The Use of Software Package and Commercial Catalogues in Development of Design Documentation

It can be stated that without a doubt the use of CAD/CAE systems in industry is ubiquitous nowadays. All graduates from technical careers are expected to have a working knowledge and skills on these engineering tools. The expectation at most industries is that designers will perform modeling and analysis tasks during their work. Unfortunately, a large portion of such work is repetition of work previously done, or it is basically repetitive work by the design person. The reutilization of existing work, or the utilization of commercially-available components, has not been emphasized in the curricula. This paper will describe the efforts that are being implemented in engineering design courses in order to address the idea of reutilization of work during the engineering design process. Specific exercises have been developed in order to expose students on the tasks of using commercially available parts, reutilizing previous selected parts, and reutilizing previously designed parts. Teams of students are presented with these design exercises with the intention of having such concepts present in their minds as alternatives to explore. Initial results indicate a level of interest on the use of these techniques, and some suggestions have been presented as well for improvement of the materials used. It is expected that these concepts will bring an improvement in engineering design efficiency due to the fact that it is estimated that up to 45% of the parts currently specified in mechanical designs are commercially available components.