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BeefofAges posted:Just chill, you're expected to be 100% useless for a good while. Ask questions if you don't know what's going on. Listen carefully when people are talking. Don't get drunk at work. FWIW I expect my new engineers to jump right in and do design work. I expect them to ask a lot of questions and probably royally mess up but after my review, comments, and coaching I expect they know it. They will have designs out in the field within the first couple months. Nothing like a little trial by fire.
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Nov 9, 2014 00:54
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Remember this phrase: "Do we have a previous design we can modify for this new design?"
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Nov 9, 2014 01:40
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spwrozek posted:FWIW I expect my new engineers to jump right in and do design work. I expect them to ask a lot of questions and probably royally mess up but after my review, comments, and coaching I expect they know it. They will have designs out in the field within the first couple months. As a fresh person in an engineer-ish job, I'll throw in that this is the best way to know what the hell it is you're doing. Nobody wants to sit around for months reading mountains of documents until some supervisor decides it's time for you to stop nodding off at your desk. Granted you'll still be going through mountains of documents, but at least there's something to break the monotony. Xeom posted:What sort of advice do you guys have for someone about to start their first engineer job. It sounds like you're entering a big organization, so it's likely whatever process you have to go through, document you have to turn out, presentation you have to give, someone has done it before. Half of your job is going to be to know who has what information. You aren't there to reinvent the wheel.
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Nov 9, 2014 02:29
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spwrozek posted:FWIW I expect my new engineers to jump right in and do design work. I expect them to ask a lot of questions and probably royally mess up but after my review, comments, and coaching I expect they know it. They will have designs out in the field within the first couple months. Oh, for sure. I have my interns/new grads start trying to write tests (I work in test automation) pretty much right away, but a test that would take me an hour to write would usually take them a lot longer, even with a lot of hand holding. I suppose 100% useless is a bit of an exaggeration, but I wouldn't want freshly hired newbies to get stressed out because they don't feel especially productive right away.
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Nov 9, 2014 16:40
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I agree with that. I try to make sure they understand that I don't care if it takes a while, they ask good questions, and even if they mess up. Just expect them to go for it and learn from the errors.
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Nov 9, 2014 22:51
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Hey Mechanical Engineers: I want something that has a good specific modulus but also attenuates vibration. Is there some material property that is measured at different frequencies for how much energy is converted to heat when you vibrate it? E.G. Aluminum, Steel, GFRP might all have an E/density ratio of 23, but presumably GFRP will convert more vibrational energy to heat because of interfacial energy loss between the fibers and polymer. IDK if this is true though and I want to look it up for different materials like metals, FRPs and MMCs.
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Nov 13, 2014 08:10
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My meagre experience with vibration dampening is that you put a layer of gluey substance between two sheets of metal (so called constrained layer damping. This way it's non-structural but helps to dampen the structural mass. We use it on flat sheets of stainless with mild-to-moderate effect (5dB or so, but we only needed 3-4 to pass the tests). I don't know if it suits your purposes?
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Nov 13, 2014 17:24
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Sunny Side Up fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Dec 14, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2014 18:17
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Nam Taf posted:My meagre experience with vibration dampening is that you put a layer of gluey substance between two sheets of metal (so called constrained layer damping. This way it's non-structural but helps to dampen the structural mass. Viscoelastic damping doesnt work well in high temp/humidity conditions or in low dynamic displacements (500+Hz for example). Also like you mentioned it doesn't increase the fn of the structure. In this case I'd be trying to raise the fn such that the thing I am adding a rib to is an octave higher than my enclosure body as damping wouldnt work in high temp tests.
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Nov 13, 2014 18:48
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Nam Taf posted:My meagre experience with vibration dampening is that you put a layer of gluey substance between two sheets of metal (so called constrained layer damping. This way it's non-structural but helps to dampen the structural mass. I put dog bone style dampers all over the transmission lines I design... Does that count? Boo aeolian vibration.
