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PODCAST

Toasting Design

Engineering design has a lot of nuances and caveats. This podcast discusses those and a few side tracks from time to time. Brought to you by the School of Mechanical, Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand

education

All Episodes

00:34:19

#97 Complex Problems: The Definition Part 2

Toasting Design ·

2021/04/09

There are four characteristics of which the solution to a complex engineering problem must comply with at least one of the following. i) are not obvious, require originality or analysis based on fundamentals; i) are outside the scope of standards and codes; ii) require information from variety of sources that is complex, abstract or incomplete; iii) involve wide-ranging or conflicting issues: technical, engineering and interested or affected parties. These points tend to cause confusion, at least

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00:36:10

#96 Complex Problems: The Definition Part 1

Toasting Design ·

2021/04/02

There are three characteristics of which a complex engineering problem must comply with at least one of the following. i) are ill-posed, under- or over specified, or require identification and refinement; ii) are high-level problems including component parts or sub-problems; iii) are unfamiliar or involve infrequently encountered issues; These points tend to cause confusion, at least for students. This is largely down to a lack of critical evaluation of what is read. Allow us to break it down for

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00:29:38

#95 The glue that holds our thoughts together

Toasting Design ·

2021/03/26

To be clear please do not use a hot glue gun to stick together your thoughts. Pritt is much better. Otherwise just listen to the podcast. Hosted in a hotly debated discussion by M.Boer and S.Schekman on the 9th Feb 2021 Keys: Problems from products, different options for problems, glue guns, functional analysis

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00:26:11

#94 Washing up on problems

Toasting Design ·

2021/03/19

Is wanting something more convenient reason enough to invest in a new (possibly) expensive system? How do you rationlize or quantify convenience? Okay so you might be saying that it comes down to time committed (if not then please go back, and say it before reading this previous sentence - thanks). But how much time is inconvenient? That's dependent on who ever's time it is. Okay what if you said it's about energy input required (once more, please go back and say it, play along now). Yes, that is a

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00:31:44

#93 Being Considerate

Toasting Design ·

2021/03/12

The consideration of design functions, properties and requirements is one of the more important aspects of design. It starts right when the problem is being identified and sometimes earlier in helping identify a problem to start with. It then goes on until the very end ensuring that the designer has accounted for the various functions that the problem solution needs to have. It is easily over looked and pushed to the side and it is similarly easy to see when this is what has happened. Hosted in

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00:28:00

#92 Design Specification

Toasting Design ·

2021/03/05

It is one of the more over looked or disregarded of report sections and yet one of the most important to examiners. This section details and specifies what the solution to the problem is. It is not about throwing out every number that was ever calculated during the design development. It is not about showing off your creative writing skills in how you imagine the system will be manufactured or how much it will cost when the furthest you got in the design development was choosing the type of engine

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00:30:14

#91 Details III: This time it's detailed

Toasting Design ·

2021/02/26

In this third installment on detailed design, we talk about detailed design. Not very controversial but that's what tends to happen with the end of a trilogy (a trilogy until we decide to make it a 5 parter that is). Detailed design in the context of a student project does not allow for the student to do EVERYTHING, there simply is not enough time. So it is important then to understand and determine what does need to be done (and there is always something). Hosted on the inside track by M.Boer and

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00:30:30

#90 Problem Defining and Refining

Toasting Design ·

2021/02/19

The problem and the solution is not a "chicken and the egg" situation. It is quite clear which one comes first. There are times however when a current solution has inspired a problem in the sense that the problem has been identified based on an investigation into a product or system that happens to have been the current solution. This can lead to a whole lot of issues that designers need to be very careful about. Hosted by S. Schekman and M.Boer on the 26th February 2020 Keys: problem

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00:30:23

#89 Details, details, details

Toasting Design ·

2021/02/12

That there be where the devil is... at least so the saying goes. It also be where no student want to go (at least not correctly). Is it because it gives flashbacks to the other courses? Is it because it has a bad habit of showing that the preliminary design was really bad? Is it because? The response to your answers are the same regardless: shame. Hosted purposefully in detail by M. Boer and S. Schekman on 19th Jan 2021 Queries, comments, suggestions and general rants can be emailed to

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00:31:21

#88 Its all in the details

Toasting Design ·

2021/02/05

Detailed design can be a noun or verb. The former implies that a large number of parameters about the design can be specified. The latter deals with how you get to that point (you have to do detailed design in order to have a detailed design). What does this matter? Almost nothing. Why am I then going into it? Because the important thing to understand is that definitions are not important. Detailed design (both kinds) are inevitable and necessary, you cannot get out of it (while being successful)

