I’ve decided on the FEA course already, I’ve seen that it’s useful during internships.
Trying to decide between (and can only pick one):
Reliability and Maintainability Engineering Design - Taken a stats course already, this expands on that, tying it back to failure modes and design in order to minimize failure.
Advanced Engineering Materials - Taken two materials courses already, one on metals and one on polymers and ceramics, this will likely go beyond what’s needed for typical consumer products, but it might be useful to gain the knowledge of the “bleeding edge” materials.
Industrial Planning - Taken one business and one economics course already, this focuses on management tools and cost estimation.
Any suggestions? (for a product design focus obviously)
Do the electives need to be technical? Sketching/drawing is always a good skill to give more time for development. GD&T is also a great topic to study, though it would be something to do on the side instead of a class, rather than as a class.
Probably useful if you plan to take a corporate position where you will need to support manufacturing beyond getting it started. If you want to live in the consultancy world you may not get into it much. However, if it covers design for six sigma, design for assembly/disassembly, or GD&T I would go for it.
Might be a good option for giving you a little extra edge. That said though, one of my degrees is in materials and I have pretty much never used any of it in product design, with the exception of having a better understanding of processing methods
A solid intro to cost estimation would be helpful. At the same time, in the next 5 years you are not likely to be in a position to be creating estimates or proposals (unless you go solo/freelance)
Reliability and Maintainability Engineering Design
I’d go with this one. Fulfills an immediate need on the front-end of the development process.
Advanced Engineering Materials
This is the coolest one. But realistically, 99.9% of the stuff you design will be mundane materials. And I rely on the vendors to keep me updated on the latest and greatest.
Industrial Planning
Furthest removed from the development process. Also cool (at least to me), but a sh!t-ton of work needs to be complete before this would ever need to be even a thought.
I registered for reliability for now, and I’ll try and get a hold of the prof to get more detailed info on what they cover (and maybe suggest those topics as well).
Unfortunately they have to be technical electives… Engineering’s extremely strictly regulated up here so we only get one general elective in the entire program and even for that we’re not allowed to take art courses. I ended up taking psychology because out of the approved electives it was the only one that fit into my schedule. I’ve been going to life drawing events regularly though to bring up that side of things.