Anyone here an engineer?

[Want.FR-S]

Not an expert on mechanical CAD tools but does SolidWorks comes with some checking tools to validate the drawings? The picture shown simply twisted the surface and objects because of incorrect lines are connected. If this has been done in 3d objects with frame model it should not be like this to begin with.

[Longhorn248]

Originally Posted by Want.FR-S

Not an expert on mechanical CAD tools but does SolidWorks comes with some checking tools to validate the drawings? The picture shown simply twisted the surface and objects because of incorrect lines are connected. If this has been done in 3d objects with frame model it should not be like this to begin with.

SolidWorks allows you to model a part or assembly in 3 dimensions such that you don't need to "draw" it per say. The picture is just a joke. However as Dimman said, just because you can create a part in a digital 3D environment doesn't mean it's a simple item to manufacture. There are limitations to how tools can be used, and if you start getting fancy with what you want to make it's going to shoot the manufacturing costs and timeframes through the roof.

[djdnz]

Originally Posted by Dimman

Nothing wrong with Solidworks at all. It's maybe too good, so the rookie engineers do less thinking.

I've got designs that are... optimistic about the capabilities of manufacturing.

Typical it's look at the drawing, facepalm, call the engineer that did it down to the floor and ask them if they can identify the problem. They usually can't, then we show them the machine we have to make the part on, and usually it's a work-holding issue.

"How the hell are we going to clamp this?"

"Oh.." Part then comes back reasonably designed.

Thing with CAD is all the parts are magically suspended in the air when they are designed.

Machinists (in my case) are both a) kinda lazy, and b) under time constraints. We generally don't tell them that we could actually make the part as they designed it the first time, but it usually involves hours of our own engineering to design the jigs and fixtures to hold the fancy parts. If there is absolutely no other way, it can usually be done. Just not quickly.

The attitude is the issue with the machinist-mechanical engineer relationship. In many cases, it's hard to get good feedback from a machinist regarding a design because they would rather be snarky and make you look silly than to give you proper feedback. Finding a machinist that will actually work with you to improve the design in terms of feasibility is a really good thing, and in my experience will lead to a continued relationship with their services/firm. Granted, if you are working in the same plant as the engineer, then the engineer has no choice but to work with you, whether you have an attitude or not.

I know it's a two way street but this is my perspective as the engineer.

[Dimman]

Originally Posted by djdnz

The attitude is the issue with the machinist-mechanical engineer relationship. In many cases, it's hard to get good feedback from a machinist regarding a design because they would rather be snarky and make you look silly than to give you proper feedback. Finding a machinist that will actually work with you to improve the design in terms of feasibility is a really good thing, and in my experience will lead to a continued relationship with their services/firm. Granted, if you are working in the same plant as the engineer, then the engineer has no choice but to work with you, whether you have an attitude or not.

I know it's a two way street but this is my perspective as the engineer.

I didn't start off snarky to engineers.

The issue I have is that the machinist trade gets closer and closer to becoming obsolete, the engineers seem less and less likely to listen to us. Particularly the new ones... argh... Part of it could be that the CNC button monkeys that are replacing what used to be a more qualified (but less relevant if he doesn't move on to CNC programming) machinist have less genuine insight to offer. So the engineers listen less.

The engineers at my first job were excellent, but they were incredibly experienced, understood design and production. We had excellent two-way feedback, mutual respect, etc... Currently we have a bunch of fools straight out of school that are smarter than god. Snarkiness came as a response to their amazing arrogance coupled with production naivete, disregarding basics like proper tolerancing and just plain being wrong more often than they were right.

Mech engineers should spend more time in production before they can graduate.

[Longhorn248]

Maybe if you didn't let them know they were smarter than god they wouldn't be so arrogant

[Dimman]

Originally Posted by Longhorn248

Maybe if you didn't let them know they were smarter than god they wouldn't be so arrogant

Touche'.

[switchlanez]

Originally Posted by RRnold

BSEE and work in the Wireless/Telecommunications field @ Qualcomm. I work on the Software/Systems QA for Android and Windows Platform's camera core. Our team is broken down into multimedia (audio, voice, video encoding, power optimization, camera/camcorder etc) and we work exclusively with the developers for regression testing and integration.

Looks like we are in the similar field! :happy0180:

Hey man yeah I remember your posts. So I also used to do regression testing and modular integration for ASICs for switches/routers. ASIC dev't teams had 2 types of engineers: designers and their counterparts the design verification engineers (me). DV engr's would code a test-bench/reference model in C++/SystemVerilog, plop the design in, and our env't would try to "break" the design. Tests were integrative to align with the current design stages as they progressed. We also made/ran regression tests for when the design was done. Does this sound like what you do or am I completely off? ASICs are more hardware than software so it might be different. I also dealt w/ Altera who manufactured our silicon; there's an Altera near Qualcomm too which I thought was funny when I moved down to San Diego but hey it makes sense.

