How long does it take to learn Autodesk Alias?

This is, not surprisingly, a common question from people who want to learn the software. The answer is going to depend on a lot of factors, including the user's level of experience in other CAD systems (if any), their ability to apply themselves to challenging problems, their level of enthusiasm and interest, their capability of understanding surfacing, their knowledge and understanding of engineering and design.

If we assume that they have zero experience of CAD, then the first hurdle will be the terminology that they need to learn. They will also need to develop an understanding of working in 3D on a flat 2D screen. Now that modern systems allow the user to rotate the model freely around then this is a lot less of a problem than it was in the past when you only had a static view of a model at any one time. But there do seem to be some people who find looking at the model, particularly if it’s displayed as a wire frame, difficult. They can struggle to see the model in 3D. Perspective helps of course. Isometric views look very peculiar at first. In particular an exterior will look very odd because, for example, when viewing from a front three quarter view, the rear wheels will look much bigger than the front wheels due to the lack of perspective.

The next step is to understand the functioning of the UI. For people familiar with PCs, then the drop-down Windows-style menus at the top of the screen are not going to be any problem. Many of the icons incorporate common design features which give the user clues as to what’s in that particular menu.

It gets more difficult to learn as we explore things such as the marking menus and we learn how to manipulate the view of the model. The user needs to get to the point where these operations are embedded into their subconscious. Much like trying to drive a car with 20 gears - it’s simply a matter of practice and most people will get it eventually. I did train one guy who had never used anything other than the left mouse button in previous CAD systems and to get him to use the middle mouse button or the right hand mouse button took weeks. But eventually he got it. To be fair he was close to retirement. So it was quite a challenge for him. Once he got the hang of it, though, he was full of enthusiasm and would have made a very good surface modeller.

The next thing that the user will need to understand, if they’ve not had any previous experience of CAD, are the concepts and behaviours of Bezier and NURBS technology. Obviously they do need to know the technical side of this, but often it’s best to throw them in at the deep end and just start pulling CVs around. It’s so much more intuitive than trying to understand a lot of theory first. It’s the way most people learn. There are some people who love the technical side of things (myself included!) and will want to know much more in depth, maybe even to the point of understanding the mathematics behind the software, but in general this is not the case.

Because there is so much to learn in surfacing it’s important to break it down into manageable chunks of information. For example, introducing scan data too early on makes the understanding more difficult because now the user has to not only grasp the need to get a close fit to the data but also how we should split up curves and surfaces, how we decide on the degree and number of spans (if we are using multispan surfaces of course - a discussion in itself!). This is all too much for most people to take in at once. I usually find it’s better to start from sketches so that the user can appreciate how models go together, how and where to split them and how to detail them up without getting bogged down in trying to get to within 0.3 mm (say) of some scan data.

Having got to the point of building models and understanding how they should go together, the user can now start to look at the diagnostic tools. In particular curvature, highlights and surface continuity. They need to know how to fix problems and understand how important CVs are to achieving a quality result.

Surfaces of revolution are a whole area in themselves. It’s fundamental that users appreciate how to achieve and check circles and circular surfaces. If they’ve had some experience of Alias before, maybe on a design course, they may believe that they’re creating circles just because they’re using the circle functions and, of course, this isn’t always the case.

With an understanding of patch organisation under their belts new users can now be introduced to scan data. The biggest question is always "what deviation do we need?" and the answer is "it depends". Not very useful of course but as in so much of surfacing this is a judgement call which can only come with experience, an understanding of the quality (or otherwise) of the data and knowing what the purpose of the data is in a particular instance. Trying to balance surface quality, fit to data and surface continuity is incredibly challenging at the beginning - and in some areas can still be very challenging even after many years of experience.

So far the user has seen how to create models of high-quality which fit nicely to the scan data. The next phase is to understand how to work with designers, engineers, perceived quality engineers and suppliers who often have conflicting requirements. The job of the A Class Surfacer in particular is one of negotiation between these disciplines. This is what makes A Class Surfacing so challenging and, ultimately, so rewarding.

If the user has come from an engineering background, they will have no problem with the engineering side of the task, but they may struggle, sometimes massively, with the requirements of design. For one thing, the language of designers is quite different to that of engineers. An engineer might ask for a 2 mm fillet when they really mean that the minimum radius on the fillet needs to be 2mm. The designer won’t want to see a circular fillet in general and will expect to see some run-in to the fillet - in other words, softer edges than a pure circular arc fillet. Designers talk about pump of surfaces when an engineer will refer to this as crown. Designers talk about accelerating surfaces when an engineer would say that the radius is getting tighter. Designers talk about curves talking to each other which in engineering terms often means that the curves are somewhat parallel or aligned to each other, although not in an absolute sense.

If the user has come from a design background, they will have no problem with the design side of things, but of course, the engineering aspects maybe more challenging for them.

The other thing that is challenging in surfacing is the requirement for the surface model to successfully import into downstream CAD systems such as CATIA. CATIA requires, by default, that the surfaces are joined within 0.001 mm, which, to new users will seem ridiculously tight. In some companies 0.005 mm is acceptable. To be honest it doesn’t make the surfacing that much easier. These tolerances have to be achieved otherwise the surface models are not suitable for release into the system.

So you can see that learning surfacing in Alias is an incredibly complex process. Anyone who says that you can learn it in a week is lying or has never done any surfacing! Yes, it’s possible you could learn the UI in a week. It's possible to start to do independent work after three months but to become truly proficient in Alias requires at least 3 to 5 years. But really it's a life-long learning experience. Even after decades of using surfacing systems. there are still things to learn. Of course the software is constantly developing as well, so there are new tools and new ways of doing things to learn as time goes on.