Engineering Design: A Project-Based Introduction

Citation

Dym, C. L., Little, P., & Orwin, E. J. (2013). Engineering Design: A Project-Based Introduction (4th ed.). Wiley.

Chapter Summary

The fourth edition runs to about 330 pages: seventeen chapters in five parts, followed by appendices on prototyping, engineering drawing and exercises. Each chapter title is paired with the question it answers, such as "What does the client require of this design?" or "Which design should I choose?". Wiley describes the book as a way for students to learn design by doing design projects, and as suitable for project-based first-year courses, formal design courses and capstone projects. A juice container serves as an early example in Chapters 1 and 4, and one project, the Danbury arm support for a student with cerebral palsy, appears in every chapter from Chapter 3 to Chapter 11 except Chapter 10.

Chapter 1: Engineering Design

Part I opens by setting the context. The chapter introduces the three roles in any design (client, user and designer) with examples such as a juice container, a highway bridge and facilities for students with disabilities. It builds a vocabulary for engineering design (its definition and assumptions, measures of success, form and function, systems, communication) and argues that design is learned by doing and must be managed as a project.

Chapter 2: Defining a Design Process and a Case Study

The design process is presented as a process of questioning, with descriptive and prescriptive models and ways of informing it through strategy, formal methods, design knowledge, analysis and testing, and feedback. A case study on the design of a stabiliser for microlaryngeal surgery shows the process in action.

Chapters 3–6: Problem Definition: Detailing Customer Requirements; Clarifying the Objectives; Identifying Constraints; Establishing Functions

Part II begins with four chapters on problem definition. Chapter 3 clarifies the initial problem statement and frames customer requirements as attributes and objectives. Chapter 4 builds objectives trees, ranks objectives with pairwise comparison charts (individually and for a group) and develops metrics. Chapter 5 identifies constraints. Chapter 6 establishes functions with black and glass boxes, dissection or reverse engineering, enumeration and function–means trees, then turns them into design specifications, including the house of quality.

Chapters 7–8: Conceptual Design: Generating Design Alternatives; Conceptual Design: Evaluating Design Alternatives and Choosing a Design

Chapter 7 generates a design space with morphological charts, metaphorical and strategic thinking, the 6–3–5 method, C-sketch and the gallery method, and discusses how to expand or contract a design space. Chapter 8 selects a design with numerical evaluation matrices, the priority checkmark method and the best-of-class chart.

Chapters 9–11: Communicating Designs Graphically; Prototyping and Proofing the Design; Communicating Designs Orally and in Writing

Part III covers communication: sketching and the forms of engineering drawings; prototypes, models and proofs of concept, and how to build them; and oral presentations, design reviews and the final report, written through rough outlines and topic sentence outlines.

Chapters 12–14: Mathematical Modeling in Design; Engineering Economics in Design; Design for Production, Use, and Sustainability

Part IV adds analysis. Chapter 12 develops modelling habits and tools (dimensions and units, significant figures, dimensional analysis, idealisations, conservation laws, series and parallel connections, mechanical–electrical analogies) and applies them to a battery-powered payload cart and to the stiffness and strength of a ladder rung. Chapter 13 covers cost estimation and the time value of money. Chapter 14 treats design for manufacturing and assembly, reliability and maintainability, and environmental issues including life-cycle assessment.

Chapters 15–17: Design Team Dynamics; Managing a Design Project; Ethics in Design

Part V turns to people: forming and leading teams and handling conflict constructively; managing scope, schedule and budget with team charters, work breakdown structures, team calendars and progress monitoring; and the ethical obligations of designers to clients, the public and the profession, grounded in codes of ethics.

Appendices A–C

Practical aspects of prototyping (shop safety, materials, building techniques, fasteners), practical aspects of engineering drawing (dimensioning and geometric tolerancing), and a set of exercises.

Key Concepts

Parts I–II: Design process and problem definition

• Client, user and designer: the three roles that frame every design problem.
• Objectives, constraints and functions: what a design should achieve, the limits it must respect and what it must do.
• Pairwise comparison chart: ranking objectives by comparing them two at a time.
• Function–means tree: linking each required function to possible means of achieving it.
• Design space: the set of alternative designs generated for a problem, which can be expanded or contracted.
• Evaluation matrix: scoring alternatives against weighted objectives to choose a design.

