There has been a significant gap between the tools used for the design of a building's architectural form and those that evaluate the structural physics of that form. Seeking to bring the perspectives of visual design and structural engineering closer together, we developed and evaluated a design tool for students and practitioners to explore the…

Students often have difficulty grasping the principles of dimensional tolerances and frequently fail to recognize that dimensioning practice has a significant impact on the tolerance of part features. This observation may be attributed to several factors, not the least of which are changes in prior student education and life experiences and…

The objective of this paper is to present applications of solid modeling aimed at modeling of complex geometries such as splines and blended surfaces in advanced CAD courses. These projects, in CAD-based Mechanical Engineering courses, are focused on the use of the CAD system to solve design problems for applications in machine design, namely the…

Over the past decade the software products available for solid modeling, dynamic, stress, thermal, and flow analysis, and computer-aiding manufacturing (CAM) have become more powerful, affordable, and easier to use. At the same time it has become increasingly important for students to gain concurrent engineering design and systems integration…

Describes the first-year Introduction to Design course at Iowa State University which incorporates design for manufacturing and concurrent engineering principles into the curriculum. Autodesk Inventor was used as the primary CAD tool for parametric solid modeling. Test results show that student spatial visualization skills were dramatically…

This paper outlines the work in progress undertaken by the School of Engineering Technology faculty to identify, assess, and develop a course to address the depth and breadth of drafting/plan preparation and plan reading skills required by the various engineering technology programs offered at Youngstown State University. The methodology used to…

Reports on a study to determine whether the presence of coordinate axes in a test of spatial-visualization ability affects scores and response times on a mental-rotations task for students enrolled in undergraduate introductory graphic communications classes. Based on Pavios's dual-coding theory. Contains 36 references. (DDR)