Free design engineering book

Oh. It might be good if I gave the book's name: _FUNdaMENTALS of Design_.

-- Ed Huntress

Also see:

--Winston

You done good tonight Ed. That one is a keeper, I put it on my USB flash drive for lunch time reading. Very ON TOPIC!

Wes

I had read this book a while back but forgot about it. great book.

I'm giving a 10 minute talk to high school kids about the engineering field as a possible career next week. I'm going to use the first paragraph of the book as a quote.

"Design is a Passionate Process Long before any design project starts, the design engineer has to believe that there is a problem that is worthy of their attention. The design engineer must feel a need to solve the problem. The design engineer must have a yearning to solve the problem. The design engineer must be passionate about solving the problem!"

BTW, do you have any other suggestions or interesting quotes aimed at having high schoolers consider the engineering field?

Karl

Not off the top of my head, but I know where you can find some in a book. The title is _The Existential Pleasures of Engineering_. 'Lots of quotes, and some good original ideas. The whole book is philosophical, so there's plenty of material in there.

I read it around 30 years ago. Maybe you can find a copy in an engineering-school library.

-- Ed Huntress

The notes and book are both very good, but I prefer the book. If you're interested in the connections between theory and practice, the book is more precise. There are one or two connections suggested in the notes which I regard as being unproven, although I have not found any which give bad advice.

One notable issue is the connection he makes in the notes between Saint-Venant's principle and the design of reliable sliding mechanisms. Some time ago I asked Professor Slocum to explain the connection to me, and my interpretation of his response was that the connection is purely empirical, i.e., it gives a sensible starting point for a design but there is no mathematical proof showing why it works. But this is not stated in the notes. In the book, the connection is not mentioned at all, and he quotes a few sensible figures, noting that they are just "rule of thumb".

Best wishes,

Chris

"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk." (Thomas Edison)

Chris

By "the book," do you mean _Precision Engineering Design_?

-- Ed Huntress

I see that _The Existential Pleasures of Engineering_ is available in a new edition (1996), that Amazon has it in stock for $10 and change, and that you can have it by Saturday if you order in the next 21 hours.

-- Ed Huntress

try "the soul of a new machine" there are good quotes in it

Most design engineers make reasonably good money, some make unreasonably good money. Another cool part is that a design engineer can design about anything he or she might want, whether or not anyone else thinks it makes any sense. Not on the job, of course, but the skills belong to the engineer to use as he or she may please. They have .... "the knack".

Excellent story about the creation of the Eclipse 32.

I'll offer "The Mythical Man Month" as a counter. The story and experience of the creation of OS 360. One Million Man Years?

I'm glad you like it, but I'm sorry to hear about what you do at lunch.

-- Ed Huntress

I made unreasonably good money, enough to buy an apple orchard. I had "the knack" as long as I could see it, feel it, touch it. Now those guys that pushed electrons around to do all sorts of strange things, were a TFM (total f***in mystery) to me.

Karl

Sorry for the inconvenience, but FUNdaMENTALS of Design is currently under revision utill further notice.

Webpage Updated 8 January 2009.

:-(

Followup - the same page has a zipped PDF file which has the document.

When it came out I was on a well-run team designing a similarly complex piece of computerized semiconductor test equipment. It was very interesting to see the dynamics of the process explained so clearly while actually living it.

As usual the brilliant PhD in charge soon moved elsewhere.

Jim Wilkins

As I mentioned in the post, the older version of the book is still there, as a *.zip file.

-- Ed Huntress

"Precision Machine Design" actually, but I think we mean the same book.

Chris