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Interview with the engineer of NIPTB Onega - the winner of WorldSkills Hi-Tech about work, championship and CAD

On Habré there were already posts about WorldSkills championships for students and young specialists. Last year, a new direction appeared in WorldSkills Russia - Skills of the Wise for participants over 50 years old.

We interviewed Dmitry Bolshakov, the winner of the WorldSkills Hi-Tech 2019 National Championship of Cross-cutting Trades in High-Tech Industries in the CAD Engineering Design competency. His professional experience is 26 years, experience with design systems (CAD), including writing his own applications - 23 years.

Now Dmitry works in the department of design and development of the NIPTB Onega, the leading design and technological organization for ship repair of the United Shipbuilding Corporation.


Dmitry Bolshakov (center) at the WorldSkills Hi-Tech Championship Awards

Why do you think you were nominated as a participant in a competition from an enterprise? How many years have you been working at Onega?

I have been working at Onega since 2016, but I have been associated with the company for a very long time - it was my first job in an engineering position after graduating from Sevmashvtuz in 1994 (then I worked here for only a few months). In the early 2000s, already working at another enterprise, he participated in joint projects with the Onega Research and Design Library.

In general, I have been working as a design engineer since the end of Sevmashvtuz in different places and with different specializations. At first he worked at a kulman, but approximately in 1996 he began to master CAD systems, and at first at a home computer in his spare time. Finally moved to a computer at work in 1997.

The participant in the competition was most likely due to the extensive experience in designing in various CAD systems, including using 3D modeling.

What is your job? Tell us more about the specialization.

While working in various organizations, I had to design various technological equipment and non-standard equipment, mechanical and hydraulic units of road snowblowers. For many years he was engaged in the design of special lighting products (to work in this direction he received additional education at the Department of Lighting Engineering MPEI in 2009).

For several years he worked as the head of a small design bureau. Today, most of my work is the design of metal structures with elements of the simplest mechanisms as part of non-standard equipment and the design of technological equipment, occasionally there are elements of hydraulic systems or electric drives.


Team of the United Shipbuilding Corporation at WorldSkills Hi-Tech 2019

Your impressions of the competition. Learned something new?

I would not say that the tasks were unusual or very difficult - at work I had to meet much more non-trivial tasks. However, the amount of work that needed to be done in such a short period of time (two days) at first caused some bewilderment.

For me personally, the most valuable thing was not so much the participation itself as the opportunity to share with colleagues the experience of using various CAD systems in different industries.

Typical competitive assignment of the CAD 50+ Engineering Design competency (located on the WorldSkills Hi-Tech 2019 page )

The content of the competitive assignment is Engineering design. Competitors receive a text description of the task, drawings of parts and assemblies, files of electronic models of parts and assemblies.

The assignment includes:

  • building 3D models of parts, subassemblies and assemblies in accordance with the information given in the drawings and in the text description
  • creation of drawings
  • creation of photorealistic visualization, assembly-disassembling schemes for the indicated parts of structures
  • creation of animated videos demonstrating the operation of mechanisms.


The expected result of the task (example)

image


What CAD systems are you familiar with?

COMPASS - to perfection. There is experience using the API to "finish the missing."

SolidWorks: 3D-modeling, photorealistic, strength calculation.

CATIA (in the distant past): 3D-modeling, strength calculation.

T-Flex: 3D-modeling, photorealistic, animation, design drawings.

Also in the past, I used a lot of different highly specialized CAD systems for the design of lighting optics, for example, Zemax and others.



Due to what, in your opinion, managed to win?

Experience was useful - not only in terms of CAD ownership, but also “tactical” - the ability to correctly plan your work and allocate the allotted time. Correctly put the emphasis before starting work: focus on priorities that are critical in terms of achieving results.

Participants in WorldSkills championships always have a choice of which CAD systems to work with. Why did you choose COMPAS for the competitive tasks?

From what the organizers suggested, I chose COMPASS.

At KOMPAS, I did part of the work: 3D models and drawings. For a photorealistic image and animation, I used another program, transferring 3D models from KOMPAS into it in the STEP exchange format.

How many years have you been working at KOMPAS? What version did you start with?

I have been working at KOMPAS since 1997, starting with version 4.55 under MS-DOS.

How do programming skills help your work with COMPASS? Tell us about the improvements, modules that were implemented.

I started writing libraries for KOMPAS back in the 90s (the first application I developed was for KOMPAS 4.55 for MS DOS). In KOMPAS there was a chic at that time library development environment “KOMPAS-Master” with its own code editor and debugger. The programming was carried out in a language similar in syntax to the C language. On it I wrote a library for automatically calculating and drawing parts of die tooling (punches, dies, pullers).

After translating KOMPAS to Windows, I wrote several application guides:

  • ( 2D );
  • ( , , );
  • ( ZIP-) .

There are also a number of libraries in the creation of which I participated as a task director and a user interface designer (for example, an application for interacting with a corporate database of standard products).

ASCON congratulates Dmitry Bolshakov on his victory at WorldSkills Hi-Tech and thanks for his many years of commitment to the COMPAS user community.

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