S6E15 Too Tall Toby | CAD Best Practices, Speed Modeling, & Gamification - Being an Engineer

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Too Tall Toby (00:00):
Before you even launch the CAD system, just take
a minute and look at the modeland ask yourself, where should
the origin be located in thismodel?

Aaron Moncur (00:21):
Hello and welcome to the being an engineer podcast
today, we are so thrilled tohave a true legend in the world
of 3d CAD, Toby Schnaars, betterknown as too tall. Toby, with a
career spanning nearly threedecades, Toby has helped 1000s
of engineers master CAD spanningmultiple platforms and now leads

(00:43):
a global movement to gamify CADlearning from his roots in tech
support and training to hisYouTube presence and CAD
tournaments, Toby is not just aCAD expert. He's a community
builder, educator and innovator,reshaping how engineers learn
and connect. Toby, thank you somuch for joining us on The being

(01:03):
an engineer podcast today.

Wow. Aaron, thank you so much for having me and
thank you for such a nice intro.
You're very flattering, and I'mnot sure I deserve all that
praise, but I sure do appreciateit. Well, I gotta

butter you up before I get into these hardball
questions. We're gonna have somesome tough questions today.
Toby,

that's an excellent strategy. And you've
been doing this for a while.
I've seen you. You'veinterviewed a lot of heavy
hitters.

It's been a minute. Yeah, we're on Season
Six right now. A few weeks ago,just interviewed the CEO of
former CEO of Mark forged,founder and CEO. We've had the
CEO SolidWorks on, we've had thefounder of SolidWorks, John
Hersh dick and the founder ofonshape on, we've had some

(01:48):
really pretty cool guests. We'vehad. You know, this one's
actually kind of surprised methat not as many people knew
about this, this next one as Ithought would, and maybe I'm
just so familiar with him,because I have a couple of boys
who love watching his videos. Doyou know the hacks? Beth? Oh
yeah, yeah. James Hobson, so hewas on and it's interesting, I

(02:11):
found that not that many peoplein the engineering world really
know who he is. Really more ofa, yeah, more of a YouTube
sensation than, like, in thecore engineering side of things.
So again, I guess I just knewabout him, because my boys
always watch his videos. Buthe's pretty cool. I

feel like he's kind of like, directed Jason to
the MythBusters type fan. Youknow, there's fans of
Mythbusters. They would reallyenjoy the hack Smith,
definitely.

Yeah, he's got some amazing content out there.
Cool. What's his name?

Greg mark. Is that his name from marked Forge?
Yeah, right. Fantasticinterview. Yeah, it's not Craig.

It's his first name is escaping me now I can't
believe it. Sorry. I

blocked you by saying Greg. Yeah, sorry, Mr.
Mark.

It'll come back to me at some point, but that was a
great interview, probably one ofmy favorite. He's super
interesting, really smart guy,and has lots of great stories to
tell as well. He had some greatadvice for engineers and
entrepreneurs on the show,

and clearly just a lifelong engineer, like, even
early on, like, that's whathooked me in right away, early
on in that interview, when hewas talking about the design
process of the march forgemachines, I was like, Oh, I
could listen to this guy allday.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let's hear a little bit about
your story. How did you becometoo tall Toby? And, okay, hold
on first. Where does the nametoo tall Toby come from? I'm
guessing, and has something todo with your height. So that's a
sub question. How tall are you?

Too tall? Toby, wow. This is a lot of questions
coming at me once all

of you, we're gonna be the hardballs one.
Yeah, buddy, you up first, andthen dive right in. I like

it. Well, thank you. Yeah. So, so the name too
tall Toby comes from me beingpretty tall. You know, I go to
conferences and things, andpeople are like, Wow, you are
pretty tall. But it also,believe it or not, has a
reference back to Icarus and,like, definitely a reminder, you
know, to be careful about flyingtoo high too quickly. Like, it's
definitely one of the biggestand most important lessons I've

(04:15):
learned throughout my life, andI am often a victim of biting
off more than I can chew. Ithink that's kind of like an
engineering curse to a degree.
You're like, I could do that. Icould do that too. I could do
that too, you know. So that's,that's a big part of it, too.
The older videos on the YouTubechannel, you'll see, there's a
little animation of me standingup out of a chair and then
actually hitting my head on thesun, and then I go out and like,
that was always the intro for,you know, for the first couple

(04:38):
of years of the YouTube channel.
And that's, that's that's wherethat intro comes from. That's
where the name comes from. It'sjust kind of a, you know, it
has, it has its roots in Icarus,but on the surface, it's just
because I am pretty tall, prettytall, yeah, but pretty tall.
Toby doesn't sound as good.
Exactly, exactly, yeah, andyeah. And then as far as my
roots go, I mean, the. The whereI am currently is I'm trying to

(05:01):
bring the idea of 3d CAD andgamification together. So I'm
trying to create a platform andan environment and a community
where people can learn 3d CADand can have some fun along the
way. And where this really camefrom was a long career of doing
tech support and training, andthe tech support part of my
career was really aboutanswering calls that come in
from customers. Customers wouldcall up SolidWorks customers

(05:22):
primarily, and they would say, Ican't figure out how to get
toolbox to work, you know, or myinstall is broken. Can you help
me go through and reinstall andclear the registry and get a
fresh download? And they wouldalso ask questions like, what's
the best way to build thisproduct? What's the best way to
design this part, but they wouldalso occasionally ask questions
like, what's the best CAD systemout there? And that was the

(05:45):
beginning of kind of planting aseed in my mind. Of you know,
how would we even determinethat? Because to me, it was
always more about the user,like, if the user is a wizard,
that it didn't matter if theywere using Pro engineer or creo,
or if they were usingSolidWorks, or if they were
using CATIA, or if they wereusing Autodesk, or one of the
Autodesk products in that timewas actually mechanical desktop,

(06:07):
and then it became inventor andnow fusion 360 but I always
believe that it didn't reallymatter what the CAD system was.
It mattered more who the userwas. And so that kind of planted
a seed in my head of like, well,what could we do to get these
users together and actually getthem to kind of compete against
one another? And so did that.

(06:27):
Did tech support for a longtime, did training for a long
time. Got a lot of experiencedoing tech support, doing
training. I think I fielded over10,000 tech support cases, and
I've taught over 200professional CAD training
classes and and then a coupleyears ago, 2022 we decided to
break out on our own and to formthis new platform to help people

(06:48):
learn CAD and not just onesingle CAD system, not just
solid works, not just on shape,but any CAD system. It's truly a
CAD agnostic platform, which Ithink really makes it novel.
And, and then we set out to kindof come up with different ways
of gamifying that process, andthat's, that's kind of where we
are now.

That's awesome.
What? What have you learned fromrunning CAD versus CAD
tournaments that you didn'texpect going into it? Well,

the CAD versus CAD tournaments are, are one of
those forms of gamification. Youknow, we what we do is we set up
a qualification process where wesay we're going to take the top
16 people from around the world,and we're going to pit them
against each other one verseone. And what we're going to do
is we're going to show them thesame 2d drawing at the same
time, and then we're going tochallenge them to turn that 2d

(07:32):
drawing into a 3d model, andwhoever can can calculate the
mass of that model correctly,first will be declared the
winner. They will move on in thetournament. So we start out with
16 people. We go one v1 thatperson moves on to the round of
eight. You know. We go one v1that person moves on to the
round of eight. One v1 one v1now we're down to our round of
eight, and the winners of thosematches go on to the Final Four.