Parts III–IV: Communication, modelling and economics

• Prototypes, models and proofs of concept: different physical representations of a design, which the book distinguishes because each answers a different testing question.
• Topic sentence outline: a report plan in which each entry stands for a paragraph.
• Dimensional analysis and lumped elements: modelling habits that simplify a design problem without losing its physics.
• Time value of money: comparing costs and benefits that occur at different times.
• Design for manufacturing and assembly: shaping a design so that it can be made and assembled economically.

Part V: Teams, management and ethics

• Team charter and work breakdown structure: tools that define a project's scope and divide its work.
• Constructive conflict: disagreement within a team used to improve the design rather than damage the group.
• Obligations to client, public and profession: the competing duties that codes of ethics address.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Organised around a real project's questions. Each chapter answers the question a student team faces at that stage, and the Danbury arm support example carries one project from requirements through objectives, functions, concepts, drawings and the final report. The book can be used week by week alongside a project.
• A large toolkit for early design. The table of contents lists many concrete methods for problem definition and concept generation: objectives trees, pairwise comparisons, metrics, function–means trees, the house of quality, morphological charts, 6–3–5, C-sketch, the gallery method and three evaluation methods.
• Beyond methods to the whole project. Communication, prototyping, economics, design for production and sustainability, teamwork, project management and ethics are all covered, as are practical appendices on shop safety, fasteners and tolerancing.
• Flexible level. Wiley presents the same text as suitable for first-year project courses, formal design courses and capstone projects. Part IV's modelling examples give a more analytical course something to build on.

Limitations

• An older edition. The fourth edition dates from 2013, and computer-aided design, rapid prototyping and digital collaboration tools have no chapters of their own; drawing is taught through sketching, drawings and manual dimensioning conventions.
• Modelling is introductory. Mathematical modelling is a single chapter built on a cart and a ladder rung. It shows the habit of analysis but does not replace discipline-specific analysis courses.
• Systems engineering only in outline. Systems appear as part of the design vocabulary in Chapter 1, but the book does not treat requirements management, architecture or verification at the scale of complex systems.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the systems engineering list, this is the project-level introduction to design that comes before systems engineering proper. Jon Holt's Systems Engineering Demystified is the other entry point: a practical introduction to systems, life cycles and model-based systems engineering with SysML. Dym, Little and Orwin teach how a small team defines and solves one design problem; Holt shows how that work scales up to complex systems. Read Dym first if you have not yet done a design project.

The life-cycle textbooks follow: Blanchard and Fabrycky's Systems Engineering and Analysis and Kossiakoff and colleagues' Systems Engineering Principles and Practice. Their needs analysis, concept exploration and trade-off methods generalise the problem definition and evaluation chapters here. Buede and Miller's The Engineering Design of Systems formalises requirements and functional architecture with modelling languages. Crawley, Cameron and Selva's System Architecture is a graduate treatment of the early architectural decisions for which Chapters 3–8 give a first, small-scale version.

How to Use This Book

Wiley addresses the book to students in project-based first-year courses, formal engineering design courses and capstone projects. Most chapters need no technical background; Chapter 12 uses elementary mechanics and electrical ideas (a beam model of a ladder rung, battery and motor characteristics), so introductory physics helps there.

• First-year project course: Chapters 1–11 and 15–16 in order, timed to the project: problem definition (Chapters 3–6) at the start, conceptual design (Chapters 7–8) mid-project, communication and prototyping (Chapters 9–11) towards the end, and teams and project management (Chapters 15–16) at the start, when teams form.
• Formal design or capstone course: add Part IV (Chapters 12–14) for modelling, economics and design for production, and Chapter 17 on ethics.
• Appendices: consult Appendix A before any workshop session and Appendix B when preparing drawings. Appendix C provides exercises.

Use the Danbury arm support as a template: after reading each chapter, produce the matching item for your own project (objectives tree, constraint list, function–means tree, morphological chart, evaluation matrix, drawings, report outline). The finished set forms the backbone of a design report.