Jeffrey Zemsky starts his day at 5:30 a.m. with a 25-mile bike ride and ends it “probably too late.” In between, it’s a full day of work as Vice President of Windchill at PTC before volunteering his time to teach students about Onshape, both through Scouting America (previously the Boy Scouts of America) and a local nonprofit in Ravena, New York, called the Innovation Station.
Zemsky joined PTC in 2008, bringing with him extensive engineering experience. He is also highly skilled in user experience and process streamlining to enhance efficiency—elements he immediately recognized in Onshape, a browser-based CAD tool that PTC acquired in 2019.
“I've been in Windchill product management for my entire time at PTC and when we bought Onshape, I'm a mechanical engineer, so playing with designs is near and dear to my heart.”
As a mentor for his sons’ scout troop and a former scout himself, Zemsky saw the opportunity for his troop to earn the Drafting Merit Badge using Onshape. Over time, he began incorporating Onshape into other badges, including Engineering, Model Design, and Building, and supporting individual projects. Since then, Zemsky has worked with dozens of students and scouts, sharing Onshape with the next generation of innovators.
An Engineer from the Beginning
Zemsky’s passion for sharing engineering with young people stems from his own early experience with creative adults who were avid learners and makers – his father was an architect, his mother a teacher, and his neighbors included a cabinetmaker and a chief engineer at Sikorsky.
“I was around all of this use of building and creating things, which I think helped bake being an engineer into my brain.”
His early and memorable project was modifying an Atari 400 in 5th grade to incorporate a new keyboard and upgrade the memory.
“Having a computer was also probably a big part of solidifying my geek nerdom,” he joked, noting that it was rare for his peers to have computers in the ‘80s. Today, he appreciates that the widespread access to computers makes learning CAD at a young age possible. This is especially true with Onshape, which can run on any device.
“Onshape has been wonderful for that because as students, they get the educational account. Teaching it with a group of kids, we don't have to worry about installing software and getting it to run. As long as they've got a laptop or a Chromebook, they open up their browser, and we're all good.”
Zemsky talking to students about Onshape. From Hockey Sticks to Klondike Sleds
Zemsky first used Onshape with his troop when he was approached by the girls' unit (his troop was one of the first to welcome girls), who wanted to build a sled for the Klondike Derby. Coincidentally, one of the other parents in the troop had played hockey and offered their hockey sticks for the sled’s body.
“We harvested all of these carbon fiber hockey sticks, and then I showed the scouts through Onshape, and we designed a basic outline of the sled. You could see them going through this creative process; you could see the light bulbs click on.”
Zemsky working with scouts on building a sled. It was the first time Zemsky incorporated CAD into his troop’s curriculum, and he immediately knew that Onshape would provide the perfect structure for his scouts to pursue their Drafting Merit Badge.
“For these types of opportunities when we were trying to get students or the scouts involved and their families, being able to access it through the web, not worrying about design or having a higher-end computer was going to be so powerful in enabling them,” he said.
The Innovation Station
The excitement over Onshape within his troop inspired Zemsky to help create a program for students in a nearby town in New York who lacked a STEM lab at school. This led to the formation of the Innovation Station, a volunteer-based program for students interested in STEM.
“I tailored a program to a class that we did at the STEM center in the evenings to learn about using Onshape to design, make parts, make assemblies, and then we taught them how to go from their design to the 3D printer so that you could actually see how to go from thinking about something to actually having something, like a 3D cat,” he shared, holding up a small black cat figurine.
Students using Onshape at the Innovation Station. His students, who range from 6th through 8th grade, attend the Innovation Station with various backgrounds and experience levels, and Zemsky ensures they are all supported in learning CAD. This has enabled students to pursue their projects, and with Onshape, they can complete their projects at home.
“One of the students at home has a hobby of raising mushrooms for eating, and he's got a controlled watering system, so he needed to replace some parts. So on his own, he modeled up parts to replace and then printed them.”
This student, and many others in the program, had no prior experience with CAD, let alone any way of determining how they could incorporate it into their own lives and pre-existing avocations.
“He had interest, but this gave him a way to enable that. He saw, oh, this is cool, and then, oh, I can actually do this.”
Zemsky showing students how to put together a sled. Onshape Opens Doors to Engineering, Innovation
By sharing his passion and expertise, Zemsky hopes to ignite a spark in young scouts and students, encouraging them to think creatively and embrace the possibilities of engineering. His vision is to create a dynamic and engaging learning environment where scouts and students can develop practical skills, innovate, and ultimately contribute to a more technologically advanced and creative world.
In the future, Zemsky envisions broadening the reach of his Onshape engineering course to scout troops nationwide.
“One of the things I’m looking at,” he says, “is giving some feedback to the scouts on engineering and drafting, on how we can look to perhaps modernize some of those and think about design more holistically and how we can get that engagement and that excitement about creation and making. There's badges like metalworking or welding, but maybe we can think about more.”
The final product. Get Started with Onshape Education
Onshape for education brings CAD out of the computer lab and into the modern era.