GitHub for Engineers 3

[sabrehagen]

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to the engineering world and am trying to understand the online ecosystem. As such I have a few questions!

Is there a 'GitHub for Engineers'? That is, is there a website where I can find people's engineering projects to learn from? Ideally I'd like to download their files, inspect them, play around, etc, in order to learn rapidly.

A second question is what is the established best practice for working on engineering projects with others? Do people use dropbox or google drive? What's the best practice 'work flow'?

Lastly, how do you find out about new interesting engineering projects people are working on?

Thanks,


Jackson

 

[FeX32]

GitHub for engineers? GitHub is written by lots of programmers many of which are engineers.
As far as I know there is no site as you describe.

 

[FeX32]

You could try:

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mechanical-engineering/

 

[IRstuff]

"Ideally I'd like to download their files, inspect them, play around, etc, in order to learn rapidly."

There is already a misconception here. "files" would only be in the form of schematics and board layouts, which are uniquely proprietary to software that the engineers use, i.e., there is no equivalent of source code, unless they're designing in VHDL. However, VHDL is essentially a programming language, and as such does not have really deal with analog circuitry, although one could probably describe analog circuitry in VHDL. Moreoever, VHDL is only worth the effort for large designs, ala the size of a compiler, or similar. Even then, much of the functionality of a design might be abstracted into major subfunctions, like processors, or DMA, and there won't necessarily be any lower level details for those.

A similar situation would exist for mechanical engineers as well. While there are textbooks that describe mechanisms in the abstract sense, a mechanical design database is all about mechanical drawing details, and the specifics of why a design looks the way it does is not really captured anywhere


TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
faq731-376 forum1529

 

[sabrehagen]

RE "There is already a misconception here. "files" would only be in the form of schematics and board layouts, which are uniquely proprietary to software that the engineers use, i.e., there is no equivalent of source code"

What is the analogue for engineers then? Source code is to software engineers as ??? is to aerospace/mechanical/electrical engineers.

RE "specifics of why a design looks the way it does is not really captured anywhere"

Is there any entity in the engineering world that captures this? Is it a report document? How is the knowledge of the design decisions transferred from one person/group/team to another?

Nobody has addressed the idea of collaborative engineering. Are tools like google drive or dropbox used by any of you?

 

[Jboggs]

If I understand your inquiry correctly, my first comment is congratulations on being inquisitive enough to want to learn more on your own. Speaking as a fully qualified "old fart" who has been designing machines for 40 years in all kinds of engineering environments, I can tell you that I've never heard of GitHub. I have heard of Dropbox though. (My daughter sent us some pictures on it.) And I have heard of Google Drive but have no clue. Don't even own (or want) a smartphone. But if I am understanding your question correctly, you are simply wanting to learn more about various designs by studying their engineering documentation in detail.

Most companies (and designers) consider their designs to be proprietary, their own intellectual property. So, you're probably not going to find a lot of publicly available detailed information.

The best way for you to learn about designs is to do what I did. Back in the day companies' engineering departments used to be FULL of drawing files, large flat drawer cabinets full of paper (remember paper?) and mylar drawings. They were an unending fount of knowledge for me as I learned from past masters of my craft. I could spend HOURS just studying old drawings. My respect for those guys just grew and grew. My favorite was the World War II era. Those guys were unbelievable in their creativity!

I would ask myself "Exactly how does this system work?" and "Wonder why they did it that way?" I also learned very valuable lessons about the importance of layout, planning, and the appearance of a drawing.

Source code is simply a method of communicating your ideas clearly enough that those that need to understand them in exact detail can do so. Other engineering disciplines have their own methods. Electrical engineers have electrical schematics. Fluid power engineers have hydraulic and pneumatic schematics and fabrication drawings. Chemical engineers have formulas and piping diagrams. Mechanical engineers have physical drawings and mathematical analysis of loading, stress, etc.

Which is all probably more than you really wanted to know, but there you have it.

Now, go learn things!

 

[ornerynorsk]

GrabCAD is an interesting source, not sure if that's what you have in mind.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[KENAT]

"Nobody has addressed the idea of collaborative engineering. Are tools like google drive or dropbox used by any of you? "

Depends on what type of collaboration you're talking about. For fully integrated 3D CAD data collaboration you probably need a PLM or at least PDM system to do it well so as to maintain all file links etc.

Using any kind of file share be it the ones you list or ftp to a company server or... has severe limitations in the file linkage aspect.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[sabrehagen]

"PLM or at least PDM system to do it well so as to maintain all file links etc."

I'm not familiar with what PLM or PDM are/is. Can you detail them for me?

What is the nature of these file links? How are they created, and what purpose do they serve?

