Who is your local SolidWorks Technical Help and what do they know about SolidWorks?
I thought I should introduce myself as I have placed a few blogpost so far and spoken to nearly every customer in WA and quite a few around Australia and New Zealand and it seems appropriate to give you a bit of an idea on who I am.
My name is Magnus Whittall and I was born and raised in the Shetland Isles which is a small island located between Scotland and Norway that has a population of 24,000. I came out to Western Australia in 1998 as 18yr old that had barely seen sunlight and landed a job as Welder for Austal Ships in Henderson which builds Catamaran Passenger Ferries. I quickly moved to be a Fabricator working in the Large Components shed building hull frames and due to the nature of the shipbuilding industry I also worked at WaveMaster and Image Marine which built smaller Cats and Private Boats.
After a few years I went to Curtin University and studied Product Design and this is where I was 1st introduced to SolidWorks in 2003. I used SolidWorks for most of my projects and one of my Electrical Designs was featured on the New Inventors show on the ABC. http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s1649862.htm
Once I graduated my wife and I moved to London in 2006 and I was employed as a Product Designer for a Display firm. This job also involved me using SolidWorks for not only concepting, but also for creating manufacturing drawings and models for prototyping. One of my 1st designs won 3 Shopfitting and Display Awards at a prestige awards night at the London Hilton. SolidWorks was such a valuable tool for me in this job as all of my designs where manufactured in China and having a 3d model helped in communications. I also found features such as the Evaluate tool to find out the mass crucial in putting together quotes for customers as I could accurately work out freight costs before any manufacturing had begun. I also had the pleasure of visiting our factories in China and this has given me an insight into the requirements our customers in WA face when having goods produced in China.
After having spent enough time living and working in London I went to work for Cadtek which is a UK reseller of SolidWorks and had an office just outside of London. Cadtek have been established for over 20 years and are the 3rd largest reseller of SolidWorks in the UK. After a tough recession we moved back to Western Australia where I landed a job with a Subsea Intervention company using SolidWorks to design and create manufacturing drawings for Subsea equipment.
When a job became available in July 2010 I joined SolidTec and since joining I have become one of a few SolidWorks Experts in Australia and a Certified EPDM support technician. Just last month I was honoured to be awarded Top Perfoming SolidWorks Support Technician for Australia and New Zealand.
Well that lets you know a little bit about me :-)
Happy modeling!
Magnus.