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Nov 14, 2014 01:32
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CarForumPoster posted:Hey Mechanical Engineers: What about metal/mesh wire isolators? http://www.barrycontrols.com/products/product.cfm?cid=8
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Nov 15, 2014 22:06
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Totally random question, but does anyone know an engineer that took a year or so off of work to travel and then successfully reintegrated into an engineering job? Or does anyone that is involved with hiring have any input on how they'd look at someone that had done that? I usually take one nifty two week vacation a year, and there's a lot of stuff I want to do. I'm pretty athletic, and a lot of the stuff I want to do involves being in decent shape at least (hiking Everest base camp, running with the bulls, scuba diving shipwrecks, etc), but I keep getting hurt randomly. It's occurred to me that there may be a bunch of things that I'll be too old/damaged to do, even if I retire early, so it's almost like there's a clock ticking for me. Anyway I wouldn't do it for a few years now until my $$$ was at a certain number, but if I were to take a year off today, my current qualifications are: Manufacturing engineer with 5.5 years in automotive, 2 years in aerospace, Green Belt certification, undergrad mechanical engineering degree from a top five school, tons of positive contacts. I was thinking take a year or so off, and assuming my company at the time wouldn't be down with a year-long unpaid leave of absence, I'd either get in contact with people I know to see what I could get, or just sign on with a temp agency to get a contract job and hope to springboard off of that. Given that it would be an INTENTIONAL year off (IE - not laid off and unemployable), I don't think it would be a black mark, just maybe they wouldn't want to hire me outright without a contract trial period, or necessarily at the salary I was enjoying pre-leave. So anyone have any anecdotes or thoughts on a year-long leave of absence to get my rear end kicked around the world?
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Nov 16, 2014 20:59
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My company has a sabbatical policy, and I believe my previous company would hold your job if you simply asked them to, but I don't remember if that guarantee was good for a whole year.
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Nov 16, 2014 23:08
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Yeah it sounds like your best bet is to just be reasonable with your current supervisor, or a new one after you are there for a while. I don't think it's that odd of a request--but your contract idea may actually be the way to go. I think it's a neat idea!
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Nov 16, 2014 23:26
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I took a year off to travel and then returned to working. It was totally worth it. Do it.
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Nov 17, 2014 05:37
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Does anyone have a reference or structure for managing computer files that they can recommend? Currently our group's project files are on several different servers and in a couple of months we are going to be merging them all into one location. I want to use this as an opportunity to implement a better file organization system, because when I started it was a pain in the rear end having to ask my mentor where everything was because it didn't make sense.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:36
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We use SharePoint. Each functional group has their own repository with permission granted account-by-account by the manager of each group. It seems to work.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:58
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Share point is a joke. Only good for temporary stuff. The pretty big program used by a lot of companies is bently projectwise. Great software since searching is a dream, attributing is great, audit trails, track changes, versioning, can be used for approvals. I would start my search there. spwrozek fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 02:04
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Could go with a classic version control setup live SVN/Mercurial/Git.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:19
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Hollis Brown posted:Does anyone have a reference or structure for managing computer files that they can recommend? Currently our group's project files are on several different servers and in a couple of months we are going to be merging them all into one location. I want to use this as an opportunity to implement a better file organization system, because when I started it was a pain in the rear end having to ask my mentor where everything was because it didn't make sense. I did a little bit of research on this for my (very very small) workplace. For our work (a mixture of manuals, white papes, code, and CAD) the easiest thing was setting up a little Redmine server that was only accessible internally. It was free and played nicely with version control. Establishing some kind of "rule" for regular folder arrangement is never going to work unless you are self employed and don't plan on hiring anyone, ever. If there's no input sanitation, everyone is going to use their own dumb methods regardless.
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Nov 19, 2014 05:24
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It really depends on the type of files you're managing. The mechanical engineers in my company just started using GrabCAD. http://grabcad.com/ They like it because it provides proper version control for CAD documents. As an electrical engineer I like it because I can use the online 3D viewer to view SolidWorks parts without having SolidWorks installed.
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Nov 19, 2014 18:58
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Atlassian Confluence is pretty decent for document management.