(07:52):
Then the winners of thosematches go into the the ultimate
finals, and then we find outwho's the world champion of 3d
CAD speed modeling. And the coolthing about that, that format,
and probably the thing that I'velearned, the thing that has
surprised me the most abouthosting these tournaments over
the past couple of years is thatthere's not as much of a delta
between speed modeling andproper 3d CAD modeling as people

(08:17):
think at first, okay, it'ssomething that is often a
concern, you know, and I'd say alegitimate concern. You know,
you don't want to teach peoplebad habits. You don't want to
teach people how to, just like,slap a model together with no
dimensions that can't be edited.
You know, we've all worked withmodels like that before. It's no
fun. You know, you're trying toget it out the door by a
deadline, but then if thecustomer comes back with a

(08:39):
design change. As soon as youmake one little change, the
whole tree blows up. And that isno fun. And so we often will
hear criticisms from theaudience, where they'll say, you
know, or really detractors whomight say, you know, speed
modeling is no good because itteaches people bad habits. But
if you watch these tournaments,if you watch these CAD versus
CAD tournaments, you'll findpretty quickly that the users

(09:01):
are following best practices.
They're just doing it really,really quick, you know. So for
example, one best practice thatusers will follow is they will
fully define their sketches, butthey will often create multiple
contours in the same sketch, andthen they'll use that same that
one single sketch to extrudemultiple features. They'll do an

(09:23):
extrusion to one depth, thenthey'll do a second extrusion to
a different depth, then they'lldo a cut extrude, all from that
same sketch. But the thing isthat sketch is fully defined,
and there's a lot of value tohaving those multiple features
working together. You know,being able to reference one area
of the sketch to another area ofthe sketch is often very
valuable. So I don't think ofthat as a necessarily a bad

(09:45):
practice or a negative practice.
I just think of it as a veryefficient way to use that tool
that they're working with. So Ithink that's probably the
biggest thing that has surprisedme about watching the cavers CAD
tournaments is just there's notreally that much of a delta
between. Like what you mightconsider speed modeling
techniques versus bestpractices. I think the the
runners, especially when youstart watching into like, the

(10:08):
round of eight and the semifinals, and especially in the
finals, they're still allfollowing best practices. It's
not it's not taking shortcutsthat's making them a master of
their trade. It's the fact thatthey've got a few years of
experience, sometimes many yearsof experience, and that they've
learned best practices, and theyand really just through practice
and repetition, they've learnedhow the software is going to

(10:28):
react when they do certainsteps, like when you do an
extrusion in SolidWorks and youfinish the extrusion, that that
extrusion remains highlightedWell, that means that means that
maybe you could immediately jumpinto a shell command and that
extrusion will be highlighted,or you could immediately jump
into like a body copy command,and that extrusion will be
highlighted. That can be veryvaluable when you're trying to

(10:49):
jump from one feature to thenext to the next, not only in
speed modeling, but in youractual job. And you can take
those skills that you learn andapply them in your actual job.
You're

probably in the top 1% of CAD skill in the
world. At this point, you haveso much experience, and you've
taught it for so long, it's justpart of your DNA. At this point,
I would imagine, what are someof these best practices that you
refer to like when you'reteaching your courses, when
you're helping people workthrough best practices for CAD

(11:23):
modeling. What are the like?
2345, things that you hit on allthe time make sure you do these
things

or don't do the Yeah. So fantastic question, and
a really important question,especially when people are first
getting into the world of queCAD. And so one of the first
things that I encourage mystudents to do is before you
even start sketching, before youeven necessarily make the the
you know, the part, before youeven launch the CAD system. Just
take a minute and look at themodel and ask yourself, where

(11:53):
should the origin be located inthis model? So in 3d CAD, the
origin is your 000, your x, y,z, 000, and whether you're
looking at a 2d drawing orlooking at a physical part, or
even a hand sketch that somebodygave you, sometimes people will
come out from the shop andthey'll say, hey, we need a
bracket for this fixture, forthis prototyping fixture. Can

(12:13):
you model this up in 3d CAD? Andthose give you a hand sketch.
Well, the first thing you shouldbe doing is looking at that and
saying, Where am I going to putthe origin in my model? Where am
I going to start? What's goingto be the 000, for this model?
Now to answer that question, youneed to think about things like,
Well, where are most of thedimensions coming from? So in
the case of that bracketexample, maybe if that bracket

(12:34):
is going into the corner of yourpart, then all the dimensions
are going to be coming from,kind of like an anchored corner.
You can usually tell prettyquickly when you're working with
a manufacturing team where thekey dimensions are anchored off
to, you know, where they'replanning to zero from when
they're machining the parts, orhow that part is going to fit in
into the corner fit, how thatpart's going to fit into other
parts in that design. So youwant to ask yourself, Where are

(12:57):
most of the key dimensionscoming from? And wherever those
dimensions all intersect, that'sa good location for the origin.
Then the next thing you'd wantto ask yourself is, does the
part have symmetry, or is it atleast close to having symmetry?
You know, maybe most of the partis symmetric, but there's one
extra slot on the right side.
Well, that's okay. That's goingto tell you that the the third
plane of that XYZ is going to begoing right down the middle of

(13:19):
your model. So deciding on wherethe origin is going to be super
important and definitelysomething you want to think
about before you even start yourfirst sketch. And then I'd say
the next thing you want to thinkabout is, now, what should that
first sketch look like? Youknow, is that first sketch going
to be a view of that partlooking down on it from the top?
Is it going to be a view of thatpart looking in from the side.

(13:41):
Is it just going to be oneportion of the design? Am I just
going to do the base right nowand then I'll start designing
the arms as a secondary feature?
You know? What is that firstsketch going to look like? And
that's something that, you know,you really get that by
practicing. You really need tojust practice, practice,
practice, practice your trade.
You know, it's just like ifyou're an electrician and you
need to put in a new circuit,you need to put in some new

(14:03):
light switches, you know, you'regoing to go through kind of a
similar mental checklist. You'regoing to ask yourself, like,
what gage wire do we need? Isthere already a breaker in the
box to work from? Do we haveenough wire? Do we need to go
through a junction box? Youknow? Like, you're going to ask
yourself all these questions,and you're going to kind of plan
out what's going to happen.
Well, the same thing needs tohappen in 3d CAD, you need to
look at the challenge that's infront of you, and then you need

(14:24):
to kind of start thinkingthrough a mentally mapping out
how you're going to completethat challenge.

Total tangent here. Throwback to what we were
talking about earlier. Greg,Mark, maybe you said, Greg, I
heard Craig. That could havebeen my fault. But anyway, Greg,

I think I said, Greg, yeah, okay, good memory.

It was gonna come back eventually. I knew it was
gonna come back eventually.
Okay, so these best practices,how, like, I think inherently, I
have a drive to just do thingsthe way they're supposed to be
done. Because it feels right tome, somehow that's that's
probably part of being anengineer, like inherently, we

(15:04):
just, we want to do it thequote, unquote, right way,
whatever that is. If weextrapolate that beyond just the
DNA of an engineer, do thesebest practices translate into
higher job performance, fastergrowth as an engineer, maybe
advancement in your company,more money, higher salary, that

(15:27):
type of thing. Or is itprimarily just the pride and
knowledge that I'm doing thingsthe right way?

