Application of the SolidWorks in teaching mechanical design for the digital generation

Some problems for students in engineering design are (1) having difficulty to visualize the complicated component or assembly from 2D drawings, (2) not sure how to manufacture designed components, (3) not sure how to properly assemble the components and (4) not sure whether the component or assembly has enough strength /stiffness.With appearance of true 3D CAD software such as SolidWorks, the concepts of virtual component and virtual assembly are introduced in this paper for effectively teaching engineering design for mechanical major.In our class design projects, students were guided to use SolidWorks for creating virtual components and further building virtual assemblies in the digital forms.The applications of virtual component and virtual assembly helped students to solve the problems mentioned above.From our direct observations on several classes, students through class design projects by creating virtual component and virtual assembly had better understanding of engineering design and gained hands-on experiences which could be directly implemented in real industries.