2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Bridging the Knowledge Gap Between Design Requirements and CAD - A Joint Embedding Approach

Presented at Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) Technical Session 14

Engineering design courses often require students to gather requirements and create computer-aided design (CAD) artifacts to present their solutions. However, current instructional emphasis often overlooks the importance of connecting requirements and CAD drawings, a critical relationship managed by experts using industry-specific software. To address this gap, this paper proposes a framework based on the concept of model-based enterprise (MBE), which enables designers and engineers to perform up-and-downstream analyses. The framework provides a data-driven approach that helps students understand the connection between written requirements and corresponding visual representations in CAD drawings. For complex projects, practitioners can use a joint embedding layer of information to track information flows across multiple domains, which students may lack experience or training to deal with. The proposed framework utilizes joint embedding to build correlations between requirements and mechanical component drawings, allowing related requirements and images to coexist in the same design space and be linked together. We conclude that this study can serve as a theoretical example to bridge the practical knowledge gap in the current design curriculum and better prepare students for future challenges.

Authors

Dr. Cheng Chen http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-9017-9195 University of Georgia [biography]

Cheng holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Georgia and has published numerous papers on topics such as computational design, geometric modeling, and engineering education. He is always seeking innovative approaches to fill knowledge gaps and to assist in solving complex design issues. He is currently working on several projects to develop various natural language models for requirement management. Cheng is passionate about applying his domain expertise to improve STEM education, with an emphasis on how AI can be incorporated into design practices.
Mr. Siqing Wei http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-7086-5953 Purdue University [biography]

Siqing Wei received B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Engineering Education program as a triple boiler. His research interests span on three major research topics, which are teamwork, cultural diversity, and international student experiences. As a research assistant, he investigates how the cultural diversity of team members impacts the team dynamics and outcomes, particularly for international students. He aims to help students improve intercultural competency and teamwork competency by interventions, counseling, pedagogy, and tool selection to promote DEI. In addition, he also works on many research-to-practice projects to enhance educational technology usage in engineering classrooms and educational research. Siqing also works as the technical development and support manager at the CATME research group.
Dr. Beshoy Morkos http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6656-3610 University of Georgia [biography]

Beshoy Morkos is an associate professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia where he directs MODEL (Manufacturing Optimization, Design, and Engineering Education Lab) Group. His research group currently explores the areas of system design, manufacturing, and their respective education. His system design research focuses on developing computational representation and reasoning support for managing complex system design through the use of Model Based approaches. The goal of Dr. Morkos’ manufacturing research is to fundamentally reframe our understanding and utilization of product and process representations and computational reasoning capabilities to support the development of models which help engineers and project planners intelligently make informed decisions. On the engineering education front, Dr. Morkos’ research explores means to improve persistence and diversity in engineering education by leveraging students’ design experiences.

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