Machine part exhibition and functional mock-ups to enrich design education

Abstract

Mechanical engineering design education aims to provide students with the required knowledge and skills to develop state of the art products. Practical hands-on experience supports theoretical teaching of the basics. This paper presents a new approach to integrate hands-on elements into the design education curriculum, while being constrained by large class sizes. Therefore, the need for improvements in design education is analysed and the concept of an interactive machine part exhibition is derived from pre-existing methods. The exhibition is the corner stone of the concept and contains physical models of basic machine parts as well as sophisticated mechanical systems. It is used to create a link between lectures (theory) and real objects (practice). Functional mock-ups specially prepared to teach students design are used to improve an existing first year design and drawing project. Copyright © 2002-2012 The Design Society. All rights reserved.