2026 Student Startup With CADimensions
The tools a student meets in a classroom shape the career they build after it. Frank Cavalier and Ken Diaz from CADimensions follow that path through four stages, from undergraduate to graduate researcher to full-time engineer to entrepreneur, and close with a real customer who walked the whole thing. Built for educators, program directors, and anyone deciding what technology belongs in front of students.
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4
CAREER STAGES
3
FREE GUIDES INCLUDED
1
REAL CUSTOMER STORY
FREE
TO WATCH
Four Stages. One Workflow.
Design, make, test, improve. The process does not change as a student moves forward. What changes is what gets demanded of it.
The Undergraduate
Students learn to take an idea into CAD, change it, improve it, and explain how they got there. The biggest obstacle is not difficulty, it is moving between disconnected tools. The lesson changes the moment a design becomes physical. A student can feel that a grip is uncomfortable, see that two parts interfere, or realize a feature is too fragile. Then they adjust and try again.
The Graduate Researcher
The workflow becomes question, test, discover. Documentation stops being a formality and starts being the thing that lets anyone else reproduce the work. On the hardware side, additive manufacturing shortens the distance between a hypothesis and a physical test. The printed part is not always the final product. Sometimes it is the tool that makes the experiment possible.
The Full-Time Engineer
Design skills now have to survive real timelines, requirements, and production goals. Work has to be manufacturable, documented, and repeatable, and it has to hold up across quality control, manufacturing, and purchasing. Frank shares what happened when a drawing package got built to the wrong revision, and why students who train on professional equipment arrive already understanding materials, tolerance, post-processing, and safety.
The Entrepreneur
Turning an idea into something customers, partners, or investors can understand and buy. Prototyping matters most here because early decisions get expensive fast. A physical prototype lets a founder test fit, function, appearance, and user feedback while changes are still cheap. Closes with Oceanic Exploration and Discovery, two students who met over a shared interest, split into separate research fields, reunited in industry, and started their own company.
Three Free Guides With Your Download
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A teacher's guide for walking students through their first CAD model on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, with step by step instructions and classroom activities.
A ready to use 12 week syllabus for higher education, built around Formlabs hardware and CADimensions expertise.
How to align your goals with funding priorities, define measurable outcomes, and move from idea to approved grant.
Two People Who Walked It.
Frank works with schools, researchers, and startups on SOLIDWORKS training and certification. He has been at CADimensions for 15 years. Before that he was a customer, working in industry for a government subcontractor building frontline tools for service members. And before that he was an engineering student at RIT who got certified and became a TA, which is what put him in the role he holds today.
Ken supports education customers on the hardware side, covering 3D printing, lasers, and implementation. He studied art and design at Tufts and did not enter school with an engineering background. 3D printing became the bridge into technical problem solving. He spent 2020 through 2024 at Formlabs and now helps schools think through hardware workflows and the support behind their programs.
From Classroom
To Company.
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