Reflective Assignment

I have been a student for Swinburne University of Technology for 6 semesters and taking the
Mechanical System Design is a new challenge for me as an engineering student. In this course, a
group of four students was made with the different backgrounds. My group consists of Australians,
Malaysian and Hong Kongers with the combination of mechanical student and product design
engineering student. I was fortunate enough to have this group because I have grown and learned so
many things about become an engineer. During these 11 weeks of solar boat competition project, I
have learned so many different types of tasks that engineer should perform which provided me
more insight on the roles of engineering in different major and the responsibility of everybody in a
team could perform as engineer to finish the solar boat project.

After the team was introduced to me, the first thing I realised was the project need to work in a
group which taught me that engineer cannot do a project individually. This thing has improved my
teamwork skills with the different backgrounds. The first thing we did before we started working on
this project, we discussed on the rules and the marking criteria of the projects. It is because we
wanted to build our main objective before we focused on designing the champion solar boat that
will be in a race. This helped us to obtain a very important information about the competition and
got an initial picture on the structure of the race. This method taught me as engineer that I need to
have a general knowledge on the project I work on a project in future.

My group consists of three mechanical students and one product design student. Everyone has the
different timetable and some of them work on the weekend which leads us to inability to focus on
this project. The only time we managed to discuss on the project was in tutorial class. So instead of
decided to work on it during meeting hours, we decided to set the tasks to be completed within the
prescribed time. This technique taught me that every project that handled by engineers need to
finish the work. This practice me to be a punctual engineer in future. On the other situation,
ineffective communication also affected the project, so we identified the issues that causes the
communication problems in our team. From the problem, I learned that communication is important
when doing group project.

When designing the boat, there was two things we need to design. The first thing was what the
shape of the boat and the second part we need to design how to turn the boat after hit the wall. The
first thing I learn about these two things were the different engineer will be assigned with the
different design area. Secondly, the communication between the different area of engineers is
important to ensure the work is done according to the same plan. For my case in the solar boat
project, the mechanical engineer will focus on the design on how the boat will turn and the product
design engineer will focus on designing the shape of the boat. The mechanical student was assigned
on how the boat and the product design engineering will focus on the shape of the boat. When the
boat was designed, there are a few things that I have learned from the design. Firstly, I learned on
how I put my engineering knowledge that I have learned in the university to design the boat. Other
than that, it taught me on how to be creative and think critically when doing the design. Next, the
thing that I have learned about design is another thing need to be considered when doing the
design. The material used to design the boat can act as limitation and need to be considered as
engineer some material cannot be shape at will. So, some theory and manufacturing knowledge
regarding to the material is important when design something which help us to be a better engineer
in future.

As a Swinburne engineering student, we do not have any problem in designing a product using
Solidworks as mechanical and product design engineering have been taught using Solidworks in the
design. We were pretty sure that we can design it very easily the boat using solid work and cut it
with 3D printing. As a mechanical engineer student, I am very sure that the concept to turn the boat
was perfect, but when it comes to designing electric circuit for the boat, it was hard for us. We
thought we cannot do the electrical part by ourselves. It is because we do not have any electrical
student to design the electrical component on the boat. The other reasons are mechanical student
and product engineering student are not exposed to the electrical design as much as electrical
student does. But, from this situation I learned something important about being as engineer as the
engineers should have basic knowledge about the electrical design and components because maybe
we will lead the electrical engineers in a project in a future.

After the design was completed, the strength of our design it is lightweight and can float steadily in
water as well as stable on water. Our weakness compared to the other design is our boat moves
slow in the water. The strength of our design was because of our decision to use extra material to
improve the material of the boat and the weakness is due to our decision to make the boat using the
same dimension of our solar panel without considering any physics theory. Most of the team has
long length of water line that causes their boat moves faster. We made a mistake when decided not
to use the theory when deciding the dimension of the boat. I realise that I might not an engineer yet
but before we decide on something, we need to use our theoretical knowledge first before we want
to decide anything on a project in future. This will a successful suggestion because we live in an ideal
world that obey physics law.

In my opinion, for the future project, design analysis can be used to design something. This is a new
strategy that can improve design process. This strategy makes an early decision based on the
product realization cycle that can have impact on the quality, manufacturability and the function of
the product. The first step for this process in design analysis is design and after design the product
we need to analysis the performance, quality and the cost of the thing we need to build by using
software such as Solidworks simulation software. If anything goes wrong, we need to make the
correction and if everything is perfect we can directly build the product. One thing I learned is,
theoretically about the design, quality cannot be built in in any product or design unless it is
designed in to be a quality product. These techniques can be successful because it saves time a lot as
it has simple steps and we can know our problem in our design earlier in analysis process instead of
having trouble after build the boat.