5 TIPS FOR GOOD FINAL YEAR ENGINEERING PROJECTS

Hi Students,

We are back with yet another blog post. This time we would like to enlighten engineering students on the basics of the final year project. There are so many sources for technical information but we feel our students need to know certain non-technical basics that help them do their final year projects with ease and in the process, enjoy it too. So here are our 5 tips for good final year engineering projects:

1       Choose your area of interest.

This is the basic and very important aspect of any college project. One should always make sure they are working in something they love. Discuss with your teammates and narrow down on the idea that suits the interests of all your teammates. 

Sometimes, the project titles are forced on the teams. In that case discuss with your professor and arrive at an alternative project title or choose the interested area within the given title and get the professor’s permission to keep the scope of the project within your team’s interested areas related to your engineering stream.

2    Aim to solve a problem.

Your final year project should essentially serve as a solution or at least a basis for a possible solution for a real world problem, be it in the practical or theoretical sense. When you work towards solving a real world problem, you will get to apply what you have learned during your engineering course in your project. This will give you and your teammates a sense of work satisfaction and also add credibility to your project.

3      Plan to finish your project on time.

Do not go overboard with the attempt to solve a problem in a comprehensive sense. If the solution requires multiple parts that may take time to do, pick one or more parts of the solution and narrow down the project’s scope to suit accordingly. This will help you work deep into the chosen parts, adding credibility to your team’s work and also save a lot of time. Remember, creating the solution alone is not the objective, documenting and reporting it also needs time and efforts.

The best way is to lay down a carefully planned schedule for your project and attempting to follow it diligently. Time delays may happen but it can only be rectified when there is a system of planning and assessment is followed. Never do anything without any prior plan of action agreed and approved by the entire team. It is also better to share responsibilities and have back-up plans, in case your decided plan gets delayed in execution.

4        Learn before you apply.

Engineering is a combination of knowledge, understanding, application and skill. Once you know what has to be done, try to learn it well before trying to apply it in your project. This can save a lot of your time and money. 

If your project involves software such as CATIA, Pro-E, ANSYS etc., learn the software, practice well and then try applying the knowledge to your project. Ask your software trainer about possible ways to do your project. This will help your trainer to customize your training to suit your project needs. Once you gain a thorough knowledge of the tool, you will be able to figure out the possible ways of applying it to your project. 

5        Enjoy your project by doing it yourself.

There is nothing more satisfying than using your own efforts to build a solution and then watch it unfold into reality. Although, with the academic project, this may be limited in scope, always aim at doing your project yourself. You won’t find it difficult if you had chosen your area of interest and a suitable project title with well-defined scope of the project. 

Some colleges tend to finalize project titles one semester prior to the final semester. In that case, you will have at least a month’s time to analyze your project title. Analyze carefully and identify areas that need work such as software training for analysis projects. Plan you project work with ample time for software training because only after you learn will you be able to start working on your project. It is advisable to get trained on the necessary software beforehand so that you can jump into your project objectives.

Make sure you enjoy every bit of your final year project. It will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity you can enjoy and learn from. So prepare yourself for your final year project.

We at Mach Engineers have had the privilege of training over 300 students so far, including working with the academic projects of BE/BTech, ME/MTech and even PhD students during numerous instances. We have always enjoyed working with those who approach us to teach them to do their final year projects. This is why we have developed training systems that allows engineering students to customize their software training to suit their final year project needs.  We have seen our students design and analyze complex engineering models as part of their final year projects and we are glad we were able to teach them to do so.

We specialize in training mechanical/aeronautical/automobile and related engineering students in software tools such as CATIA, Pro-E, ANSYS, Hypermesh, SolidWorks, Fluent, Gambitm, Unigraphics etc. 

Feel free to contact us anytime at www.machengineers.com. We are here to clarify your doubts regarding your final year projects. (Mech/Aero/Auto and related streams)

If you find this interesting, please share this with your friends. Feel free to comment below your questions. 

Regards,

The Mach Engineers Team

FOUNDER SPEAKS: PODCAST FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS OF TAMILNADU

Hello Students,

We are actively working towards helping the students of mechanical/aeronautical/automobile and other related engineering streams in acquiring the necessary skills to become eligible for suitable jobs in the engineering design and analysis stream.

So far we have been visiting the engineering colleges in various parts of Tamilnadu including Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Dindugal. We have enjoyed our interactions with you.

As part of our efforts to reach out to the engineering students in Tamilnadu, we decided to launch our podcast series via SoundCloud, where we would host speeches by our Founder, Alaguraj. In these short speeches, Alaguraj will explain the various aspects of Mach Engineers, its objectives and offerings that will benefit the engineering students who are interested in the design and analysis streams.

Since our home base is Tamilnadu, we are launching our first podcast, recorded in Tamil. We will be hosting the speeches in English later on to help students who do not understand Tamil.

Here's the first in the Podcast series:

If you have any questions regarding engineering software training related to mechanical design and analysis, feel free to contact us at www.machengineers.com. You can follow us on facebook too.

If you find this podcast interesting, please share this with your fellow students. We are open to suggestions, comments and questions.

All the best!!!

Regards,
The Mach Engineers Team

TOP 5 MYTHS ABOUT ENGINEERING SOFTWARE TRAINING

Dear Students,

Thanks for choosing us for your engineering software training and project needs so far. It had been a great travel for us in the years so far and we have enjoyed every bit of helping you all.

However, we have also learned over this period of time, certain differences in the choice and awareness trends among engineering students who have interacted with us at college symposiums and our institutes at Chennai and Coimbatore. We have noticed that a vast majority of engineering students, belonging to the Aero/Mech/Auto streams, are either unaware of the facts or are misinformed regarding engineering software (PRO-E/CATIA/SOLIDWORKS/ANSYS/HYPERMESH/NASTRAN) and their related training methods/industry trends.