Well, I think that you know, you make a
fantastic observation that thatis what engineers are pre wired
to do. We want to determine whatis the most efficient way to
solve a challenge. What is themost efficient way to get a job
done? You know, it's not evennecessarily the fastest way,
although it often does go handin hand, but it's more so, just

(15:57):
like not wasting steps, notwasting material, not, you know,
not wasting anything, the mostefficient way to design a system
or to solve a challenge. So Ithink that that definitely is
kind of built into our DNA. ButI think that what I hope that
people will get out of doing thechallenges on our website, and
out of, you know, participatingin the CAD versus CAD

(16:20):
tournaments and and even justspec being a spectator for the
challenges during thetournament. What I hope that
people will get out of that isthe ability to use the CAD as a
tool to allow them to focus moreon the engineering. You know,
what we're teaching on thewebsite is not going to teach
you how to select the bestmaterial. What we're teaching on

(16:40):
the website is not going toteach you what the best bolt
configuration is to hold thosedifferent components together,
or how to properly designchanneling so that you're not
going to inadvertently groundthrough the system electrically.
You know, that's not what we'reteaching. Those are engineering
challenges, and they'reimportant, and I feel like as an
engineer who's striving todesign the most efficient

(17:01):
systems possible. Those are thechallenges that are the most
interesting. They're the mostexciting. You know you. You have
an engineering background. You,you know you. I know that you
and I talked offline, and youshared with me that that was
actually the thing that got thatgets you the most excited about
designing machinery anddesigning custom machines, is
solving those engineeringproblems. So what I hope that
people will get out of workingwith the tools that we offer,

(17:23):
the challenges that we offer, isthe ability to really embrace
the engineering and to to notget too caught up in the muck of
the CAD itself, like we reallyit's almost like a musician
analogy. It's like when youstart playing enough guitar, you
kind of stop thinking about howto hold the chords down, and

(17:44):
even necessarily like whatchords to play, and you get to
really enjoy playing with otherpeople, you know. And what I
hope that people will get out ofdoing our challenges is kind of
that same thing where it's likethey're not even really thinking
about the CAD the cat is justkind of flowing through them
because they've got all therepetitions down. They know all
the scales, you know, they knowall the moves, and they're able

(18:05):
to just create these modelsreally quickly, really
efficiently, and then focus onthe engineering challenges.
Because, you know, that's, Ithink, even more fun than just
doing the CAD. It's, it's, it'sfun to solve those challenges
and to come up with a solution.
And it starts to become a littlebit less fun if you feel like
you're constantly fighting withthe CAD system, or even if it's
just slowing you down, even ifit's just slowing down the
process.

Well, speaking of fun, I think it's really
brilliant that you have gamifiedthe exercise of learning CAD,
because CAD is daunting,especially if you're brand new.
It's a big program, a lot tolearn, and it takes a long time.
So make gamifying it is a greattwist right to make it more
enjoyable for engineers,especially young engineers, to

(18:49):
pick up cat. How have you seengamifying? CAD training, CAD
education help engineers learnit better and retain what they
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Well, a big chunk of our audience right now is
those younger engineers who areattracted to what we're doing
because of the fact that it isit does resonate with them a
little bit more. You know, we wehave a discord channel, which is
typical. Basically going to be ayounger audience who's on
Discord. We do a lot on YouTube.
We do a lot on Reddit. So a lotof these are these younger
audiences, and what I've heardfrom them time and time again is

(20:07):
that it's great to be able to goto the to talk Toby website and
to see the different challengesthat we have posted there. So we
go to choosealtobi.com you signup for a free account, and now
you've got access to ourpractice models challenges, and
those challenges are organizedby tier level. And what that
tier level represents is a levelof complexity. It's basically
how many features would berequired to create this model

(20:30):
for for a normal person, forsomebody who's not, like,
intentionally trying to decreasethe number of features. So the
first tier level usually ittakes like, one to three
features to complete that. So itwould be like, you create a
sketch, you'd extrude thesketch, and you'd fill it the
corners. That would be anexample of a tier one challenge.
So by going through this tierone challenge and doing all the

(20:52):
challenges that are available attier one, it gives the newer
engineers almost like a sense ofa completionist, you know,
mentality where it's like, Iwant to try and get through all
of these before I advance totier two. And now we get into
tier two. And so now maybewe're, we're doing a revolved
part that has a hole that'sgoing through the middle, that
has a rectangular base on thebottom, and maybe that ends up

(21:14):
getting into the right the rangeof, like, five or six features,
you know. So these are bitesized challenges that even a
novice could complete in, say,under 15 minutes, you know? And
as you get faster and faster,you're able to complete these,
these challenges even faster.
And then then we're able to goon to the third level, the third
tier, and usually around thethird tier, that's where people

(21:36):
start really trying to honetheir their CAD skills and hone
their CAD workflows. So youknow, I mentioned to you earlier
that as you continue to gothrough these challenges, you
start to learn differentshortcuts, different ways, just
to use your CAD system. Like inthe case of onshape, there's a
fantastic shortcut in onshapewhere you if you create a fill
it, and then you hold shift andyou press enter, that takes you

(21:56):
back into the fill it command tocreate a new fill it with a
different radius. So learningthat that workflow is there can
save you a lot of time whenyou've got a model that has
three or four filets on it, butthen you're also able to learn
some best practices, like it'sbetter to save your filets until
the end of the model, ratherthan doing them midstream. So
now you've got, let's say, threefilets at the end of this

(22:17):
challenge. And you get down tothe bottom, you do the first
one, you shift, enter, jump intothe next one, and then you
realize, oh, you know, anothershortcut. And on shape, you can
right click on an edge and say,select parallel. And so if
you've got four edges on thecorners of your of your base
plate, or on the corners of yourpocket, let's say that's going
to get all those corners at thesame time, and it's going to be
a nice shortcut that you canuse, not only to complete the

(22:38):
challenge, but also to use inyour regular CAD career. Well,
where we've gamified this, andusually it's around tier three
that people start using. This iswe've added a try again clock so
you can do the model, and maybeit takes you 15 minutes to do
the model, and then you can goback in and try again. And now
you know the second timethrough. Of course, you know you
already know what the model is.
You already know what yourmodeling strategy is. So maybe

(23:00):
that knocks five minutes off thechallenge, but you're able to
start implementing andexperimenting with some of these
workflows and really truly seeover time how much faster you
can get with the same challenge.
And you get to answer questionslike, Would it be better to add
these filets at the sketchlevel, or would it be better to
make the corner sharp and thenadd them at the feature level.

(23:21):
Now, of course, there's going tobe a CAD Best Practices part of
that equation as well, but youcan really start to experiment
with, you know, which one'sfaster, which one's more
efficient, which one is going tohurt me later? You know, if I
need to go back in and make achange, you can kind of
experiment with that too. Andyou can do this in kind of a
more of like a safe environment,where, you know, you're not
going to be messing up any ofyour company's models. And

(23:44):
probably the other hugeadvantage is that you're going
to be presented with challengesthat you might not do at your
regular job. You know, a lot oftimes in our regular job, we get
pigeonholed into just doingsheet metal all day, and we
never do sweeps and lofts. Andso it's nice when you go to an
environment like this, whereit's like, oh, this is cool.
This model has a weird swept bargoing through it. I wonder how

(24:05):
to create that in my CADsoftware. And so now you're
going to expand your knowledgeof your own tools even further.
If

I was a young engineer right now trying to
really hone my skills in CAD, Iwould just be eating this up.
This would be like, what I woulddo when I get home from my day
job, I would practice on thegamified site. Walk us through
so for those who are listeningto this, thinking to themselves,
yeah, I want to check this out.
I want to try it. I want toincrease my CAD skills. Go to

(24:34):
too tall toby.com and then walkus through the process like,
what? What do we expect to seeas we're working through these
challenges? Do we get promptsafter we finish that say, like,
Oh, good job. But here's like,here's a pro tip for how you
could have done it even faster.

