Solidworks model mania 2000

While searching for resources to practice advanced Solidworks modeling technique, I came across Solidworks Model Mania. Next higher level peak spotted. I just climb up the challenge.

The model mania was apparently held every year since 2000 as collected in the Solidworks official blog. Models are not straightforward to design. Some of them seems to be re-used for professional level certification exam, so a good site to practice for it.

 

Today I finished the very first one (for year 2000). It took me ~30 minutes to finish. Was not a very difficult one to model for me. Except that I spent over 10 minutes to figure out the left-most port length. According to the solution video, the dimension is not given in the 2D drawing. See below for the missing information.

There are many different ways to design a 3D solid body. One nice thing about the official blog is that they provide authoritative solution. You can brush up your memory on functions used less frequently, and start thinking about the best approach for the specific model. In short, highly recommended. I will keep trying the other ones.

LeetCode - solved 200 medium level problems

Progress report #2: I solved 100 medium level problems of LeetCode on 3/8, next 50 on 4/15, and today finished 200th. 56 days for the last 50 problems. Slightly less than one problem per day. Worse than the previous 50, but this time the problems were harder (lower acceptance rate). Anyway I now have strong confidence of being able to solve most of easy to intermediate level coding problems on major computer science algorithms. One weak area though is Dynamic Programming, particularly on sub-sequences (subset of array, where you can pick any elements but maintaining the original order). Now that I hit a significant milestone of 200, I plan to switch gear to self-studying DP, using GeeksForGeeks list of hundreds of representative problems. But I will also keep solving medium level LeetCode problems.