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Nov 19, 2014 23:02
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So I've been at my new job for almost 3 months now. Things seem to be going well and I really like everyone so far, the work is interesting too. Im interested in asking my boss for an informal review just to see if things are going well from his end. How should I approach this? Just shoot him an email asking if he sees any issues with how things have gone so far? Is it too early to ask? I know its not a lot of time but I've been quite active since starting.
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Nov 20, 2014 18:05
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Popete posted:So I've been at my new job for almost 3 months now. Things seem to be going well and I really like everyone so far, the work is interesting too. Im interested in asking my boss for an informal review just to see if things are going well from his end. How should I approach this? Just shoot him an email asking if he sees any issues with how things have gone so far? Is it too early to ask? I know its not a lot of time but I've been quite active since starting. You could always pop by his office and ask him the same. Don't know what your workplace's culture is like, so it may be more appropriate to arrange a meeting via email.
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Nov 20, 2014 20:42
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So my lab is looking at picking up some sort of parallel computing cluster to handle various computer simulations we run. We aren't a huge group, just a few post-docs and a dozen or so grad students. The simulations we run are mostly thermal-fluids related, CFD and that sort of thing, but we occasionally run some pretty intensive monte-carlo for particle transport modelling. Any advice on what sorts of hardware we should be looking into would be amazing.
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Nov 20, 2014 22:09
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2014 22:20
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Olothreutes posted:So my lab is looking at picking up some sort of parallel computing cluster to handle various computer simulations we run. We aren't a huge group, just a few post-docs and a dozen or so grad students. The simulations we run are mostly thermal-fluids related, CFD and that sort of thing, but we occasionally run some pretty intensive monte-carlo for particle transport modelling. This is entirely driven by the specifics of what you're running on it. The answer could range from 'GPU cluster for GPGPU work' to 'a small number of super-fast cores because the off-the-shelf software we purchased hasn't been made highly parallel yet'. Anyone who advises you without knowing your specifics is doing you a disservice. All of those problems are *potentially* embarrassingly parallel but your implementation of them may or may not be.
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Nov 20, 2014 23:47
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Nam Taf posted:This is entirely driven by the specifics of what you're running on it. The answer could range from 'GPU cluster for GPGPU work' to 'a small number of super-fast cores because the off-the-shelf software we purchased hasn't been made highly parallel yet'. Anyone who advises you without knowing your specifics is doing you a disservice. So the majority of our codes have native parallel support. StarCCM+, a bunch of stuff based on MOOSE, Geant4, and MCNP are all parallel out of the box, we run some MATLab stuff which apparently has a parallel computing toolbox that I've never tried to use before. We have a few codes that we run that don't support it, but they take like 6 minutes a run maximum on a regular PC so we don't care. Worst case I'll teach myself python to distribute runs to various cores in the cluster. Nothing we have can run on GPUs as far as I am aware, although I'd love it if they could. I don't know if this is enough information to help make a decision at all, but my advisor literally walked in yesterday and said "I think we should invest in a cluster, I want you to figure it out."
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Nov 21, 2014 00:09
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I don't mean any offense by this suggestion but my experience in academia has led me to ask this first: Have you already checked to see if your school has existing high-performance computation resources? I went to a pretty dinky state school and they still had enough room in the budget to get some decent processing power.
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Nov 21, 2014 01:22
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Corla Plankun posted:I don't mean any offense by this suggestion but my experience in academia has led me to ask this first: Have you already checked to see if your school has existing high-performance computation resources? I went to a pretty dinky state school and they still had enough room in the budget to get some decent processing power. No offense taken. The school does have a high performance computing center, which rumor says is often very busy and could take weeks to get any meaningful time on. It also isn't free to use and the cost might simply be higher than what he can justify. While I'm not entirely sure our own cluster is the right answer it's the one he seems the most up on. In a slightly less important sense some of the codes we use are heavily controlled and having the ability to limit users in our group could be beneficial. From what I know of that sort of thing it's a known issue for users with sensitive codes that system admins can see/use the software without being cleared and there really isn't much that can be done about it, so people just ignore it for the most part.
