When I talk to many people who are using SOLIDWORKS in their work, personal hobbies, the topics typically involve metal, machinery, moving parts or how SOLIDWORKS is used to design mini libraries (reference to SLUGME8)!
"And now for something completely different..."
I'd like you to meet a colleague of mine: @RN
Rachael is an incredibly talented user of SOLIDWORKS and on top of that, exceptionally skilled in designing and making clothes - AND shoes! I just had to spend some time with her and fortunately for us, she graciously accepted the invite to be interviewed.
You can listen to that interview here as well as follow along in the text below which I've embedded various pictures and links to additional, related reading material you can check out.
Now... Without further ado, I present my interview with Rachael:
Interview Transcript:
Matthew Hall 0:00
Rachael, thank you very much for joining us here today. I would like you to take a moment to just kind of introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us who you are. Where do you work and what's your role?
Rachael Naoum 0:13
So my name is Rachael Naoum. I am on the Product Definition team, which is part of SOLIDWORKS R&D...part of Dassault Systèmes.
Matthew Hall 0:21
So how long have you been working at the Dassault Systèmes?
Rachael Naoum 0:24
I'm about to have my five year anniversary in December, but I was also an intern for three years before that.
Matthew Hall 0:30
Okay, so you've been with us for eight years? That's a long time. All right. And give us a little bit of the history. What sparked your interest in joining the Dassault Systèmes - initially as an intern... where did you start - which brand did you start in?
Rachael Naoum 0:44
I have been at SOLIDWORKS the whole time. So I was...for the first two years I worked on the education team and this... Well, actually, this is a very interesting story. It started when I was in high school, actually. The high school I went to, it was only for junior and senior year. And the senior year, you would take college classes. And while I was doing that my the very first class I signed up for was called "Introduction to CAD." And my professor was @DP, and I'm sure you know, @MP. He was my professor and he taught me SOLIDWORKS. And at that point, because I was still in high school, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And through that class, I realized, "Hey, you know, this CAD thing, I've always liked physics. And I've always liked art, and doing the CAD thing" , "Hey, I could do those things at the same time" , "Hey, you know what, maybe I should be a Mechanical Engineer, because then I could do this stuff all the time for my job...Wow!"
Matthew Hall 1:47
And get paid doing what you like, right?
Rachael Naoum 1:49
Yeah. One thing led to another after that - like I became a tutor for the class, I ended up when I finally was in college, I went to that same school, and kept being a tutor for the class. And then I became an intern for Marie on the education team.
Matthew Hall 2:03
Wow. So direct line, there's the newer an intern for several years with SOLIDWORKS. You could take advantage of all the different software in the opportunities there inside of our company. What kind of projects did you work on as an intern?
Rachael Naoum 2:15
Oh, gosh, each year was something different. So the first year when I was doing my education stuff, I was mostly traveling to different student events, interviewing teams who would present their projects that they did and writing blog posts. And then also doing a lot of certifications. My second year on the EDU team is when the lab opened in the office. And so I got to be part of the original FabLab intern team. I also did my Senior project there at the same time, because I was able to use all of the machines in the lab. I was helping run certain things, so I was a mentor for the 3D printers. There's also a sewing station, which I am still the mentor of today, there is the laser cutter, and all sorts of things. And I was just around it all day, every day. And then after that...because of the high school thing I did, I was in undergrad for three years, but then I still felt too young.
So I said, "Hey, you know, why don't I just do like a plus one year and come out with a master's degree too." So I did that. And I just happened to go to a career fair that one time, the only time we went to a career fair at school, and I saw Susanne, @ST. And she goes, "Hey..." (like she remembered me because she calls me the serial intern because I kept coming back), she was: "Hey, you know, you should check out the Product Definition team. They always hire, or like they look for Master's Degree students because they're like long-term internships." So I'm like, "Yeah, sure. Here's my resume, you already know my name and how to contact me." And then I became an intern on the PD team. And then they hired me. And I'm still there today.
Matthew Hall 3:50
You're still here. That's awesome. I'm glad you're still with us. I think SOLIDWORKS designs and you know, I do other interviews with other incredibly talented SOLIDWORKS users from around the world. You know, when I talk to them, usually typically, these guys are in girls are working in sheet metal, machinery moving parts. You mentioned sewing, and in tying to your interest in art. What's the through line? What's the connection? How to sewing come into all of it? What are you using to design your creations when you're working in sewing? Where does your interest or passion around sewing come from as well?
