1 Copyright © 2003 by ASME Proceedings of DETC’03 ASME 2003 Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference Chicago, Illinois USA, September 2-6, 2003 DETC2003/CIE-48201 WEB-BASED SELF-PACED VIRTUAL PROTOTYPING TUTORIALS Rajankumar Bhatt Graduate Student Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering State University of New York at Buffalo 318 Jarvis Hall, Buffalo NY 14260 E-mail: rmbhatt@eng.buffalo.edu Web: http://www.eng.buffalo.edu/~rmbhatt Chin Pei Tang Graduate Student Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering State University of New York at Buffalo 318 Jarvis Hall, Buffalo NY 14260 E-mail: chintang@eng.buffalo.edu Web: http://www.eng.buffalo.edu/~chintang Leng-Feng Lee Undergraduate Student Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering State University of New York at Buffalo 318 Jarvis Hall, Buffalo NY 14260 E-mail: llee3@eng.buffalo.edu Web: http://www.eng.buffalo.edu/~llee3 Venkat Krovi Assistant Professor Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering State University of New York at Buffalo 318 Jarvis Hall, Buffalo NY 14260 E-mail: vkrovi@eng.buffalo.edu Web: http://www.eng.buffalo.edu/~vkrovi ABSTRACT By permitting designers to realistically, accurately and quantitatively prototype and test multiple intermediate models within virtual environment, Virtual Prototyping (VP), also known as Simulation-Based Design (SBD), has rapidly gained popularity and become a crucial part of most engineering design processes. While there is a significant demand from industry for students trained in this methodology, currently there is not much room in engineering curriculum to permit widespread adoption in the lecture-based classroom. In this paper, we describe the rationale and the stages in the development of a series of web-based and self-paced VP tutorials targeted at students of a course in machine and mechanism design. These undergraduate seniors are permitted to: (1) interactively explore the process of creating engineering analysis models in integrated VP environment; (2) develop skills for interactive SBD of models; and (3) develop their engineering judgment by interactive exploration of a spectrum of examples. The outcome of a phased introduction of these exercises and our experience based on the first successful course offering are also discussed. INTRODUCTION Currently, considerable numbers of Computer Aided Design (CAD) software and technology tools are commercially available to support simulation-based design-refinement of mechanical systems. Many of these tools not only allow a user to geometrically model mechanical devices in a 3D virtual environment, but also permit the simulation and testing of product functionality virtually. Figure 1 compares the conventional approach with the VP approach in an engineering design process. In the conventional approach, the iterative creation and modification of a physical design prior to manufacture can be expensive and time consuming. VP approaches derive their many advantages by eliminating the need for an intermediate physical prototype for the design refinement stage. Two trends that have favored the adoption and rapid proliferation of the VP approach are: (1) the availability of low-cost PC based parametric simulation and analysis tools; and (2) the capability of integrating multiple functionalities into a unified environment. Today, computer simulation may be used to compute and calculate the kinematic, dynamic and FEA-based responses of prototype completely within the computer and the result can be visualized within a 3D interactive graphical virtual environment. Further, the ubiquitous availability of low-cost personal computer processor with accelerated graphics hardware coupled with the ease of availability of the tools for such platform has set the stage for this new phase in engineering, enabling the designer to quantitatively evaluate the performance of a proposed design completely in software.