(24:54):
What's that process like?

So the process is that you like you said, you go
to teachall toby.com, you. Signup for a free account. We have,
we think we have, like 15 or 20challenges that are free for
everybody. The library is atotal of 150 challenges. So
there is a Pay option where youcan upgrade and get to the full
library. But there's plenty toget everybody started for free.

(25:17):
And what you do is you go intothe very first challenge. So
challenge number one is verysimple, tier one part, and you
try to model that up. And asyou're trying to model up the
part, you're presented with a 2dprint, a clock and a validation
field. And in that validationfield it says, what is the mass
of this model. So when you looktoday, you have to learn how to
read a 2d print. You have tolearn how to look in the title

(25:37):
block to see what the materialis and what the material density
is, and maybe in your CADsystem, that material has a
different material density. Soyou have to go through and you
have to figure out how to createa custom material, or input a
custom material density. Well,this is going to be a pretty
valuable skill for engineers, tolearn how to make their own
custom materials and learn howto add them to their library. So

(25:58):
there's like, a little bit of alearning through osmosis in that
regard. And then you're going totry to model up that part, and
you're going to enter youranswer down in the validation
field. Maybe you answer, like,120 grams. And you press enter,
and then it says, nope. This iswrong. Keep trying. The clock is
still running. And so, you know,pressure, you look, you look at
the pressure, yeah. So you lookat the print, and then you
realize, like, Oh, I missed thisdimension here. So you go back,

(26:21):
you know, go back through, fixall your dimensions, try again.
You enter the correct answer,and it says, Congratulations,
you've earned one point on thecompletionist scoreboard. And if
you want to, you can, you know,you can go back through and you
can try again and get a fastertime. Now what we've also added
is, down below the challenge,there's a table called Community
tutorials. And what that tabledoes is it lets you see

(26:44):
tutorials that other users havecreated, and I've created quite
a few of those tutorials aswell. So if you get stuck on any
of these challenges, you canwatch a tutorial. Now I
primarily specialize in onshapeand also in SolidWorks, so most
of the tutorials that I've madeare in those platforms, but
there's users in free CAD.
There's users in Fusion 360 ironCAD. We have one iron CAD user
who, I think, has done the first100 challenges and created an

(27:06):
iron CAD tutorial for them. Sothere are, there are tutorials
in quite a few different CADsystems that the users can
watch. So if they do get stuck,or even if they just want to
watch somebody go through andyou know, to your point, if it's
like, did I really do this themost efficient way? A lot of
times, watching somebody elsemodel something you just tried
is the best way to learn becauseyou realize, like, Wait, what

(27:28):
did he do there? And then youyou roll back the video, and
you're like, Oh, that's great.
Oh, I'm gonna, I gotta try thaton my next run.

That's a fantastic format. So you get the pressure
of being timed and having to doit yourself and probably failing
a couple of times, depending onthe complexity, but then once
you're finished, you can take abreath and take a look at how
other people did it. Learn fromthem. Chances are a lot of these
tutorials are going to sharesome pretty great pro tips that
you don't even know about. Ilove it. That's great,

(27:59):
fantastic. How has yourcommunity grown over time? And
what are some of the things thatyou guys have done to promote
that growth? So

the community is fantastic. Like I said, we have
a discord that is very active.
We have a lot of people in therehelping out when people get
stuck on the practice models.
But we've augmented thecommunity with a weekly live
stream called model Monday live.
So so far in this interview,we've talked about the
tournaments. So with thetournaments, we have a
qualification period. We get thebest eight people or the best 16

(28:29):
people in the world, and we pitthem against each other. But we
use a similar format each weekon a live stream called model
Monday live. And what we do inmodel Monday live is we we live
stream on Mondays at 1pm eastcoast, and we show a 2d print to
the chat, to everyone in thechat. So I just say, all right,

(28:50):
is everybody ready for this nextchallenge? Here we go, 321, go,
and I flash a 2d print up on thescreen, and everybody's watching
from their computer using theirCAD system, and they're watching
on YouTube. And what they do isthey take a screen capture of
that 2d print and they maybemove it over onto their second
monitor, and then I startyapping away about, like, here's

(29:11):
some news from the world of twotall Toby. You know, we just
released a new training class,or we just added a new feature
to the practice models app, orthere's an upcoming tournament.
I share all this news with them.
Well, while I'm sharing thenews, they're frantically
modeling this 2d drawing, tryingto turn it into a 3d model. And
some users are using inventor,and some users are using free
CAD. Some users are using solidwork. Some users are using build

(29:33):
123, D like the the users areusing all these different CAD
systems from all around theworld. And then what they what
they do is they start enteringthe mass into the chat during
model Monday live. And so all ofa sudden you see an answer come
in, and it'll be like 250 grams,and then another answer will
come in, 269 grams, and thenanother answer, 214 grams. And

(29:54):
you see all these differentanswers. And then gradually they
kind of converge, like 233grams, 233 grams, 230 83 grams,
like, all of a sudden everyonestarts coming in with the same
answer, because they've gonethrough and they've looked at
their model and realized, like,Oh, I did something wrong. And
so they correct. And so it'sreally fostered the sense of
community, because we get thesame members of the chat every
week, and they hang out in thechat, and then they hang out in

(30:16):
discord together, and they, youknow, they really communicate
with one another well, and theyhelp each other out. And so
it's, it's the perfect companionpiece to what we're doing on the
website and to what we're doingwith the tournaments. We have
this model Monday live, where,every week, you know, some of
the regulars in model Mondaylive are former champions,
former world champions of thetournament. And so we get, you
know, we get regulars in there.
We've got Aaron C who won thethe model Monday live

(30:40):
leaderboard last year. So everytime you answer correctly, you
know all these different answersare coming in. Well, at the end
of the the live stream, I gothrough and I look at the
answers, and I say, Okay, itlooks like Aaron C was the first
person to answer correctly. Sohe gets one point on the model
Monday live leaderboard. AndAaron C won the whole thing last
year. So now you know, he'scontinuing to dominate this year

(31:01):
in 2025 and it's just it's sucha fun environment because
everybody's in there, kind oftrying to dethrone Aaron C,
trying to, like, knock him offat his pedestal. And we have,
like, Victor K, who won theworld championship in 2023 using
SolidWorks. We have ramrosworkshop, who hangs out in
there. He won the worldchampionship last year using
Fusion 360 so they're in therebattling it out. And then we got

(31:24):
Aaron C trying to defendhimself. And then we have lots
of other, you know, regulars inthere as well. We have GERD, we
have Mr. Alex, we have all thesegreat regulars in there, Pico
boo, and it's just like, it'sjust such a fun community. It's
just such a like, you just kindof feel like you're at home. As
an engineer, as a catenthusiast, you just really feel
like you're at home. And thenice thing about that format is

(31:44):
that it doesn't matter if you'rethe fastest person or the
slowest person in there, likeyou have plenty of time to
answer, you know, and we don'treveal the correct answer to the
end. And so really, anybodywho's able to get that answer,
get the correct answer in thatcompressed period of time under
that pressure, is a winner. Youknow? It's a it's a total win.