Rachael Naoum 4:30
So this is like my life story right now. My family story. My grandparents were tailors. So they had a shop with all of their like professional industrial machines in their basement and they - depending on what they were working on - they would receive the cut pieces of fabric, sew together and send it back off to get sold in stores. My grandfather drafted his own patterns and according to my mom, he could look at you and make a pattern that fit.
Matthew Hall 5:01
Wow, okay!
Rachael Naoum 5:03
So when I was really little, he passed before I was born, so I didn't get to meet him. But my grandma, she was still sewing, she made all of her own clothes up until when she died too. So when I was four, she started teaching me how to sew. And every time my parents picked me up from my grandma's house, I was coming home with like a pile of little tubes I had sewed and they were dresses for my dolls. And that just kept expanding.
As I got older, I was making fancier little tube dresses, or, "Oh, no, no, now I wanted to sew the doll itself...No, no, now I want to make a dress for myself." And yeah, it just kept continuing. When I was in high school, I started making like really fancy dresses, I started getting patterns, like buying patterns. And then it wasn't until recently, in the past couple of years that I decided, "Hey, you know, why don't I just make the pattern myself because some of the stuff I want to sew or design, I'm having a tough time finding patterns for it." Or maybe the patterns I did find didn't really fit the best way and I don't want to deal with trying to fix it. So I'm just well, why I don't just make it myself? And that realization happened while I was working on Magic Wheelchair.
Matthew Hall 6:16
I mentioned it earlier and you're bringing it up - for people listening in what what is Magic Wheelchair all about and what's your involvement there?
Rachael Naoum 6:21
They're a charity organization. They connect build teams with kiddos and wheelchairs and their families. And we talk with them, we work with them, and we design and build this epic costume for the kiddo because a lot of times they're feeling self-conscious.. "Oh, people are looking at me weird because whatever, I'm in a wheelchair." And so our job is to make them feel like superstars. Everyone's looking at them because they're AWESOME.
So there is a SOLIDWORKS build team. We've done four builds, I joined the team for the third and fourth build. The first two, I was still in school so even though I knew about it, I didn't join the team because I just said I had too much going on with school and homework and stuff. So that you kiddo we had her name was Friday and she wanted to be a princess. But not just any princess like she didn't want to be a Disney princess or something. Nope...she wanted to be Princess Fejya. So we're like, alright, a purely custom Princess outfit. So we're like, OK...well, what does the princess need? A princess needs a castle, a princess needs a crown, a princess needs a princess dress. So all sorts of things. We built her a castle that was on a floating island being pulled by cats on like a chariot floating in the clouds that went over her wheelchair. And my job was to make her the princess dress.
Because this was totally custom. I didn't have any patterns I was working with. I was asking her - I pulled up collections of features of a dress and had her pick which one she liked the best. I specifically remember, I had a diagram with 30 different types of sleeves. And I said, "Which one do you like the best? What shape skirt do you like the best?" And she picked all of them. And I drew up a couple of different designs until settling on the one that she liked the best.
Read about the princess - the build, the reveal and more:
Matthew Hall 8:18
So you worked with her and you got her inputs. And so maybe the big reveal wasn't a surprise. But you worked alongside with her and she had her inputs as you were designing it?
Watch the SOLIDWORKS Live Replay of the Magic Wheelchair reveal:
Rachael Naoum 8:28
So through that I learned how to draft things by hand. And let me tell you, that takes a long time. So there was a learning curve of just how to draft, how to take a flat thing and use the right proportions and the curves and the lines and the spacings to make it fit on a person - and a person is not a flat piece of paper, a person's a person! And so after, I don't know, 15 iterations, every time I messed up, I would have to throw it out and start over because it's just a really big pain to erase all of those lines. And because they would affect everything else, if one line is out of place, then you're just the whole thing is shifted over. And so after all of that, and really getting the process down to a place that I think I know what I'm doing now, finally, I realized: "Hey, you know all this drawing on paper looks an awful lot like a sketch. And you know where else I can do sketches? SOLIDWORKS!"
And so I call that my "a ha!" moment.
Matthew Hall 9:32
So you had this "a ha!" moment and you started integrate - you brought your passions for art sewing everything and it converged along with SOLIDWORKS. How did that make things different? easier? or the going forward in your designs what changed?
Rachael Naoum 9:52
Once I was able to get the sketch into xDesign - I was using xDesign and SOLIDWORKS interchangeably depending on if If I was on my work computer, or if I was on my home computer. So that was able to speed up my process; I didn't have to start over anymore if I messed up. All of my dimensions - I mean, I would just type it in. If I had something that was a proportion, I didn't have to bust out a calculator to get that equation, I could just type it in and say, "Oh, well, if I have to make a change, because the measurements updated, because we measured it the wrong time, I can just update that" and the whole thing will adjust.
