cad-resources.com Blog

Through its DesignQuest Education Program, PTC provides tools for professional career growth
De Anza College, Cupertino, California
Located 45 miles south of San Francisco, De Anza College occupies a
112-acre site in Cupertino in the heart of California’s “Silicon Valley”.
Cupertino is also home to manufacturing giants like Apple, Compaq,
Sun, Hewlett-Packard, and many other high-technology firms. Near
the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the college was named after
Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. The college is one of the
largest, single-campus community colleges in the USA, with a fall
enrollment averaging 25,000 students.

De Anza provides general education and vocational courses, as well
as interdisciplinary studies, community service opportunities, on-thejob-
training, internships, collaborative programs with businesses and
industries, and online and television classes.

The Challenge: Help Professional Engineers
Develop Marketable CAD Skills
With the tremendous growth in 3D product development tools across
all industries worldwide, manufacturing companies are now looking
for their engineers and designers to be highly skilled in the latest,
most advanced 3D CAD (computer-aided design) software applications.
For De Anza College, that means more and more ‘seasoned’
engineering graduates are seeking out higher education programs
offering the latest 3D CAD training, to develop new skills or sharpen
their outdated CAD skills and secure the best engineering positions
available. De Anza’s goal is to provide the 3D CAD tools that are in
most demand by top companies.

The Solution: PTC DesignQuest Program for
Colleges & Universities
As a member of PTC’s DesignQuest Program, De Anza professors are
able to bring a variety of Pro/ENGINEER software solutions into their
curriculum at a price that’s a fraction of the industry cost. PTC and
De Anza (along with CAD-Resources.com) have been partners in education
and publications for over 13 years, resulting in a dynamic
program where both seasoned professionals and recent high school
graduates are now learning the industry’s best hardware and most
popular 3D parametric CAD software-Pro/ENGINEER. Students are
being educated to a level where they can secure a professional position
using Pro/ENGINEER, without requiring additional training by
the hiring company. In addition to 3D CAD software, DesignQuest
provides teacher training, technical support, and a complete student
curriculum, enabling professors to be up and running quickly with
their 3D CAD program.

The Results: Thousands of Professionals Build
CAD Skills and Find Career Positions
Thanks to De Anza College and the PTC DesignQuest, thousands of
college students and professional engineers are acquiring the skills
they need to either find new employment or advance their current
design and engineering positions. Today, De Anza works closely with
local and state employers in California who are now using the college’s
CAD Web blog and online job board to disseminate job opportunities.
Job requisitions are emailed to over 2000 past and present students,
as the postings are received from 10 different state and national technical
service firms. The college has personally placed over 1000 students
in local industry, a vast majority of which are Pro/ENGINEER-based
positions.

History of CAD at De Anza College
The CAD program at De Anza College officially started in 1984 with the
introduction of Computervision to the curriculum. Previously, from
1965 to 1984, the Drafting department offered a traditional Drafting
and Design certificate and degree program. Since 1984, the CAD program
changed names and divisions a number of times while continuously
evolving and reinventing itself to meet the needs of the local
high-tech job market in Silicon Valley. In the past, Computervison,
Personal Designer, Calma, and CADAM were offered.
Today, a variety of CAD design programs is offered, including
Pro/ENGINEER, AutoDesk, SolidWorks, CosmosWorks, and Unigraphics.
Current CAD Program

Today, degrees and certificates are available not only for every CAD system
being taught at De Anza, but also as an AA transfer program degree.
The Pro/ENGINEER Certificate requires 20 units and a minimum of five
classes. Much of the program is devoted to nine separate classes in
Pro/ENGINEER. The faculty is composed of both full- and part-time
instructors, each with 20-40 years of industry experience.
The CAD facility was newly installed in September, 2007, and is
composed of two rooms, each with 35 Mac Pros running Windows.
“Pro/ENGINEER runs extremely well on the computers and the De Anza
CAD program is one of the largest and first facilities to use this platform,”
explains Louis Gary Lamit, a full-time instructor and department
coordinator at De Anza College.