How fun. How fun.
Building a community like thatis a beautiful thing, and
congratulations, and my hat isoff to you for for being able to
do that. I think you've, you'veprobably brought joy to a lot of
people's lives, right? Justhaving this community of like
minded individuals and everyonecan support each other and have
fun together. That's a bigaccomplishment.

Thank you. Yeah, it's a, it's, it's always been
my, you know, my passion hasalways been kind of bringing
these people together, lettingthem learn, you know, being able
to, kind of, like, it's like anedutainment type of a mission,
you know. And, you know, I'vealways, always tried to kind of
mix in that, you know, educationand entertainment together. I
think it's one of the best waysto learn. I think people learn

(32:46):
the best through humor, youknow, and through excitement, as
opposed to, like, just having togrind through a lesson. So,
yeah,

well, let's, let's go back to your support days,
just real quickly. You spent alot of time helping engineers
understand what problems theymight have and how to how to
solve those problems in theirCAD models, what were some of
the most common support callsthat you would get, and the
solutions to those supportcalls?

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yeah, the the tech support was a lot of fun.
I, you know, I gotta tell you,that was my favorite gig ever,
you know. And it was, it was areally, it was a really cool
experience, because while I wasworking that job, it was a
relatively small company, andwe, we all knew we were in a
good place. You know, it was oneof those things where it was

(34:48):
like, it's not like, I look backon it now, and I realized, like,
oh, we had it so good. Then, ifI can only go back to those
days, like we knew it while itwas happening. We knew that it
was lightning in a bottle. Weknew that eventually it was
gonna end. You know. But we justembraced it, and it was just
such a good team that it was sofun to work at a room with other
tech support people. And youjust, you get to hear your your

(35:08):
coworker on a call with acustomer, and you're able just
to, kind of, like, get up and goover and lean over his shoulder,
lead over his or her shoulder,and and listen in, you know,
listen into the call. And youget to learn, you know, that
way, being able to learn thatway, and being able to help one
of one another out. And you hearyour co worker make a suggestion
to a customer, and you in yourhead, you're like, that's not

(35:28):
going to work. That's not howyou do it. And then you see it
work, and you're like, what youcould do it that way? This whole
time, I had no idea you could dothat, you know? And then the
thing was so cool about aboutthat job is that whenever you
learned a new piece ofinformation like that.
Inevitably, it would be a calllater that day for you, like,
you would get that same totallyobscure thing, and then it would

(35:49):
come and, you know, you justlearned it that morning. And
then that afternoon you wouldget a tech support call, and you
like, Oh yeah, you know, there'sa registry key you can edit
that'll fix that. You know,everybody knows about that. You
literally just learned it threehours

earlier, the universe at work.

Yeah, the universe of work. But yeah, I'd
say, you know, the calls were,were very, very range. I mean,
we had a we had an award that wedid that was anybody who did
over 1000 calls in one year,anybody who closed over 1000
cases in one year, got an award.
We had a plaque. I actuallystill have the physical plaque
here in my office, even though,you know that that company was,

(36:25):
was absorbed into a biggercompany quite a few years ago, I
still have that plaque here. Andthat's a pretty big
accomplishment. You know, over1000 calls in one year we had,
we had one tech support engineerwho did, I think, 1600 in one
year. So that's a lot of calls,like, when you break that down
to per day, day after day afterday. So you know, doing that

(36:47):
many calls, doing that volume ofcalls, that's a you're going to
get a pretty big range of ofissues. Yeah,

that that just speaks to the power of
gamification. I mean, here youare, all these years later, and
you still have this plaque, andit still means so much to you,
because the owners of thatcompany were forward thinking
enough to gamify the supportcalls, right? Whoever makes over
1000 you get this special award,and, boom, everyone's trying to

(37:15):
hit over 1000 That's great.
Yeah,

it's, it was so so it's so genius. It's so cool.
And, you know, such a greatcompany to work for. And, you
know, and like you said, it was,it was the beginning, like, a
lot of the seeds of what I'mdoing now got planted there. You
know, when, when people wouldcall into tech support and they
would say, what is the the bestCAD system out there? That was,

(37:38):
that was planting that seed.
Like, in my head, I was like, itdoesn't really matter. The one
doesn't matter as much as thewizard, you know, so let's have
a wizards battle. Like, what dowe need to do to have a wizards
battle? And I was thinking aboutit even way back then. I was
thinking about, like, how isthis going to evolve? How is
this going to become a thing?
And then a few years ago, Ithink it was in 2020, I think we

(37:59):
did our first tournament, youknow, we actually get to see the
wizards battle. Now, that onewas, was a lot of SolidWorks
users who were in that one. It'svery SolidWorks heavy. But over
the past couple of years, we'vegotten so much more variety of
the different CAD systems. Ithink last year for the world
championship, we had 16 users. Ithink we had 14 countries
represented, and I think we hadsix different CAD systems

(38:20):
represented. And so we truly gotto see a wizards battle. And
over the past, you know, fewyears, we've been hosting it,
we've had an inventor worldchampion, we've had a SolidWorks
world champion, we've had afusion 360 World Champion, and
we've had an on shape worldchampion. So it really speaks to
this, this theory of like, it'snot so much the wand, it's more
about the wizard.

It makes me think this is not a direct analogy,
but it's close. I didphotography for some time. A
friend of mine and I, we owned aphotography company on the side
for several years, and I stilldo photography, even here at my
company, I do a lot of thephotography of finished products
and that we put on our website.
Anyway, I remember thinkingabout, what's the most important
thing for photography? Andobviously it's, it's the monkey

(39:03):
behind the camera, right? It'sthe technician behind the camera
who's controlling everything.
But outside of that, what, like,what are the most important
elements to achieving a reallybeautiful photo? And what I came
up with was, I know this istotally a tangent. It's not
engineering related, but athought in my mind. So I'm going
to go with it. I The mostimportant thing is the lighting.

(39:24):
It's the lighting in theenvironment, right, whether
that's ambient lighting or youbring your own studio lighting,
but I think that's the mostimportant element to making a
really wonderful photos, gettingthe lighting right. And then the
second most important thing, Ithink, is the glass that you're
using the lens, because the lenscan have a pretty dramatic
effect on like the depth offield, your your blurred

(39:45):
background, things like that.
And then third is Photoshopskills, editing skills. There's
all why that goes on inPhotoshop after the the photo is
taken, and that can make orbreak a photo easily, right
there. Anyway, I. Say all this,getting back to engineering if,
clearly, it is the wizard thatis the most important, not the

(40:06):
wand, right, not the tool, theCAD system, that's being used.
So with that understanding asour baseline, our foundational
context, here, are theredifferent CAD systems that are
better utilized for certainfunctions, like, I don't know if
I'm if I'm doing machine design,is there a better CAD system for

(40:28):
that? If I'm doing consumerproduct design with with a bunch
of organic surfaces, is there abetter CAD system for that? Do
you have any opinions there?

Yeah. I mean, I say yes, the answer is yes.
That's the short answer. I don'tknow if I'm qualified to, like,
go down a list of of what CADsystem will be best for the
specific applications, but yeah.
I mean, there's definitely,like, in general terms. You
know, fusion 360 for a longtime, has had the the,
certainly, at least thereputation. I think it has a lot

(41:00):
more to do with their the withtheir their pricing scheme, more
so than maybe it's probably bothactually like when it comes to
having integrated cam and doingCNC right inside of the cat
package. I think fusion 360 hasthat game locked up. You know, I
think that when it comes tomulti user collaboration, you're
not going to get much betterthan onshape like, multi user,
simultaneous collaboration,team, collaboration, like, on

(41:23):
shape.

