10 things to remember when asking technical questions

I still go to the SW forums now and then just to see what’s going on. I’m often surprised at how difficult to understand many of the questions are. People who have been working on a problem for several hours, and finally decide to ask for help seem to assume that everyone else is as familiar with their problem as they are. I think people assume that there is a general answer that will apply to their specific situation readily available. Considerate netiquette is not that much different from common sense in real life. These guidelines apply pretty much no matter which forum you find yourself on.

Here’s a little list I’ve put together from my time in tech support, CAD admin, consulting, and general question answering over the years:

1. The first thing you can and should do to help yourself is to do a Google web search. You should also search the forums separately. You need to be logged in to search the forums. If you are going to ask a stock question like hardware or graphics drivers, or version non-compatibility, do a search. It gets annoying to see the same questions over and over again from hit-and-run visitors.
2. As Matt West points out, some of the CAD discussion is on social media. You won’t get a detailed answer on Twitter, but you may on LinkedIn. Facebook is probably a better place to find a reference than get an answer (unless you ask a question about reference sites). You might be surprised to see how much information there is on YouTube. Also, don’t forget Ben Eadie’s sites, SolidJott and Using SolidWorks. There are few SolidWorks blogs that tackle technical questions.
3. If you are on subscription, you should also consider asking your reseller. All in all, you will probably get a faster, more complete answer from the community at large, but in certain special cases, the reseller may have access to information that users do not.
4. A picture is worth 1000 words. Really. Don’t get wordy, just take a screen shot. It’s easy to attach a screen shot to a SolidWorks forum post. SolidWorks has a built in screen capture tool at View>Screen Capture. You can show the button for it or make a hot key. You can use Irfan View as a fantastic free image editor to annotate with arrows, circles and text.
5. If you don’t know what something is named, circle it in the picture or use an arrow to point to it. There is a program called Snag It that allows you to take screen shots, and it includes an image editor. There is a free trial and I think you can still find the totally free SnagIt Version 5 around on the web somewhere. You could also pay the $35 for the program, which is well worth it. Annotate images just like you’d annotate an engineering drawing.
6. Take multiple images from multiple points of view. It’s difficult to annotate a 3D problem in just 2D images. Remember? That’s our job as CAD users.
7. Make sure to ask a question. Some people get so caught up in explaining their situation that they never get around to asking the question.
8. Most questions are geometry specific, so nothing helps people answering your questionso much as sample files. You can’t always post your files for the world to see, but you can sometimes simplify the issue.
9. If you do know the correct terminology, use it. Remember also that things like “external reference” or “shortcut” can have several meanings, so be as specific as you can be.
10. It doesn’t help that the forums seem to have a few folks who are just interested in making as many posts as they can possibly make.