In Mechanical Engineering 128 at University of California, Berkeley, students learn CAD design, communication, teamwork, animation, and produce a final project that has helped students land their dream jobs.
For the class, students take a moderately complex device (like a digital camera, a miter saw, or a flute), reverse engineer it, design it in CAD, and then animate the design. Dr. Dennis Lieu said he created the evolving course almost 20 years ago because he “wanted to introduce students new ways to communicate- and technical animation was not only new, but effective. Plus,” he adds, “The students have a lot of fun working on these projects.”
A quick search on YouTube for “E128 Berkeley” displays some pretty amazing final projects. Upon first watch, you may think there’s no way a teenage-slash-early-twenty-something can design and animate these complex devices within a semester. It’s not only possible, it’s flat out impressive.
Check out some of the favorite final projects, including the Canon 10D DSLR, the Compound Bow, and the Rotary Engine (below).
Students can use any modeling product that is comfortable and convenient for them to design the device (e.g., Inventor, Solidworks, Creo Parametric, 3D Studio, and Maya). For Pum Sang Cho and his team, comfort and convenience came in Creo Parametric. Cho was on the Rotary Engine three-person team, and their story is reminiscent of those college days where you lived simply, burned the midnight oil for a project, and sported a learning curve as steep as a granite cliff face.
To get started, the team found their device on Craigslist: a 13B rotary engine from a Mazda RX-7. Disassembling the engine took place on an apartment balcony, where they measured components out with a ruler or a digital caliper. They measured and reconstructed every component in the engine the best they could. Quickly, they lost count of time, taking them well into the triple digits of man hours to do this project over the course of six weeks.
When asked why he used Creo Parametric to create the rotary engine over other products he’s familiar with, Cho said, “I often find myself defaulting back to Creo Parametric when possible. I find the interface much more intuitive/natural than Catia V5 (especially in dimensioning) with more powerful features than Solidworks.” They had begun learning Creo Parametric only a couple weeks prior to diving into the project.
Many Berkeley engineering students called this class “indispensable” to their college career. Lieu says that some of these students finish the class knowing the CAD programs better than he. Overall, E128 sounds like a course you don’t want to miss.
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