Glad to Be Here!

I always knew this is where I would end up. I didn’t know why or when or what circumstances would present themselves, but somehow I just new. My name is Todd Werginz and I am the new tech at CATI. I will be working out of the Brookfield office helping existing, and prospective customers with the “Technical Aspects” of  Solidworks. 

First I need to give a little background. I have been associated with the manufacturing field for some time (20 Years Ouch!). I have been married to my wife Heidi for 15 years. I have three children ages 19, 13, and 5. I enjoy fishing, hunting, woodworking, playing my drums and family type outdoor activities. I took a summer job after my second year of college as a sweeper in a mold making shop. I had never seen anything like it before and was truly fascinated. Being one who loved to work with my hands and a creative type person I decided to pursue this with passion. Now mind you when I started this career were talking about  punched paper tape for CNC’s and drawing tables with cigarette filled ashtrays in the lower right corners being wielded by ornery designers with pocket protectors. But I saw something here. 3D visionaries trying to get by on a 2D budget.  I always could "SEE" in 3D and it came easy for me. 2D paper drawings just suck!

As my career progressed building tools in both the die cast and plastic injection molding industries, I saw a trend start to emerge. Computers. I loved these things! I was one of those who bought a 486DX with a 40MB hard drive for $2300!! By 1994 I was in business with my family. We owned a medium sized mold making shop in southeastern Wisconsin specializing in medium sized tooling for the plastic and die cast industries. I was the self proclaimed “GEEK”. I saw right away the advantages of the CAM system. It was a little while longer (1997 or 1998) that I began to see a bottle neck. In order to obtain more throughputs I needed to work when no one was there.  I needed geometry to machine during the “lights out” periods of the day. Up until about this time CAD systems of any power required there own zip code and infrastructure. They cost a fortune and only the big guys out there had them. In comes Solidworks. An affordable, easy to learn, easy to use, Windows based pc platform, CAD tool. I still remember my first Extruded Boss. It was heaven. Now we had the missing link to lights out machining- rapid production of machinable geometry through the use of a solids based modeler. No more taking 2D prints and drawing them in our CAM system. What a waste of time that was!

Fast forward a blink of the eye (14 years). I kind of carved my nitch in doing mold design and various other computer stuff over the years. I always kept SOLIDWORKS at arms length though. Not working on it steadily but always keeping up with it and getting a taste of “What’s New?” every year. In all my years with CAD/CAM software the only one with consistent customer driven enhancements and truly great product releases year after year continues to be Solidworks. Which is why I am here working at CATI. There are things that I could not learn anywhere else. I have been truly blessed to come aboard. I guarantee that I do not have even close to half the answers but SOLIDWORKS and my coworkers are only in it to win. In my first week I already know that the word “team” means something here. I look forward to working with as many of you as possible.

Design Better!

Todd A. Werginz