Development Of A Solid Modeling Course For Electrical And Computer Engineering Technology (Ecet) Students

This paper is a collaborative effort between a faculty member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology (ECET) department and a faculty member of the Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) department at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. For years, ECET students at Penn State Behrend were instructed on how to create schematic or wiring diagrams using AutoCAD. The student’s conceptualization and visualization skills were minimally exercised throughout the course and therefore students lacked the ability to understand or communicate 3D components or assemblies. Electrical and Computer Engineering Technologists are responsible for working with Mechanical Engineers and Mechanical Engineering Technologists to perform applied design of electronic packaging, electromechanical parts and assemblies, as well as operator controls and indicators. Therefore it is of the utmost importance to understand and be able to convey shape, size and assembly descriptions of those parts or assemblies. The ability of increased knowledge of solid modeling has become crucial to the success of ECET students. The new Solid Modeling course exposes ECET students to creating 3D models, creating 2D drawings of components, and 3D assemblies. This paper will discuss the development of a solid modeling course for ECET students. It will include the following information: discussion on the need for the course (i.e. driving factors), course objectives, course content, and the student’s capstone project in the course and student comments about the course. Background and Desired Outcomes of the Course The development of the course started with meetings between the MET and ECET department representatives (i.e. the authors of this paper) discussing the desired outcomes of the course. We had to totally abandon the old paradigm of previous drafting courses. The last two course models included mechanical drafting and using AutoCAD, respectively. Mechanical drafting has been abandoned and the AutoCAD based course served its purpose well; however, lacked the development of the student’s visualization and conceptualization skills as well as the graphical communication with ME’s and MET’s. Also, the courses were strongly based around schematic and wiring diagrams. Mechanical drafting is outdated and time consuming. For these reasons, it has been abandoned by industry so the switch was made to drafting/solid modeling software based courses. Drafting/solid modeling software based courses are more technologically advanced and more comparable to industry standards 1 . This is similar to having students abandon the slide rule and switch to the calculator or personal computer as the industry standard. P ge 14472.2 The AutoCAD course taught the ECET students at Penn State Behrend emphasized schematic and wiring diagrams which was thought to be relevant and appropriate to prepare the students for industry. After soliciting feedback from the Industrial Advisory Board, students and personal experience of one of the authors of this paper whom consults a lot in industry; the paradigm of teaching students how to create schematic and wiring diagrams was considered okay, but not fully preparing students for industry. There were two main reasons for this: students are taught how to create schematic and wiring diagrams in many of their core electrical course s using specialized CAD software for schematic capture and printed wiring layout, so there was somewhat of a redundancy occurring and ECET’s in industry are required to be able to graphically communicate with ME’s and MET’s on teams. While the ECET’s did an excellent job at creating the diagrams which allowed the manufacturing of the circuits, they could not visualize the mechanical components that the circuit would control. This left a tremendous gap in the ability to communicate with the ME’s and MET’s that would be responsible for the design and interface of the mechanical components of the assembly. This new course overcomes the issues discussed above. The following outcomes were developed to overcome the issues discussed above: 1. Students will visualize physical (electrical and mechanical) part (s) 2-D to 3-D and vice versa. 2. Students will incorporate design intent into solid models using extrusions, revolves, shells, ribs, chamfers and rounds. 3. Students will properly execute duplicating operations to create circular and linear patterns of features and mirrored features. 4. Students will use mathematical relations to drive solid models. 5. Students will create a detail drawing of a mechanical part. 6. Students will create 3D assemblies.