Design Firms
Design Firms
(OP)
I will be starting my own design firm soon (within two months) I have Solidworks 2007 and a screaming Dell workstation on the way. I will be marketing 2/D 3/D drafting & design with a focus on Mechanical Design for the tool, jig, fixture, specialty machine & automation segment. With ten years in a manufacturing engineers position I have gained alot of knowledge and have re-engineered & designed alot of tooling. I have a primary customer who will help me get kicked off & going. I am of course worried about future customers and wondered If anyone would have any input, success stories or advice to a venture such as this. Of all tooling that comes into our door where I work there always seems to be a design source labeled in the title block and then an integrator/builder. There has got to be work out there! I am in the south central Indiana/Michigan area and am trying to think of the best way to market my services. I will be full time (not going to try this out of my home.) Hope Im making a good choice! Also, I am making the switch from Inventor to Solidworks; its going o.k. so far except that my primary customer has solidworks 2006 and I have 2007 so we have to work thru this. I think solidworks owes me 2006 as well.






RE: Design Firms
thread559-150008
Why does SolidWorks owe you 2006?
Chris
SolidWorks 06 5.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 02-10-07)
RE: Design Firms
You may need to come across more as an expert in your field, doing what you do more efficiently than anyone can offer the equivalent work for.
Just my thought, since I'm working from home (in a nice dedicated office), saving my clients money for excellent work. I really have no need for "space", per se, since I do my work on my desk with a computer. Your industry might be different, but I don't think it is (since I know folks who do what you endeavor to do).
Check out the Starting & Running An Engineering Business forum as an additional place to post--more to-the-point on the general business side of things.
Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.
RE: Design Firms
You say you will not be working from home. Will you be working on-site at various customers premises? Could you use one of their computers?
If you are paying for only one license from SW, then SW owes you only one license. However, having said that, I know many people have multiple SW versions installed but are paying for only the current version license. Maybe talk to your VAR to see what can be arranged.
RE: Design Firms
Rob Rodriguez CSWP
www.axiscadsolutions.com
www.robrodriguez.com
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/rob_rodriguez/
President: www.nvtswug.com
SW 2007 SP 2.0
RE: Design Firms
RE: Design Firms
Not that I ever think you are that helpful
Garland
RE: Design Firms
(OK, OK, I understand an attachment to Win 2000. ..)
Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.
RE: Design Firms
Rob Rodriguez CSWP
www.axiscadsolutions.com
www.robrodriguez.com
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/rob_rodriguez/
President: www.nvtswug.com
SW 2007 SP 2.0
RE: Design Firms
Congratulations on getting out on your own.
Even though your message did not mention this issue, I would suggest installing and using PDM. You may already plan on this anyway. PDM keeps good records of customer’s revisions. I really like the as built feature.
Bradley
SolidWorks Professional x64 2007 SP2.2
Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU
3.00 GHz, 3.93 GB of RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400
RE: Design Firms
RE: Design Firms
Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog
RE: Design Firms
I jumped ship 4 years ago and split my time now between contracting and working for myself would i do it again?
yes and no the learning curve is severe
1. in the beginning you tend to take any job pretty much negating the reasons that you wanted to work for yourself
2. your relationship if you have a partner will suffer far more than in that office job you had
3. it takes a good year before you become comfortable with what you have done
4. even if you dont succeed and you need to get a real job again employers tend to view the fact that you had a go with a lot of respect several senior management guys have told me they wouldnt do it in todays climate
5 try and get up do your days work and finish as you would if you were employed by someone else its way too easy to spend two hours just browsing the web watching tv staring aimlessly out the window
RE: Design Firms
Good luck!
John
RE: Design Firms
RE: Design Firms