ME Design Curriculum Support

The Ebner Fund has helped in modernizing a number of our courses through purchases of design software packages.  The Fund helped to establish enough seats of SolidWorks in the CAE lab to enable entire classes in the sophomore and junior years to use the CAD program for extensive design purposes.  The relative ease of use of SolidWorks has gained considerable acceptance by students for project work.  Attempting to build on this success, the COSMOSWorks software package was later added, which has enabled a variety of finite element (FEA) analyses to be carried out by students on structures they designed.  Most of this material is now being taught in the junior year course ME 407 “Computer Aided Design and Manufacture.’’  This course is also taken by a number of other students in the college as a technical elective.

Moreover, in recent years emphasis was placed on trying to better leverage CAM integration for both educational purposes and for greater uniformity in our laboratories. Another major goal was the tighter integration of the design and machining activities in the CAE Lab, ADMS Lab and the Machine Shop.  Virtual Gibbs was chosen as the primary CNC program and the Ebner Fund purchased three additional seats of this 3D software for use in the CAE and ADMS laboratories and the departmental machine shop.

The Ebner Fund has also purchased posters displaying innovative designs.  In future years, it will be used to purchase display cases to showcase completed design projects by students that have won various awards.