Product Design & Development – Level 1 - Course & Test
Bridging academic theory and practical application enhances product design efficiency and reduces errors.
A product design engineer needs a shared vocabulary and a repeatable review habit before any cost or strategy question can be answered honestly. It opens with the terminology used across the profession, a shared glossary and the acronym set that appears in specifications, meetings and design reviews, then moves into the two questions every component must answer: does it fit, and does it function as intended. Students study design reviews of already-built products, a headlamp and a garden watering valve among them, to see how stated requirements become a working assembly, and finish with the material distinction between thermoplastics and thermosets that decides manufacturability long before a tool is cut.
For an engineer starting a career in product design, or a specialist moving into consumer or industrial products from another field, this level closes the gap between academic theory and the daily practice of reading a drawing, selecting a material family and judging whether a concept sketch can become a real part. Manufacturers gain from engineers who share this vocabulary, since fewer specification errors and shorter review cycles follow directly from it.
Product developers gain a team that simplifies a design before adding cost, a habit that saves far more than it costs to teach.
The Concepts & Tools to Learn in this Course:
These are the bodies of knowledge that will be assessed in the test below:
Engineering glossary and acronym literacy
Form, fit and function analysis
Form-follows-function as a design discipline
Common design mistakes and how to avoid them
The simplification principle in product design
Thermoplastics versus thermosets: selection criteria
CAD software landscape and selection
Structured design review of a physical product
Engineering drawing conventions and reading practice
ASME Y14.5 geometric dimensioning and tolerancing fundamentals
Tolerance stack-up basics
Bill of Materials structure and revision control
Material selection charts (Ashby method or others)
First article inspection and prototype validation
Introductory design for assembly principles
Datum reference frames
Surface finish and its functional impact
Standard fastener and hardware selection
Engineering change notice fundamentals
Design review checklist construction
Our Suggested Readings
The list below is a special selection of our original articles, tools and methodologies available on this site.
Tip: the big dot at the start of each title indicates if that post/article has already been read ( ● ), or not ( ○ ). Refresh the page if necessary.
Tip: the reading progress is recorded either in a cookie (if you are not logged in or no account created), or in your site profile. Use the later to be sure not to loose your progression.
As soon as you start a given article, your progress will be indicated on top of each page to help you finish and move on to the next.
Note: for this particular course, articles can be read in any order.
After you are familiar with the lectures above, so as having done your own readings, we recommend attending the Exam below.
The test consists of 20 questions in random order, out of many more, to insure novelty each time. Each completely correct answer gets you 10 points. You get a full correction at the end of the test.
If the course has different levels, the current test does not include questions of lower levels, making it … hardthat level!
radio-buttons: only 1 correct answer must be selected
check-boxes: 1 or several answers must be checked (with strict all-good-or-nothing grading logic)
Tip: mouse over “Hint” to get an advise for the response.
Only innovation.world members can see it below and attend it.