And so using that sketch, I was able to extrude it just a little bit. I added my seam allowances, so I just didn't like offset by a half inch around the entire thing. And then I threw it into a drawing file in 1:1 scale and then exported that as an Adobe Illustrator file, so that I could send it to my printer as a title to print. I just had like the normal paper printer at home not like a big one that normally patterns are printed on.
And I taped the whole thing together and that was my pattern. If I had to make any changes, like okay...we'll do the fitting and we'll say, "Oh, well, it's a little bit loose over here," I can just snip that part out, and then move the bodies and combine it back together again with that volume missing. And that just made everything a lot easier and faster.
Matthew Hall 11:19
Must drive incredible efficiency. So you're designing these dresses that you mentioned, are you doing any other kind of work in fabric besides clothing?
Rachael Naoum 11:31
It's most mostly dresses, because I love dresses. I am working on a project right now, that so far has been purely manual, but I just entered...I just brought SOLIDWORKS into the picture. So we'll see what happens with that. So I'm getting married next year.
Matthew Hall 11:50
Congratulations! 🎉
Rachael Naoum 11:52
Thank you. And I decided I'm gonna make my shoes.
Matthew Hall 11:56
...Your shoes as well??? Okay, I was expecting you to say, “Yeah, I was gonna make my own dress.” Which I'm assuming you might be making your own dress, but your shoes as well? What will challenges will that bring to you I wonder?
Rachael Naoum 12:09
So here's what happened, I was going to make my dress, I went to the store for purely scientific research purposes, to you know, try out the different silhouettes. See what colors and styles look good on me. The first thing I put on, I said, "Well, I guess I'm buying this!" But it worked out, because a little bit later - I'm like, mixing the timeline. So that happened in the fall of it was like fall 2020 or something. And then it was fall 2022. So then winter 2023, we just had 3DEXPERIENCE World, I gave a presentation about the princess dress I just told you about, and then also a different dress that I made specifically so that I would be able to present it at the same presentation but like having the process more freshly in my mind. And I wore this pair of shoes, and I was gonna get the same shoes for my wedding shoes just in white. But after wearing them around for the whole day, I was like, "Oh my God, my feet turned into sausages. This hurts...I hate this!" And I was telling this to Sal and he jokingly goes - you know @SL (AKA: @.S) - he was joking. So he jokingly says, "Why don't you just make your own shoes, Rachael?" So I said, "You know what? I will!"
Matthew Hall
Thanks. Sal!
Rachael Naoum
And yep, so since March, I've been teaching myself how to make shoes. And that's been quite the process I've done four individual practice shoes, I haven't made a pair yet. Because why make a pair when I know it's no good and I won't use it? So I've just been making different individual shoes and improving on my technique and my process and materials every time she asked. Now, I'm starting to bring in the CAD element. So I saw to make shoes, you need something called a "last." And that is the form of your shoe in the size of your foot. And so I wanted a shoe that has like maybe a 2, 2 1/2" heel with a nice pointed toe. And I have this it was based off of an older design from like a 1916 last. And I made my practice shoe and it looked perfect. But when I put it on, it was too big. And so this is actually the fourth last I purchased because every single one of them has been too big for different reasons.
Because it turns out that your shoe size when you buy a shoe, it's just the length; it doesn't account for the width. So if you have a wide foot you need to get a longer shoe size unless you can find it in a wide. And so the shoe size I've been wearing my whole life is actually wrong and that was a whole like thing I had to accept because your shoe size doesn't change when you're an adult like, "What do you mean this is wrong?"
So it took me many attempts to get down to the proper size and this is where I said "Okay, I don't want to buy anymore shoe last, this is getting expensive, and I don't want to buy more." And the place I bought this one from the woman selling it, she only opens her store twice a year because she doesn't have a warehouse (side note - she's actually closed her supply store for good as of December 2023). It's just her and her house. So she takes pre-orders and then ships them out to everybody. So I knew, "Okay, well, I can just wait until the next time she opens it in like February. Or I could try to fix this...maybe?" So I ran through a bunch of different ideas. I'm like, "Well, what if I shaved down the toe? But then I might lose the toe shape and I don't, I don't want to. Well, what if I shave it down from the heel, then I can keep the toe shape....but then the arch is going to be in the wrong spot for like the length of my foot" and like, "Oh, these are all weird. What if I make a mold of it? And then I fill it was something...?" But that I couldn't figure out okay, well, if I make a mold of it, what plastic do I use? Can I even get that in a format that I can melt down? And so finally, I heard from @SF in the lab in the Waltham office. He goes, "Hey, you know, we got a new 3D scanner." A scanner??? Hang on now.
