SolidWorks Model Mania challenges, 2000 to 2025. The first sixteen years modeled by hand in Onshape, the last ten modeled with AI in an afternoon
Model Mania is SolidWorks' annual CAD challenge. Every year a single part arrives as a dimensioned drawing to model from scratch, and then a design change lands that the model has to absorb without breaking. Harry worked through sixteen years of them, 2000 to 2015, by hand in Onshape to get back into CAD. Then he handed the drawings for the next ten years to AI, which built every part from the dimensions alone in a single afternoon while he reviewed each one against its drawing. The parts it made are marked "Modeled with AI" in the title block. That skill, it turns out, is starting to be replaced. The page is drawn in the style of the original drawings: drafting-blue linework on a white sheet, inside a title-block border, with yellow parts and their fillets colored the way each year's drawing colors them.
How to use itThe parts are physical objects, so you can grab them, toss them, and stack them. Click a part to zoom in on it, and pick a view to snap to it and watch its dimensions draw themselves in (the arrow keys step through them, and P switches phase). Material, bottom left, dresses a part or the whole bench in another material and changes the scenery. Reset bench puts everything back where it started.