Camera core... do you deal with DSP or compression algorithms? I took a few DSP, digital image processing, and video compression courses at UCSD to get a fundamental understanding of things. Fascinating stuff but I never really got to apply it.

The SQA stuff I do now is at a much broader/higher (system) level. Basically at the phone level (Android or Windows Phone like you) with scripts controlling the phones to simulate how the end user uses the phone, etc. Your chipsets are at the core of our devices so our systems are heavily reliant on your systems!

[70NYD]

Originally Posted by Dimman

I didn't start off snarky to engineers.

The issue I have is that the machinist trade gets closer and closer to becoming obsolete, the engineers seem less and less likely to listen to us. Particularly the new ones... argh... Part of it could be that the CNC button monkeys that are replacing what used to be a more qualified (but less relevant if he doesn't move on to CNC programming) machinist have less genuine insight to offer. So the engineers listen less.

The engineers at my first job were excellent, but they were incredibly experienced, understood design and production. We had excellent two-way feedback, mutual respect, etc... Currently we have a bunch of fools straight out of school that are smarter than god. Snarkiness came as a response to their amazing arrogance coupled with production naivete, disregarding basics like proper tolerancing and just plain being wrong more often than they were right.

Mech engineers should spend more time in production before they can graduate.

This
And I am very fortunate that where I work now the lead designer was a machinist (race engine builder) for a long time, he is VERY anal about doable tolerancing, proper measurement, easily manufacturable parts and easy to read drawings. I have learned more in the past 6months from him in proper design for manufacturing than I did at uni. Difference is I know what I know and I don't, I know I'm not smarter than god.
And we need more people like him, good machinists, it's sad that it's a dying breed

[Guff]

Any Materials Engineers? I'm not one, but the field interests me.

[iff2mastamatt]

Originally Posted by Guff

Any Materials Engineers? I'm not one, but the field interests me.

I'm in Industrial Engineering but most of my friends are MSE. What were you wondering about MSE?

[Gardus@Supersprint]

I'm graduating in aerospace engineering (very close now finally) and I work at a performance exhaust company so I'm quite happy with what I do, even if I'm not doing the design itself at the moment as I'm occupied with other stuff.

[RRnold]

Originally Posted by switchlanez

Hey man yeah I remember your posts. So I also used to do regression testing and modular integration for ASICs for switches/routers. ASIC dev't teams had 2 types of engineers: designers and their counterparts the design verification engineers (me). DV engr's would code a test-bench/reference model in C++/SystemVerilog, plop the design in, and our env't would try to "break" the design. Tests were integrative to align with the current design stages as they progressed. We also made/ran regression tests for when the design was done. Does this sound like what you do or am I completely off? ASICs are more hardware than software so it might be different. I also dealt w/ Altera who manufactured our silicon; there's an Altera near Qualcomm too which I thought was funny when I moved down to San Diego but hey it makes sense.

Camera core... do you deal with DSP or compression algorithms? I took a few DSP, digital image processing, and video compression courses at UCSD to get a fundamental understanding of things. Fascinating stuff but I never really got to apply it.

The SQA stuff I do now is at a much broader/higher (system) level. Basically at the phone level (Android or Windows Phone like you) with scripts controlling the phones to simulate how the end user uses the phone, etc. Your chipsets are at the core of our devices so our systems are heavily reliant on your systems!

Yeah, that is very similar to what we do but ours is primarily on the software level. Given that you (HTC) is one of the many Qualcomm's customers, we do work in parallel but at the same time I do not want to go in full detail or our area due to the proprietary information.

Majority of our group's testing is through automation stability, development framework, debug, post processing verification (Perl/C++) and broken down into multimedia groups; video encoding/decoding, audio, voice, graphics, display, camera, camcorder and power. My group works with the camera dev team for camera encoding, image quality tuning and decode post processing.

Have you heard of the 3rd party group called Imatest?

[KadeS]

Studying to be an ME, estimated grad date in 2013 or so...

Though I've always been on the fence between ME and EE.... a flip of the coin decided it for me...

[Longhorn248]

Originally Posted by KadeS

Studying to be an ME, estimated grad date in 2013 or so...

Though I've always been on the fence between ME and EE.... a flip of the coin decided it for me...

Intro to microcontrollers decided it for me, I high tailed it out of there.