Unknown (41:25):
I don't know. Is there

anyone else that does that? If there is there,
you know, I haven't seen it,certainly not done as well as
they've done it because, justbecause the way that they
reimagine the entireinfrastructure of the the file
management, like, it's notfiles, you know, you're
essentially doing everything onthe fly, on really, it's
essentially a database in thebackground, but like the real
time multi like you and I couldbe working in on shape from two

(41:49):
different locations at the sametime on the same part, and you
could be adding features in onearea of the part, and I could be
adding features in another areaof the part. And it's like, no
problem. So I mean on shape, youknow, you and I talked a little
beforehand. I'm definitely superimpressed with that solution,
and particularly in that, inthat domain. But, you know, they
just added cam like they'rethey're clearly accelerating

(42:11):
much faster than any other catsystem because of how new they
are. So it's like, every timeyou turn around, they've added
another amazing new feature. SoI,

am so impressed with onshape. We we have a
volunteer program called CADclub, and we have middle school
and high school age studentscome in to our office Wednesday
afternoons, and we teach themhow to use CAD and some
engineering. And we use onshapefor that. And it's been awesome
because it's free for studentsand for personal use, with some

(42:43):
file sharing limitations, Iguess. But anyway, for these
students, especially, they canbring their their public issued
laptops, these crummy laptops,right? That barely open the
internet, but they run on shapejust fine, because it's in the
cloud. There's nothing toinstall. They have tremendous
they've put a tremendous amountof effort into building out

(43:05):
tutorials just to learn how touse their software, really,
really well done and funtutorials, right? It's not just
like the standard super linearengineering jargon, like they've
got like memes of, you know,people doing silly things in
their tutorials. And I thinkit's just, it's wonderful. I'm
going to use this as a shamelessopportunity to plug our PDX

(43:30):
event that's coming up October21 and 22nd it's an in person
training event. It's not a tradeshow trade show. It's a training
Expo. And onshape is actuallyone of our premium sponsors for
this event. So they'll be there.
They'll be talking aboutadvanced surfacing in onshape.
They'll be talking about somesome automation that you can use

(43:52):
in on shape. It's, it's, youhave access to the code in
onshape, and so you can actuallygo in there and tweak some
things. And so they'll betalking about some automations
you can do just I'm so impressedwith the company in general, by
the way, if you want to learnmore about PDX, go to the wave
dot engineer, and there's allsorts of information there. So

what, what is, what is the the PDX? So when,
when does it take place?
October,

21 and 22nd here in Phoenix, just outside of
Phoenix, a town called Mesa,we've rented out a convention
center, and the idea is to pairservice providers and engineers,
right? So, like this thing hasto pay for itself. So there's a
commercial aspect to it. It's apaid event, so for for

(44:41):
attendees, it's relativelyinexpensive. It's a few $100 for
an attendee to be there, andexhibitors pay a bit more to be
there. But we are. We've made ita requirement for exhibitors to
provide training at the event.
So this is not like

Unknown (44:57):
training for the attendees or the attendees.

They. Exactly, yes, yeah, yeah, right. So it's
not like you show up and youknow, you're just getting flyers
or whatever from thesesuppliers. They're holding these
training sessions, and so thingslike GD and T and Advanced
Service modeling and plating andfinishing and DFM for CNC
machining and injection moldingand tolerance analysis, like all

(45:23):
of these things that arerelevant to engineers developing
physical products and devices,there's going to be just, you
know, dozens of training topicsthat they can attend there. And
it's in October, so theweather's nice here in October,
it's going to be very cool.
We're super excited about it.
Thank you for asking. I'll in mya good way to spend two days.
Not bad, not bad. Yeah, yeah.
Well, thank you.

Good tips and tricks, yeah. And what? What is
the, what is the? You call itthe CAD club. CAD

club, that's right, yeah. So we, there's a
whole story behind this, youknow, I'll just tell it. I'll
tell the story right now. It'snear and dear to my heart. This
was probably three four yearsago. My son was in high school.
Must been three years ago inhigh school. And my wife also

(46:13):
works at this high school, andshe works in the front office,
and so she kind of hears all thethings that are going on at the
school, right, good and bad. Andthey got a call this one day
from a parent, and the parentsays, hey, my son left the house
a few minutes ago. I don't knowexactly how long, but I know
he's gone now, and he has a gunwith him, and he's heading to

(46:35):
your school, and you need to,like, lock things down, right?
So not the kind of call that anyschool wants to get, and so they
locked everything down. Theycalled the police. Within
minutes, there were heavilyarmed police officers
surrounding the perimeter of theschool. There was a helicopter,
police helicopter flying upoverhead. Right everyone's on

(46:56):
the lookout for this kid, andthey found him luckily. And sure
enough, he had a gun with him.
He had stashed it because he sawall the cops and they found the
gun. So Crisis averted,thankfully, right? And you know,
I'm thinking about my wife thereand my son there, like, what
could their day have been likehad the police not found this
kid in time and things had gonepoorly? And I'm thinking to

(47:19):
myself, Man, I can do somethingabout this. Or what can I do
about this? I don't have a tonof resources, but what, what is
something that I could do to tomitigate a situation like this,
to just my small part, to helpthings not like this happen
again, right? And so I thought,you know, CAD is pretty cool,

(47:40):
and I bet there are kids outthere who would like to learn
CAD, and maybe we could do thisthing called CAD Club, where we
open our doors and students comein and they learn CAD, and they
learn a little bit aboutengineering. But really, here's
the secret, right? The secret isthat we're not really teaching
CAD. We're not really teachingengineering. What we're teaching

(48:00):
is what healthy adult behaviorlooks like. And if we can do
that for, you know, a handful ofkids a year, that's a huge
success. So that's what we'vebeen doing all the time. The
kids think they're learning CADand engineering, haha. We
tricked him, and it's beenwonderful. It's been a really

(48:23):
rewarding experience. How

frequently is the does the club take place? So we
do two

terms per year, and each term lasts for 10
weeks. So on Wednesdayafternoons, they come in for two
hours, they're here. We're doingon shape. We have we talk talk
about some soft skills as wellour CAD club tenants, we call
them, and there are some specialactivities. We usually have a
guest speaker comes come insometimes, depending on what's

(48:53):
available, we'll do a field tripto a local engineering or
manufacturing company. And kidswill get to see, you know,
things being manufactured andsuper rewarding. It's been
awesome. Wow, that's

so great. Yeah. I mean, it gives them not only,
not only a trade, you know, thestart to getting a trade, but
maybe also, you know, for a lotof time, a lot of times,
especially nowadays, kids reallystruggle with kind of figuring
out a purpose, you know. And soif you're able to kind of give
them the tools, who knows, maybeone of them turns around and
realizes like, Oh, if wedesigned this differently, you

(49:28):
know, if we designed thisdifferently, it would be more
safe. It would be, you know. Andnow, now they're doing something
it seems kind of benign, like,maybe it's a like a bus stop or
something, but, but like, theytake on that, that job, and they
realize, like, Oh, if I justmake it this way, it'll be a
little more safe, and now, allof a sudden, they have more of a
sense of purpose. And like thatfeeling is so important,
especially for the youngergeneration, especially right
now. So that is that's amazing.
I mean, you said, like, if wecould help five or six kids each