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Nov 21, 2014 03:51
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We have a bunch of blade type clusters at my work, and our job distribution software is some custom thing the IT group maintains themselves. The cluster was not cheap, I'm not sure what your advisor had in mind. My impression is he talked to someone about it and there is some catch he didn't tell you about, like the guy was talking about a GPU cluster or something, which are pretty cheap. Also, some stinky butt software has core limits and additional core licenses are needed to open up more cores. Of course being a university institution this probably wouldn't be too bad, but it can be a deal breaker in industry.
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Nov 21, 2014 04:30
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Nov 21, 2014 05:23
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Thoguh posted:This statement makes me think you haven't even actually checked. Why not at least ask? You might be pleasantly surprised. Worst case you are just back where you started. The checking isn't something I can do from my position. A previous advisor of mine had an account created for me while I was working on a project with him. My experience with the cluster was that everything was readily available (during the summer, I have no experience with it during legitimate school time). I don't know what the cost associated with running over there is, and I told the current advisor to ask the old one about that. At the same time several other students chimed in about how it could take weeks to get any meaningful time on the cluster regardless of cost. At least one other research group has decided to build their own in-house cluster as well. Honestly I think it's politics driven. The university HPC is probably a better setup than we could ever hope for, but he can't really ask for additional money with that. And he can't claim anything about the computing ability of our lab specifically, just that of the university.
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Nov 21, 2014 06:20
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Olothreutes posted:So the majority of our codes have native parallel support. StarCCM+, a bunch of stuff based on MOOSE, Geant4, and MCNP are all parallel out of the box, we run some MATLab stuff which apparently has a parallel computing toolbox that I've never tried to use before. We have a few codes that we run that don't support it, but they take like 6 minutes a run maximum on a regular PC so we don't care. Worst case I'll teach myself python to distribute runs to various cores in the cluster. Nothing we have can run on GPUs as far as I am aware, although I'd love it if they could. I don't know if this is enough information to help make a decision at all, but my advisor literally walked in yesterday and said "I think we should invest in a cluster, I want you to figure it out." Matlab's parallel computing toolbox has the successor to Jacket, which was a GPGPU CUDA plugin. Also, it might be parallel but just make sure you balance RAM to CPU to I/O right so that it actually uses all your resources. For example, FEA is parallel but is often RAM constrained, for a desktop PC.
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Nov 21, 2014 11:25
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How does everyone feel about Engineers Without Borders?
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Nov 21, 2014 20:30
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Tin Gang posted:How does everyone feel about Engineers Without Borders? I hate Africans getting functional wells with no power required filtration.
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Nov 21, 2014 20:54
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CarForumPoster posted:I hate Africans getting functional wells with no power required filtration. Well I'm electrical so I'd like to hear more about the stuff they do that requires power.
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Nov 21, 2014 21:04
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Do it. I was in it in undergrad and it was a great experience. You get exposed to real and complicated logistics and do some real good. I never went on any trips, but it was definitely worthwhile just to be a part of it. Doesn't hurt that it looks killer on a resume. I'm electrical too, don't expect to necessarily be doing electrical work. You're delivering aid -- a lot of these projects are specifically designed so that they don't require power at all. If the people there could afford power they probably wouldn't have the sort of problems that require international intervention.
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Nov 21, 2014 21:09
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Tin Gang posted:How does everyone feel about Engineers Without Borders? Look at your local and national groups and see what they're up to. It's a neat organization in concept, but not that much of it involves stuff like designing water pumps and building things. Imagine a bunch of engineers getting together to try and solve issues that are often societal rather than technical. It's sort of a technocratic approach to aid and education. If that's your sort of thing, then great.
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Nov 21, 2014 21:21
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It's excellent because it teaches nerds that some problems are more complicated than "input A, output B" and demonstrates the societal need for exporting technology rather than just the circlejerk of "we're so smart, the true ubermensches, everything would be so much better if everyone was just logical like us" that so many engineers find themselves in
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Nov 22, 2014 18:20
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