We therefore consider this our responsibility to inform all the engineering students in the engineering colleges of Tamilnadu and elsewhere in India regarding the realistic aspects of engineering software industry and training methods.

http://www.coffeeshopgurus.com/the-top-5-myths-of-entrepreneurship/

Here are the top 5 pairs of Myths and Facts that we wish every engineering student in the aeronautical/mechanical/automobile streams must be aware of:

1.When to Learn What...

Myth: Any software can be learned at any time of the undergraduate degree.

    

Fact: All engineering software are built on the application of engineering principles. Without gaining a sound understanding of the underlying principles, there is no point in learning how to use a tool that is based on those principles. 

For example, if you are a second year engineering student, you might be getting introduced basics of engineering graphics and machine drawing. Only after you have gained exposure to these elementary aspects of engineering design, will you be able to learn a modeling software such as CATIA V5/Pro-E/SolidWorks.

Before you choose to learn a software tool, assess your current understanding level and exposure to the related engineering principles. If you are not completely aware of the basics, you are probably not going to see any visible benefits of learning a software based on those principles.

On a different note, we at Mach Engineers, for this reason, have designed our courses such that a considerable amount of training time is specifically allocated to expose our students to the basics of the software tools they chose to train with us. This way, we make sure that our students understand what they learn so as to be able to apply their knowledge in their final year project or future job.

2. All at Once is Dangerous!!

Myth: The best training program is always a combo of multiple software taught in a month's time.

Fact: Any training program that crams more into a short time period is a waste of time. Every student is unique and each of their brains work in different ways. There is now way a student can learn 3 or 4 engineering software in 1-3 months. When we say "Learn" we mean it in the sense that the student, after learning is in a good hold of the core engineering principles and is able to operate the software efficiently to solve real-world engineering problems that may be faced in academic and industrial projects. 

Learning the tool options, menu categories and functionality of any engineering software would take only a few weeks but that is just 10% of the training. It is understanding the basics behind those tool options and extensive practice that gets the student get a first hand feel of the software capabilities. This practice requirements varies from software to software and all of those require months of practice before a level of proficiency is reached.

It really hurts to see a large number of students who come up to us and ask for up to 4 software  tools to be taught in a time span of 1-3 months. Although, we regret having turned down such requests, we did so with a sense of responsibility that we will only teach engineering software, the way they are designed to be taught. We at Mach Engineers, value quality training and therefore we customize our training programs with respect to the needs and abilities of the concerned students.

3. Knowledge and Skill Beats Certificates!!!

Myth: Certificates of training are enough for engineering jobs in MNC's.

Fact: MNC's never bother about certificates. They are always interested in the candidates' depth of knowledge in their respective engineering streams and related software tools. MNC's (predominantly in India) that specialize in engineering design and analysis projects, look for the ability to use the software tool creatively and extensively in a time-saving manner. 

Being able to draw simple figures and perform baseline analyses are far below the expectation levels of MNC's that offer the majority of jobs that involve engineering software. Recruitment processes followed by many such companies today require the candidates to model/analyze a given engineering problem in their work atmosphere and the candidate who completes the task with perfection in the shortest period of time gets preference for the position.

We at Mach Engineers always strive to build our students' knowledge so that they not only gain high end software knowledge but also develop the capacity to outperform the competition that they may later face in the job market.

4. Price is Not Everything!!!

Myth: Cost of training determines the quality of the training.

Fact: Most established and expensive engineering software training programs are ineffective in terms of training a student. They  cram a large amount of material in a short amount of time in an attempt to teach more number of students and in the process leave the students under-trained to an extent that they are not able to face the challenges in the engineering software job market.

A large portion of expensive engineering software programs use coursework that are originally published by third party publishers and therefore fail to have their own course material. Also importance is given more to the mere familiarization of tool options and not much time is allowed for practice. The students are therefore required to practice on their own in order to justify the costly fees charged by those training programs.

We at Mach Engineers customize each training program as per the requirement and abilities of the student and therefore we price our programs based on the offerings chosen by our students. We engage our students in thorough practice regime that allows them to apply their practical knowledge under our supervision, eventually allowing them to master the software concepts.

5. Don't Jump Stages

Myth: There is no sequence required in learning engineering software.

Fact: Engineering software training has a strict sequence than any other training programs. One cannot start learning an analysis software before mastering the modeling aspect of engineering. One has to begin with basic engineering principles and start from elementary design, switching over to detailed modeling/drawing software such as CATIA/SolidWorks prior to learning any analysis software such as ANSYS.

The analysis software require the digital models of the engineering problems that are to be analyzed. Without knowing how to model a problem, there is no point in learning how to analyze it. 

We at Mach Engineers always suggest our students to begin as early as end of second year or the beginning of 3rd year with modeling software and gradually develop their knowledge base before they choose their favorite analysis or meshing software. We have enjoyed the happiness of training students in the long term, taking them from the basics up until the level of expertise that puts them apart from the majority of their competitors. 

We believe, as of now, these are the top 5 myths that we wanted to share with you all. We hope, this post helps all the Aeronautical/Mechanical/Automobile engineering students in Tamilnadu and around in deciding on their engineering software training programs. If you have any questions regarding any engineering software with respect to your academic project or professional training, feel free to get in touch with us. We have our training centers located at Chennai and Coimbatore.

You can get in touch with us at www.machengineers.com. Feel free to follow us on facebook.

Thanks for all the support!!! 

Regards,

The Mach Engineers Team