Changing Face of De Anza’s
Engineering Department
In the last 20 years, the De Anza student body has changed from
young, recent high-school graduates seeking to enter the field of
drafting and design, to experienced professional engineers seeking
training and retraining. Over 75% of students possess engineering
degrees, and some have Master Degrees and PhDs. The “typical” student
ranges from 20-70 years old, with a mean average of about 35
years old, and 10-15 years is the typical industrial experience level
for the students. Over 90% of students have extensive experience
as engineers, designers, or as drafters. This highly educated student
body attends classes in Pro/ENGINEER and other CAD systems, and
return periodically to update or enhance their CAD skills. Some students
have attended classes off and on since the program started in 1984!
In the last few years, the program is seeing a new “feeder” group;
instead of high school graduates, they are seeing more university
graduates. Many newly minted engineers from Stanford, Santa Clara
University, San Jose State University, UC Berkeley and UC Davis, who
have had insufficient training in CAD and in most cases no exposure
to Pro/ENGINEER, are joining the De Anza program. Before 1990,
80% of the students came from local high school drafting programs.
Now, only about 10% of the program caters to recent high school
graduates. Many local university engineering programs are sending
their students to De Anza for CAD training-which offers them a flexible
schedule to fit within their complex and taxing full time engineering
program.

In many instances, students are graduating from other universities,
yet aren’t prepared to enter the workforce as their curriculum was
out of date. Lamit explains: “One young student recently graduated
from a major northern California university as a mechanical engineer.
In that curriculum, he had taken one engineering graphics
class, which used an application called AlmostCAD. As the student
stated, AlmostCAD is not used anywhere in local industry, so how
will he be able to get a job with 40 hours on AlmostCAD, which is
three years out-of-date and next to useless. After six months taking
Pro/ENGINEER classes at De Anza, he is now employed,” said Lamit.
Only university programs that emphasize the technical and design
aspects of engineering actually teach 3D CAD to a level that is usable,
and many students are so overloaded with classes in math, physics,
chemistry, engineering, etc. that engineering graphical design warrants,
at most, two classes. And, these engineering graphics classes
are normally taught in the sophomore year. By the time the engineering
student graduates from a 4- or 5-year program, the software
they learned has gone through 3-4 version changes, and the student
barely remembers the command structure.

PTC DesignQuest Program at De Anza
PTC and De Anza (along with CAD-Resources.com) have been partners
in education and publications for over 13 years. Together, they’ve
created an incredibly dynamic program where students use the bestavailable
hardware, and master the most powerful 3D parametric
CAD software on the market. This partnership affords students the
opportunity of being educated to a level where they can enter a job
using Pro/ENGINEER without extra training by the local companies.
At present, De Anza teaches Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 and will
upgrade to the newest version (4.0) in the summer of 2008. All of
the classes offer the newest version of the software, while also making
available two previous versions, along with earlier versions of
CADTRAIN/COACH for students who need older versions of the software.
An update class is also taught every term.
At present the CAD Program teaches separate quarter-long (96-hour,
12 week) classes in:
Pro/ENGINEER
Pro/MANUFACTURING
Pro/SURFACE Pro/CABLE and Pro/MOLD
Pro/SHEETMETAL and
Pro/ENGINEER Mechanica

Educational Materials
Instructors at De Anza use Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 and Pro/ENGINEER
Wildfire 3.0 Tutorial, produced by De Anza’s Louis Gary Lamit, for
the first three classes-and PTC’s CADTRAIN/COACH as supplemental
material for every module. Outside books and tutorials from SDC
and CADQUEST are also studied in advanced classes. A majority of
students also purchase the Student Edition of Pro/ENGINEER for
home use.

Graduates in Great Demand by Local Industry
For many who attend the CAD classes at De Anza, the goal is to maintain
and expand their knowledge and use of specific CAD design tools,
which are essential for the engineer, designer, or drafter to stay gainfully
employed throughout their career. Through the DesignQuest
Education Program and De Anza’s curriculum, local industry is finding
the talented and skilled engineers it needs to thrive in today’s
competitive marketplace.
De Anza works closely with local and state employers using the college’s
CAD blog and online job board to disseminate job opportunities. Job
recs are emailed to over 2000 past and present students as they are
received from ten different local-state and national technical service
firms. The college has personally placed over 1000 students in local
industry, a vast majority of which are Pro/E-based jobs.
Each term ends with a CAD user group event, combined with software
and hardware demonstrations, along with a large CAD job fair hosted
by the local tech service companies. It is not uncommon to have ten
students interviewed and receive job offers at every event.
For De Anza professors like Gary Louis Lamit, there’s a sense of pride
that comes with helping local professionals maintain and find valuable
engineering positions with top companies. “With many local companies
like BAE, Stryker Endoscopy, Intuitive Surgical, KLA Tencor, Loral and
many others using Pro/ENGINEEER for the design and documentation
process,” says Lamit, “De Anza students have found ready employment
when they complete the program.” For that accomplishment,
De Anza should be very proud.

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herein is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be
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