I just did this, like two weeks ago. I brought my last in, covered it with a bunch of the scanning targets, the little black and white stickers. And I took a 3D scan of my last. And the software we're using, we're able to generate a watertight mesh. So if I just send it into SOLIDWORKS, or to a printer, I wouldn't have to do any post processing, it's already solid. It's not gonna be a bunch of separate surfaces that I have to worry about getting together. So that saved me so much time.
So I got the STL dumped into SOLIDWORKS. I said, "Alright, well, how am I going to work with this?" The width is fine. I don't want to mess with the height of the heel, I just need to be shorter. So I opened up the Scale feature and realized I can do a non-uniform scale and just the length of the last. So I'm like, "fantastic. Let's cut that down about a half inch." So what's that in percentage? All right, let's call that 94% scale and I resized the last. And right now I just have VCarve installed on my computer. So that's the software we use with the ShopBot in the lab. I'm currently figuring out how to use those tools so that very soon I will be able to machine myself a wooden last.
Matthew Hall 17:39
Wooden one? Wow, okay, yes. It's incredible. You're making it sound super easy, but I'm sure it's been a lot of trial/error and complication. And you feel this point your your shoes are a success.
Rachael Naoum 17:55
I think so. I'm working on my first pair right now actually. I'm going to an event in a week and I want to make shoes that match the dress that I made that I'm also going to wear to the event. So I am using the last that's too big. But if I put a 3mm cushion in the ball, it will probably fit fine.
Matthew Hall 18:15
To balance it out - 3mm is not too much. That's pretty small.
Rachael Naoum 18:20
Yeah, but you'd be surprised how much volume that takes up.
Matthew Hall 18:22
At the beginning of our discussion. You talked about the school you went to that you studied and graduated from? Are you still involved there? Or are you continuing to mentor students there?
Rachael Naoum 18:33
Not really, I am mentoring some students in a program closer to the office now. So there's a company called MassRobotics, and La Fondation either gives them a grant or sponsors them, I don't quite remember...But it's related. And they started a program a few years ago called the Jumpstart Fellowship. And the purpose of it is to take high school girls from around the Boston area, who maybe their school doesn't really have a good STEM program, and they themselves are really interested in STEM and have them go to MassRobotics and have a six month STEM program resulting in a summer internship at one of the participating companies. So...it's funny when that when it first started, I was sort of "volunteered" for that position...
Matthew Hall 19:28
Oh, you were "volunteered." I heard that!
Rachael Naoum 19:31
But I was really excited about it. So I was like, "Of course, I'll help out. That's not even a question!" And so what I've been doing with them for the past three years is I've been teaching them SOLIDWORKS. Taking inspiration from my wonderful professor, Professor Planchard. I have been using his textbook that he writes - I'm using the old version because that's the one I have from class (It's got my name in the acknowledgments, by the way!) So I've been using his lessons that he wrote. It's the CSWA training manual. And I've been using that to teach the girls SOLIDWORKS.
Matthew Hall 20:08
That's nice, you kind of giving back and you have the time the capability to do that; sounds like you're keeping super busy there. You have your day job, you have the volunteer work that you're doing. What else? Is there another Magic Wheelchair project in the works that you're participating in?
Rachael Naoum 20:24
We are figuring that out right now. So we had taken back the chair from our 4th build, because it had some electrical things that we were trying to fix. It should be returned to this month, I believe, based off of the last thing that happened. We are on the lookout for a new kiddo. There are some whispers, but nothing concrete. But there will be more and I'll be participating, that's for sure.
Matthew Hall 20:48
I believe there is a Magic Wheelchair community that we can link to that people can check out and learn more about that as well.
Access the Magic Wheelchair community HERE
Rachael Naoum 20:55
Yes, there is.
Matthew Hall 20:57
All right, and see some of the works and creations you've done there. We'll put some links there some pictures as well, in the final post.
Rachael, thanks very much for joining us and sharing us your life through line from your childhood into and working for Dassault Systèmes and it just you know all comes together. I've seen you around and seen your posts and creations you made. This is some great insights you provided so I can kind of put it all together my head, your history and I'm sure people be excited to hear this and see some of the works you've done as well as your dresses. They are beautiful. They're great creations. Again, congratulations on the upcoming wedding and good luck with all the shoe projects that you're working on. I look forward to seeing blog posts around that.
Rachael Naoum 21:41
Thank you.
Matthew Hall 21:42
Thanks again for joining us, Rachael and you have a wonderful day.
Rachael Naoum 21:46
Thank you, you too!
