORKS is and all the resources you can find online,” Dane explains. “It was really easy to get into.”

One of the first things he designed in SOLIDWORKS had more to do with snacks than it had to do with automobiles, though. During his freshman year of college, his parents had just gotten an RV, but it didn’t have a center console for road snacks: just cup holders for drinks. So, Dane designed a tray attached to an arm that could be put in a cup holder and then printed most of the components with his new 3D printer for his parents.

Though the design he’s proudest of is, understandably, the exhaust system he made for the FSAE car, I would argue that the swivel tray is more applicable in day-to-day life. Now Dane is a member of the SOLIDWORKS Central Kansas Users Group, where he’s presented work he’s done on the FSAE car, as well as part of the Champions Program.

During college, Dane also worked as a student assistant at the National Institute of Aviation Research, where he turned 2D draft drawings of legacy military vehicles into 3D digital twins. He enjoyed working on the FSAE team so much that he’s now looking for an automotive engineering job in motorsports.

Now, Dane is thinking about the future, but if he could meet his younger self, he would advise him to talk to people.

“Anybody you think might have something interesting to say – just talk to them,” he stresses. “That’s the biggest way that opportunities have popped up for me.” He explains that, in fact, his biggest connection to SOLIDWORKS came by chatting someone up.

A few years ago, a SOLIDWORKS team visited his campus, and his boss suggested Dane give them a tour of the FSAE shop. Matthew Clegg, manager of the SOLIDWORKS Champions Program, was among them.

“I had them in the shop and just started talking to them. Matt explained what he does and his outreach,” Dane says. “I kept in contact with him, and ended up going to 3DEXPERIENCE World in Dallas last year to present to the Champions Program. And it all snowballed from there!”

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