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WebCorner: Hotlinks to Websites

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WebCorner Contents:

Where to Start Searching the Web for Manufacturing Engineering Information? (by Jim Corlett)

 

Introduction

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This brief article is the first of a series in which I will be looking at resources on the Web covering the world of manufacturing. In future articles, I will cover specific areas of interest to design and manufacturing engineers and managers.

This particular article offers a brief personal overview of the way I go about getting relevant information from non-subscription (i.e. free!) sites on the Web. I search the Web a fair amount during my work, and hope that the following will help some of you to navigate your way in the most efficient manner through the various of search options.

 

Searching for sites

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There are four main ways I go to find Internet resources:

 

Subject Gateways

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Subject Gateways are usually collections of Web sites which have been reviewed, classified and catalogued to make searching quick and easy, to ensure that only "quality" sites are retrieved and that those sites are focused in one main subject area, so that users know in general what they are getting.

A list of subject gateways can be found at (http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html).

[N.B. Some of the gateways highlighted focus on educational resources in that subject, others on a wider range of resources].

The main gateway I use for engineering/ manufacturing is

EEVL the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/).

Others of relevance include:

 

Local Lists

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Local Lists are collections, often compiled by individuals, in very specific subject areas. If one exists in your area of interest, then many of your search problems will be solved. However, they can be hard to find (try using a Subject Gateway first to look for them) and are not guaranteed to be kept up-to-date (people change jobs and interests, etc).

Examples of such sites are:

Similar, but slightly more "official" sites, (often produced by companies or institutions) are specific Resource Guides and Directories, such as the

 

Resource Collections

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Resource Collections, such as Yahoo (http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Engineering/), and the WWW Virtual Library (http://arioch.gsfc.nasa.gov/wwwvl/engineering.html), are subject collections similar to the Subject Gateways, but covering a much wider span of subject areas. They can be very useful.

The problem I find is that they are US-biased (OK if you're in the States!), the coverage of specific subjects is uneven and in many fields it is not as detailed as that of the Subject Gateways. Indeed, some sites proclaiming subject access to the Web simply do not include manufacturing or engineering within their range of subjects listed.

 

Global Search Engines

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Global Search Engines, such as

They are useful for very specific subject searches, not so good for browsing.

Their main defects spring from the way the results of a search are presented; the list of resources found can be very unfocused and unselective, often leading to time-consuming and frustrating efforts by the user trying to find relevant sites. I think people quickly find their own favourites from among the long list of those available.

Useful lists of Resource Collections and Search Engines can be found on many, often academic, sites.

My own institution has a comprehensive coverage, on their Electronic Library Resources Exploring the Internet pages (http://www.ntu.ac.uk/lis/helpin.htm). This site also provides the full text of some articles which compare and contrast the various Global Search Engines.

 

Conclusion

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The amount of information freely available on the Web is truly phenomenal. I choose to go to subject gateways if I want to browse for relevant subjects. Here, on sites like EEVL, I should pick up local lists, as well as courseware, company and product information, full text documents, e-journals, etc. If I don't find enough of what I want, I then move on to some of the resource collections.

If I need a very specific piece of information, I try one or two of the global search engines (or one of the options on EEVL which allows searching of actual Web sites and their links in specific areas (UK sites or free e-journals) rather than just the EEVL database).

I'm sure you will develop (or have developed) you own Web search style - happy hunting!

 

Jim Corlett

Manufacturing Information Services Manager
CADE, Boots Library
The Nottingham Trent University
http://www.ntu.ac.uk
Nottingham NG1 4FZ
United Kingdom

