This document forms part of the SEED curriculum development series of publications and is principally intended for use by teachers and lecturers of engineering design in the preparation of teaching material for the topic of detail design. It addresses a strategy for the teaching of detail design rather than the specific procedures involved in the detail design of a product. The message it aims to present is equally applicable to mechanical, electrical, civil and other engineering disciplines. Consequently the term ‘product’ as used throughout the document should be interpreted as referring to buildings, processes, systems, circuits etc. as well as consumer and industrial artefacts. Similarly, ‘manufacturing’ should be interpreted as also referring to construction.

The report provides an introduction, topic definition, rationale, educational objectives and chapters on when taught, detail design curriculum, teaching and assessment and a bibliography and references.

[Description and screenshot taken from the SEED Curriculum for Engineering Design page for this report. (c) The Design Society used under the terms of their (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license.]

The course contains intensive coverage of precision engineering theory, heuristics, and applications pertaining to the design of systems ranging from consumer products to machine tools. Topics covered include: economics, project management, and design philosophy; principles of accuracy, repeatability, and resolution; error budgeting; sensors; sensor mounting; systems design; bearings; actuators and transmissions; system integration driven by functional requirements, and operating physics. There is an emphasis on developing creative designs, which are optimized by analytical techniques applied via spreadsheets. This is a projects course with lectures consisting of design teams presenting their work and the class helping to develop solutions; thereby everyone learning from everyone’s projects.

Special software is required to use some of the files in this course: .xls.

[Description and screenshot taken from MIT OCW page for this course. (c) MIT used under the terms of their CC-NC-SA license.]