(49:51):
year, it's like, if you couldhelp one kid each year, you
know, or one kid across yourlife, it would be worth it. So
if you're doing five or sixevery session. That's, like, a
huge win,

yeah, one kid, especially if you're the the
parent or brother or sister ofthat one kid, right? And, yeah,

yeah. And just get him back on track here to
show him, like, you know, it'sso cool. It's such a great
story. And that's, that's,that's really inspirational. And
the fact that you realize too,like, like, you don't have to be
a multi millionaire to make adifference in people's lives,
you know, if you just,sometimes, just sometimes, just
open up your doors and show thema little attention. Yeah,

you do what you can, you know, a little bit.
Yeah. Well, thank you. Thankyou. Yeah, kind words on you.
Well, let's see. I think, man,we've got so much more that we
could talk about, but weprobably have enough easily for
you. You got

to interview, you got to interview her. Stack.
John her stack. Well, I did that

was awesome, yeah, my favorite story from him was
how he funded the very beginningof SolidWorks. Do you know this
story? I've heard some rumors.
Yeah, yeah. You know this story.
He gambled in Vegas and countedcards, and that's how he he got
enough money to start the very,very beginning, right? Little
bit of seed funding for for hissolid works. Well,

he told me a story once you might find kind
of interesting. Oh, let's hearit. So he told me that when you
are working in SolidWorks, youyou're pretty you're a
SolidWorks expert, right? You'repretty deep in SolidWorks.

I spent, uh, over a decade deep in SolidWorks,
yeah.

So what, what did describe for me for our audio
listeners, what does the rebuildicon look like in SolidWorks?

Oh, man, was it like a red light, green light
stack exactly

like a little traffic light, right? Yeah. So
he told me that when they werefirst developing SolidWorks,
they didn't know what the iconfor rebuild should be, and so
one of the developers was like,why don't we just make it this
traffic light kind of looks likekind of looks like an England
traffic light. We'll just, we'lldrop that on there for now, and
then we'll figure it out laterwhat the rebuilt light will be.
Well, here we are 30 years notonly are we here 30 years later

(51:52):
in SolidWorks, but that icon hasbeen adopted by other CAD cell.
How funny. And it's almost likeeverybody like, it's like, I've
heard people make up storieslike, I've heard instructors
make up stories like, it'scalled rebuild, because, you
know, when you come to a trafficlight, you kind of stop and then
restart. So it's like, you'rerebuilding. Nothing to do with
the true Genesis, no meaning atall behind that, the

(52:15):
placeholder, and now it'sactually been adopted by other
cats. Funny, I love it. I loveit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
That's great.

That's great.
Yeah. Well, Toby, I think we'll,we'll start wrapping things up
here. What? Maybe final questionbefore we do so, what? What's
next for too tall, Toby, wherewere you? What do you hope to
be, you know, three, five yearsfrom now? Where do you hope your
platform will be your communityall of that. Yeah.

So, I mean, what's next is that we're trying
to continue to roll outenhancements for the users.
We're trying to continue to makesure that that that gamification
itch gets scratched. You know,we just this week, actually roll
out a new enhancement, which isthe speed modeling leaderboard.
So up until now, all we'vereally talked about is how our

(53:03):
users can go in and they cankind of challenge themselves,
and they can, you know, they cando the model, and then they can
do it again, see if they can getfaster do it again. But there's
a subset of these users whoreally want to take it to the
next level. So it's very similarto speed running in video games,
where people try to figure outwhat's the best way to get
through this level. Very similaridea. But instead, it's speed

(53:24):
modeling. So you take a singlemodel, you start the clock, you
hit record on your your youknow, whatever you're using OBS
or whatever your screen capturesoftware is, you hit the start
button on the clock, and you tryto model the thing as fast as
you can. Maybe the you know,we're collecting times from
everyone, from everyone who'sdoing these models. So maybe the
average time for the model is 15minutes, and maybe you're able

(53:44):
to do it in 90 seconds. So yourecord yourself doing it, and
then you can post that recordingright onto our website, and you
can, you can actually competeagainst other users and see who
can get the fastest time. So youland on this new speed modeling
leaderboard. So you get to showoff your skills, show off how
fast you are. And the thingthat's so cool about that, you
know, similar to the tutorials,is that we do, we do a similar

(54:08):
mechanism for the tournamentqualification. So we've seen
some of these speed modelersbefore, and they come up with
such clever exploits, like whenyou create a fill it in
SolidWorks, the next time you goto create a fill it, it
remembers that value, rememberswhat the value was in the
feature. So maybe what you'll dois you'll make like one fill it

(54:28):
as a sketch, and then you'llmake the second fill it using
feature, because that that valueis already embedded in the
feature as like the defaultvalue. Exploit it that way. Or
we had one user who was usingthe intersect command and
Solidworks in an incrediblyclever way, like I'd never seen
anybody use intersect like this,like he was doing, essentially
bullying addition andsubtraction, using intersect

(54:51):
instead of just like a really,really clever, novel way of
using intersect. And so thenwhat was cool is that after we
saw him do that a couple oftimes, we started seeing. Other
SolidWorks users adopting thatsame strategy tried their times
to move up the leaderboard, upthe speed modeling leaderboard.
So speed modeling is now, youknow, it used to be exclusive to
our monthly challenges and toour tournament qualification.

(55:14):
Now is available for every modelin the library. So any anybody
could do speed modeling, anytimeyou can challenge your friends,
you guys could say, like, let's,let's try and do speed modeling
on this, you know, on thisparticular challenge. Do you
guys

ever do events for companies like, I mean,
companies are always lookingfor, you know, team building
type opportunities, right? Doyou guys do things like that?
Yeah. I mean, when you ask

the question about where we're going in the
future, that's absolutely wherewe're going. Yeah, we're trying
to, we're trying to getourselves in involved with more
companies. So if you'relistening, you're out there and
you have a company and you wantto do a team building event,
like, please call us up. We'dlove to work with you. You know,
host a tournament just for you,a custom tournament just for
you. We just last month, did ourvery first tournament for our

(55:56):
high school. So we're hoping toget more involved in that type
of thing to, you know, just workwith high school students and
help them understand that.
Because the thing that's cool isthat when you when you label it
as like an engineeringchallenge, it's like you're
going to get a couple of highschool students who are into
that. But when you label it aslike an E sport, like or a CAD
speed modeling or a minute esport, and especially the way
that we've we've been able towork in kind of CO commentary to

(56:19):
help make it a little bit moreaccessible, even to people who
aren't into 3d CAD, you know,now it starts to get the
interest of people who maybewouldn't even have considered
engineering. And then they theyrealize, like, Oh, this is
actually pretty cool. And thenwhen you work in 3d printing on
top of that, and you show themlike, Hey, you could actually
come up with a really cool idea.
And then 3d print it, and youget that satisfaction, you know,

(56:42):
within the weekend, instead ofhaving to mail it out and wait,
you know, wait six months to getthe thing back. You know,
that's, that's a reallyappealing proposition to
students who maybe wouldn'totherwise consider engineering.
And so that's awesome.