(The Editor: You can email to Jim via: cimware@cimwareukandusa.com. For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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A summary of all references / hot-web-links mentioned in this article

http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html

http://www.eevl.ac.uk

http://www.ub2.lu.se/eel/eelhome.html

http://www.englib.cornell.edu/ice/ice-index.html

http://www.transenco.com

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/5978/links.html

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/2549/design.htm

http://www.faps.uni-erlangen.de/persons/schloegl/vm_links.html

http://www.wohlersassociates.com

http://intell-lab.engi.cf.ac.uk/franck/RPB.html

http://cadserv.cadlab.vt.edu/bohn/RP.html

http://www.cam.org/~flamy/cadcam.html

http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Engineering

http://arioch.gsfc.nasa.gov/wwwvl/engineering.html

http://www.altavista.digital.com

http://www.infoseek.com

http://www.hotbot.com

http://www-english.lycos.com

http://www.ntu.ac.uk/lis/helpin.htm

(For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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Polymer Processing on the Web (by Jim Corlett)

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My first article in this series tried to point a path through the jungle of Web search tools towards the most efficient way to approach Web searching, in general terms &endash; i.e. which of the many search tools to use in what order. This article &endash; on polymer processing - and succeeding articles highlight sites on specific topics of potential interest to manufacturing and design engineers.

Contents

 

Local lists, resource guides and FAQs

The introductory article mentioned local lists, collections, often compiled by individuals, in very specific subject areas, and slightly more "official", (often produced by companies) specific resource guides and directories.

One such local list in the polymer area is the The Unofficial Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) Homepage (http://www.net-master.net/~ptfedave/), while resource guides include

Other, more general sites include:

Further sites worth highlighting in this category are:

European sites which may be of interest include

 

Institutions, Associations and Companies

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Institutions, Associations and Companies include the following:

Examples of Trade Associations include the

Individual Companies (see also Resource Guides, above) often just provide product and company details; two examples, in the area of rotational moulding/vacuum moulding, are Rotosystems Ltd (http://www.rotosytems.com/) and J R Dare Ltd (http://www.jrdare.co.uk/).

Other companies offer that bit more:

 

Research Centres & Higher Education

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Research Centres provide details of the latest research activities.

Examples in the UK are

In Europe, there are, among others:

In the USA, for those wishing to study/research in North America, the Polymer Science Internet Directory (http://www.polymer.org/) aims to link the Web sites for all public and private PhD-granting Schools and Universities in Canada and the United States with significant research efforts in polymer science and engineering.

 

Full-text, e-Journals & Mailing Lists

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Full-Text Documents available range from books such as the Introduction to Plastics (http://www.lexmark.com/ptc/book.html) mentioned above to individual articles such as those from Rheometric Scientific (http://www.rheosci.com/apps.htm).

Some documents are also available as part of sites which offer Courseware for users to access.

Examples of such pages are:

Other documents may be found as part of e-journal sites; for example,

 

For those wishing to interact with others rather than just read, there are a number of mailing/discussion lists, such as the polymer-processing mailing list at http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/polymer-processing.

 

Reference Material

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A wide spectrum of reference material may be found, ranging from

 

To summarize, this is just a taste of what is available on the Web - there are many others which I could have included. Note that most of these &endash; and many other - resources can be retrieved via the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL) at http://www.eevl.ac.uk/.

 

Jim Corlett

Manufacturing Information Services Manager
CADE, Boots Library
The Nottingham Trent University
http://www.ntu.ac.uk
Nottingham NG1 4FZ
United Kingdom

(The Editor: You can email to Jim via: cimware@cimwareukandusa.com. For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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A summary of all references / hot-web-links mentioned in this article