 

[rb1957]

it's a good idea, but perhaps too simplistic.

sure, review your company's designs (if you have time), talk to other engineers (if they have time). Accessing other company's design data is probably very difficult (they don't want to share it) and to a degree, pointless. Pointless because you don't how how well the design worked, but more, you don't know the limitations that they worked with ... maybe they were an OEM with access to all the plane design data and all sorts of modern and expensive productions methods; maybe they were a "chop shop" making do with what they had, being overly conservative to compensate.

You're clearly new to the business ... a word of advice ... i think you need to listen to some of the people around you to figure out why we do things a particular way. the trouble is figuring which people to listen to !! You may have some good ideas, I suspect that most ideas won't work (for a multitude of reasons ... and this is an excellent way to learn) and most probably will have been tried at some time in the past. That said, I'm sure we can all gain from sitting back and thinking "why do we do it this way?" ... until the boss comes round and says "git 'er done".

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[sabrehagen]

RE "it's a good idea, but perhaps too simplistic."

why is it too simplistic? what need do you see not being met by the solution?

RE "i think you need to listen to some of the people around you to figure out why we do things a particular way."

that's exactly why i'm asking in a forum "how is it done?"

RE "Pointless because you don't how how well the design worked, but more, you don't know the limitations that they worked with"

I agree this is immensely valuable information. The fact it is not communicated is one of the greatest losses. In industry, how is this meta knowledge not lost. That is, how is it communicated and persisted?

 

[KENAT]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_data_management

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_lifecycle

If you need more

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=CAD+PLM+&+PDM

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[IRstuff]

As I mentioned above, the equivalent of source code is schematics, but schematics are not in English words, unless they're VHDL, otherwise, they're in a proprietary binary format for whatever schematic capture program the EE used to enter their schematic.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
faq731-376 forum1529

 

[IFRs]

I've been engineering stuff for almost 40 years. For personal use I have MathCAD, AutoCAD, a lightweight FEA program, Excel, lots of books, articles, published papers and access to university libraries. For collaboration I use Buzzsaw, GoogleDocs, Basecamp ans Sharepoint. This site is an excellent resource. Participating in code committees is a very good way to understand a particular subject and cultivate a peer group to bounce questions off of. I don't think you can expect to learn much from downloading a CAD file of a structure without understanding the methodology of its design but some details might be of interest and then you could attempt to reverse engineer or forward engineer to see if you get the same result. To find out where the new stuff is happening, go to trade shows, read engineering journals, industry magazines, things like Science News, ASME magazine. There is an interest group and journals for just about everything. Read patents. Go to universities where research is being done. Engineering is a skill developed over time based on understanding of basic principles, practical methods, imagination, number crunching, design elegance, experts in areas you are unfamiliar with, trial and error. My opinion only...good luck and please report back what you find and the direction you decide to go !

 

[FreddyNurk]

I'm curious, are you actually employed as an engineer at the moment, or are you looking at engineering employment?

Github is a mostly (there may be 'closed' setups specifically for certain companies, but I've never looked) open source utility, based on both use of Git as a software collaboration tool, as well as facilitation of an open means of developing software. Its possible to use Git (and by extension, GitHub, since Github is really a hosting solution) for development of other systems / platforms / artifacts, but its often not suitable for those purposes for a number of reasons, least of all concurrent access and approvals.

Its also quite unlikely that 3rd party companies would allow you access to their engineering development tools (PLM is in some respects, a functional equivalent of what Git provides) as in just about all cases they're concerned with protecting their intellectual property, rather than allowing collaboration with others.

Companies generally have their own methodology for production of engineering services, ranging from SMB shared folders, Microsoft Sharepoint, various PLM tools and others. Usage is generally company specific.

 

[sabrehagen]

RE "For collaboration I use Buzzsaw, GoogleDocs, Basecamp ans Sharepoint."

Thank you! The first direct answer to my question. Much appreciated.

There's a lot of discussion here about companies sharing their files. I'm not interested in seeing companies engineering documents/files/data. I'm interested in individuals' project files. Surely you do hobby engineering on your computer, right?

 

[moon161]

The global village construction set is an open source project.

http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set

 

[KENAT]

"Surely you do hobby engineering on your computer, right? "

Rarely, and when I did/do it was mostly related to either 'bright' ideas I might be able to make a $ off, or it was things like landscaping plans for my yard or occasionally just silly geometry problems that were bugging me or the like.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[BUGGAR]

If you are a Civil Engineer, you can visit all the State Highway sites and view their Standard Plans for ideas on how highways and bridges are built and how designers put the drawings together. I also used to collect old out-of-date bid documents from plan centers to see what my competition was doing.
I don't know what Aerospace industry does. It's probably all proprietary.

I have my house plans drawn up if you want to see them. Give me a day to get my perspective done by "Rent an Engineer".

 

[sabrehagen]

RE "I have my house plans drawn up if you want to see them. Give me a day to get my perspective done by "Rent an Engineer"."

Most definitely! Do you have a whole folder dedicated to the project, with subfolders for each section? How would you plan to share it with me?

Thanks also for the PLM and PDM links. That's all new to me.