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00:30:16

#87 Packing it in

Toasting Design ·

2021/01/29

When it comes to going on a trip its the before, the destination and the after that is what people want. No one wants the middle stuff, specifically the packing. It takes forever and never seems to work as well on the return way back. While it is great to go minimalist this is not always an option so something needs to be done about it. If your first solution was "magic" then I don't think you understand how this podcast works. Alternatively if you thought "just don't go in the first place," while I

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00:27:30

#86 4th year design topics 2021

Toasting Design ·

2021/01/22

A design topic for 4th year needs to be based on a complex engineering problem. This is itself a challenge to some but the nature and relevance of the topic is focused on in this episode. Given the current state of things (as of Jan 2021) it is easy to get lost in current world events and determine problems that exist. Where care needs to be taken is that an design project will only be running in the second half of the year. In between the now and the then, things change, problems are solved and

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00:27:46

#85 Bring the holiday home

Toasting Design ·

2021/01/08

Cards on the table (a 5 of spades, 2 of clubs and pick up 4 uno card if curious), we had no idea what direction this episode would go in, even after having started it. That is sort of how design sometimes works and you need to roll with it. Note that it doesn't take 1 week of stumbling around though so as far as excuses go, "I took a bit of a tangent to a new idea" buys you about an hour; you still need to explain what you did the rest of the week. Hosted with holiday memories by M. Boer and S

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00:29:41

#84 Jumping over Leonardo

Toasting Design ·

2021/01/01

The combination of entertainment and design can be a difficult one. On one hand you have a scientific method with quantifiable proof's, substantiated arguments and an inherent logic. On the other you have what tickles the fancy of a crowd and this is typically impossible to quantify, argue against or apply any sort of logic to (there is a reason you don't see engineers with psychology degrees and vice versa). Hosted with high hopes for a new year by M. Boer and S. Schekman on 8th December 2020

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00:44:55

#83 Festivities and Design in Hindsight

Toasting Design ·

2020/12/25

Complements of the season! Of course if you only listen to this at a later date then I am left having to just complement you. On what you may ask? Well on listening to this podcast of course (unless you are actually listening to this around december end 2020 - in which I am only complementing you on the season). In conclusion to the year we look back at what happened with design, the good and the bad. Probably more of the bad given that that is what we remember better. Hosted jolly-ly by M.Boer and

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00:42:31

#82 Mowing down the concepts

Toasting Design ·

2020/12/18

With design, there are no clear "right" ways or "wrong" ways and it depends on what works for you. Having said that, there are plenty of "wrong" ways and in part these are contributed to the designer wanting to skip steps or force a design in a particular direction. There are also terrible ways (no inverted commas there, they are just plain and simply terrible!) and those are the ones you should not do, they are not recoverable or fixable. We present a mix of these today with regard to concepts and

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00:38:28

#81 We told you so

Toasting Design ·

2020/12/11

Reading through the complete disaster of a design report is depressing and agravating but, as always, there is a silver lining. In this case it is our chance to remind you that we told you so! That all those daft ideas, poor choices (or lack of choices), continued selection of concept 2 or insistence of comparing blue helicopters to aluminium aquariums were highlighted, colour coded, stated, repeated, drawn and acted out as warning. So if you are guilty of these "great" moves then thank you for

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00:26:57

#80 Designing between the designs

Toasting Design ·

2020/12/04

Design is a skill and skills need to be practiced consistently. So in breaks where you don't have anything to design or projects to leave until the last minute, consider some background tasks or ideas to keep things fresh. Or don't... You could always do you own thing and give us more things to talk about in consideration of the obscure and weird inexplicable ideas that are pursued. Hosted skillfully (for the most part) by M. Boer and S. Schekman on 20th October 2020 Keys: design skills, what you

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00:37:04

#79 Drawing out design to make it faster

Toasting Design ·

2020/11/27

Engineers tend to deal with images and figures better than text and words. The use of drawings/sketches/rendered views, etc. is all but critical for a design. Stop fighting it, accept it and embrace it. Its not the dark side (unless you the dark side is better, in which case it is the dark side). Also seriously, if you have found Jeremy, keep him. Hosted in animation and pictorially by M. Boer and S. Schekman on 6 October 2020 Keys: the executive summary, problem definition, substantiation of ideas,

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00:23:53

#78 A lit bit of different design ideas

Toasting Design ·

2020/11/20

In the current conclusion to the application or use of scientific principles to a design methodology, we discuss a series of different principles. There are more (the law of thermodynamics is an interesting one to try this with as is survival of the fittest). Keeping to only one design principle, ideology or approach allows for the potential for you to miss different ideas that may be far better than what may come from your standard approach. At the very list it tests your own thinking to find and

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