I'm, I'm thinking back over the years to all the
different engineers that I'veworked with, and they all had
varying levels of CADcapabilities. And, you know, I
think I can pretty definitivelysay that the ones who were able
to work faster. I mean, itsounds so obvious when you say

(57:16):
it, but I'll, I'll just beexplicit about it, the ones who
are able to work faster. I paidthem more. You know, they made
more money. So if that's whatyour profession is, if you're a
CAD designer, mechanical designengineer, I think the platform
that you've built is such agreat tool for these

(57:36):
professionals out there toenhance their their craft,
right? To get better at CADdesign, faster at it, increase
the value to themselves and totheir companies. And, man, it's
almost like a no brainer, youknow, if you're looking for an
opportunity to improve, go checkout your site. Too tall, too
tall, toby.com and improve yourCAD skills. Yeah, thanks.

And it's, you know, I think it's, it's almost
like the natural evolution of atrade, right? You go from being
an apprentice to being ajourneyman to being a master.
And when the, you know, when themaster electrician comes over to
your house and and he sees theway you wired in, you know, your
your light switches, and thenhe's gonna add another circuit,
and you see him do it all withone tool, you know, like, he

(58:22):
just uses, like, a flatheadscrewdriver, and he just, like,
cuts the wire exactly to theright spot and strips it, and
then, like, he's got thesniffers, and He sniffs it. And
you just see him work after you,like, sat there painstakingly
for hours, you know, just likeyou, you're trying to perfectly
dead everything into the breakerbox, and he's able just to go
through it, like he's notsacrificing quality. He's not

(58:43):
taking shortcuts and sacrificingquality. And I think that's the
difference between, you know,it's really, it really
represents the true journey tomastery. You know, it's a true
mastery. Like, it's not thatyou're learning how to do
something super fast and you'resacrificing quality. It's that
over time, you've learned how todo something as efficiently as
possible. And so when you watchthe CAD versus CAD tournament,

(59:03):
and you watch the final matches,you know, we show these users a
tier five or a tier six levelcomplexity drawing, and they're
looking at it, and in theirhead, they're, you know, in a
matter of seconds, they're goingthrough and they're mind mapping
the entire process. They'relike, I'm going to use an
extrusion here. I'm going to userevolve. This will be a thin
feature. I'll do my fill it'sfirst, so that I pick them up in
the thin feature, they'rethinking all those things so

(59:25):
quickly as soon as they see thechallenge, and then they're
going through and they'remodeling it up. And that's kind
of getting back to the pointthat you made, is that, you
know, you get to that point byhaving a lot of experience and
putting in a lot of practice,and so, you know, it's warranted
that you're going to earn thehigher salary once you get to
that point once you know whatall the tools are, and when,
when the customer comes to youand says, Can you model this up

(59:46):
for me? And gives you, you know,a technical drawings package,
and you're not going to getstumped by any of the geometry,
you know, that's, that's avaluable skill, very and that
that's what we hope to, youknow, to continue to help people
learn. Yeah, and we and we hopethat along the way, you get to
have some fun doing it, and youget to have a little bit more
fun doing your job too, becauseyou're not, you're not as

(01:00:06):
frustrated feeling like, I feellike I'm going the long way
around every time I make thisset of features, like we're
going to help you get there alot faster.

Aaron Moncur (01:00:13):
Awesome. And engineers want to learn how to
do it the right way. I remember,there was a guy who worked here
a while back, and he was alwaysasking that question in in Ken,
what's, what's the right way todo this, what's the best way to
do this? And you watch YouTubevideos, you know? So anyway, I
think we're all just kind ofwired that way to begin with.
Yeah,

Too Tall Toby (01:00:33):
it's actually kind of the fun part about
things too, you know, a little,I'll give you a little inside
baseball here. The this, youknow, part of, like, the secret
sauce of what we're doing isthat, and the natural state of
an engineer is that they willlook at a system, and especially
if it's a system that theyhaven't built or designed
themselves, and they'll say, whydid he Why did they do it that
way? I would have done it somuch better. I would have done

(01:00:53):
it so much more efficiently.
Like, it doesn't matter what itis. You show an engineer a
bookshelf, they'll be like, Whydid they build it that way? And
why did they arrange the booksthat way? You know, like, like,
it doesn't matter what you showthem. And so it's a it's a
perfect fit for our challenges.
Because anytime we show ourchallenges, especially when we
show the average time, CADdesigners and engineers are
always like, I could do that somuch faster. And so now we've

(01:01:15):
given them a place to go. Like,come on in. Let's see you do it
faster. Like, prove it. Do itagainst the clock. Record
yourself doing it, you know,upload it so everybody can see
it. So we're really trying togive give them the ability to do
this, and also give them theability to kind of pass it on,
because all of us learned fromexperienced engineers, you know,
as we were coming up and theywere willing to share their

(01:01:35):
knowledge. And so we're tryingto give them a platform where
they can now share theirknowledge forward and share it
with the new engineers that arecoming up through awesome

well, Toby, thank you so much for all of your
contributions to the engineeringcommunity, for what you're doing
for engineers. I think it'sfantastic. How can people get in
touch with you? How can peopleengage with your community?

Yeah, two talk toby.com is the website. If you
go to tell toby.com you'll findall the links for the discord
and for the for all thedifferent applications that we
have for the tournamentregistration. It's all there to
tell toby.com and then you canalso look me up on YouTube. You
know, look up to tell Toby onYouTube, you'll find all of our
content. You can start tuninginto the model Monday live, the
live streams that we host everyMonday. We have a lot of fun

(01:02:21):
with those live streams. And ournext tournament is currently
open for registration andqualification. So free entry
into that tournament. Anybodywith a free to talk Toby account
can enter that tournamenttotally for free. And we're
going to start live streamingthat tournament on May 2. So
we're going to be live streamingit every Friday in May, even if

(01:02:41):
you don't want to, want tocompete, it's a lot of fun to
watch these different CADengineers from around the world
using two different CAD systems.
That's probably, you know,that's probably the other thing
that's really fun is watching alot of times you'll see two
different users, two differentCAD systems, and they might
think, look at the model andthink, where should I put the
origin? And they might both makea totally different decision.
You know, what's going to be myfirst feature. They might make a

(01:03:02):
totally different decision, buta lot of times when it comes to
that final feature, theyconverge and they end up right
at the same point, almost rightat the same time. We've had
plenty of matches that haveended within seconds of one
another, and so it's so cool.
Two users, two CAD systems, twodifferent countries, and they
finish within, you know, just afew seconds of each other. It's

(01:03:23):
so fun to watch. So may 2 isgoing to be the first, first
live stream of that tournament.

Awesome. That is some good, wholesome, nerdy fun
right there. Toby, thank you somuch for being on the show
today. Great to talk with you,and we just appreciate
everything you're doing forengineers out there. Yeah. And
thank

you. Thank you, Aaron, for putting together this
platform. It's so much fun tolisten to all the episodes,
listen to all the podcasts. Soplease keep it up. I've learned
so much from listening to youinterview all these fantastic
guests. So it's a real honor tobe on here with you. Thanks
Toby. All right.

I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and
engineering. If you liked whatyou heard today, please share
the episode to learn how yourteam can leverage our team's
expertise developing advancedmanufacturing processes,
automated machines and customfixtures, complemented with
product design and R D services.
Visit us at Team pipeline.us. Tojoin a vibrant community of

(01:04:20):
engineers online visit the wavedot engineer, thank you for
listening. You.

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S6E15 Too Tall Toby | CAD Best Practices, Speed Modeling, & Gamification

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