http://www.net-master.net/~ptfedave

http://www.ramsay.co.uk/pvc

http://www2.plasticsresource.com

http://www.rapra.net

http://www.plastico.com.br

http://www.polysort.com

http://www.lexmark.com/ptc/ptc3.html

http://www.lexmark.com/ptc/ptc3.html

http://www.irc.leeds.ac.uk/irc/spfaq

http://www.phoenix.net/~cobb/castables-faq.html

http://www.plastunivers.es

http://www.plastic.it

http://www.4spe.org

http://www.poly-eng.uakron.edu/PPS/PPS.html

http://www.instmat.co.uk

http://www.rotomolding.org

http://www.bpf.co.uk

http://www.pvc.org

http://www.socplas.org

http://www.rotosytems.com

http://www.jrdare.co.uk

http://www.endura.com

http://www.moldflow.com

http://home.t-online.de/home/cpm.eq/index.htm

http://www.cmold.com

http://wwwqub.ac.uk/mpeng/mmeng/rotomould/rotoweb.htm

http://www.me.umist.ac.uk/neppco/neppco.htm

http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dch0www2

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/iptme

http://www.iap.fhg.de

http://www.rwth-aachen.de/ikv/Ww/english.html

http://www.ipfdd.de

http://www.mpip-mainz.mpg.de

http://mat.ethz.ch/d-werk/ifp/ifp.html

http://www.chemie.uni-marburg.de/~gdch/polymerchemiker.html

http://www.polymer.org

http://www.lexmark.com/ptc/book.html

http://www.rheosci.com/apps.htm

http://isl.cps.msu.edu/trp/index.html

http://www.umr.edu/~wlf

http://www.abalone/cwru.edu

http://www.sdplastics.com/plastics.html

http://immnet.com

http://www.polymer-age.co.uk

http://www.modplas.com

http://www.ovest.it/mpe

http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/polymer-processing

http://mat.ethz.ch/d-werk/suter/bt-frames.html

http://www.merl-ltd.co.uk

http://www.metweb.com

http://www.eevl.ac.uk

 

(For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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Rapid Prototyping Information on the Web (by Jim Corlett)

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My first article in this series tried to point a path through the jungle of Web search tools towards the most efficient way to approach Web searching, in general terms &endash; i.e. which of the many search tools to use in what order. This current article &endash; on rapid prototyping (aka desktop manufacturing, solid freeform fabrication or layered manufacturing) - and other articles in the series will highlight sites on specific topics of potential interest to manufacturing and design engineers.

Contents

 

Local lists, resource guides and FAQs

My introductory article mentioned local lists, collections (often compiled by individuals) in very specific subject areas, and slightly more "official" (often produced by companies) specific resource guides and directories.

Several excellent local lists include:

Other, more general sites include:

When looking for resource lists for particular countries, it is often best to start with the local associations or institutions. However, one very good guide, covering Japan, is the Rapid Prototyping from Japan site (http://nak.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/rpjp/), which includes documents outlining the present status of RP in Japan.

Some advice on prototyping may be found on the FAQ on Innovation and Product Development site at http://members.aol.com/RonGraham1/innovate.html.

 

Associations and Companies

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A useful list of RP associations may be found on the Wohlers Associates site (http://www.wohlersassociates.com/), which announces the Global Alliance of RP Associations (GARPA) and its annual meeting, the Global Summit, formed to encourage on-going sharing of information across international borders.

Among the European sites are the

In the USA, the Rapid Prototyping Association of the SME (Society of Manufacturing Engineers) is at http://www.sme.org/rpa/.

Among the interesting sites in the Far East are the Hong Kong Society for Rapid Prototyping Tooling & Manufacturing (http://hkumea.hku.hk/~CRPDT/RP&T.html) and the Australian Rapid Prototyping Association (http://www.adl.dmt.csiro.au/external/arpa/arpahome.htm).

RP processes, and the companies/ organisations associated with them, include:

Individual companies (see also Resource Guides, above, for much fuller lists) in the RP domain include those offering software and bureau services. Two which do both are Solid Concepts Inc (http://www.solidconcepts.com/) and Materialise N.V. (http://www.materialise.be/). Other companies producing software include DeskArtes Oy in Finland, and Imageware in the States.

There are numerous bureaux providing RP services. A flavour of the sort of thing being offered can be found by looking at sites such as the

There are many more. The best way to locate them is via the Resource Guides.

 

Research Centres & Higher Education

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There are a good number of places undertaking research in RP. Here are just a few to illustrate the range. Once again, others may be traced via the Resource Guides mentioned above.

Those in the United States include:

Within Europe, you can find a number of interesting sites in the UK, among them being the

In Germany, there are the Institute of Industrial Technology and Applied Work Science at the

The Rapid Prototyping Research Group Sweden at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) (http://www.cadcam.kth.se/public/computer/fff/RP.html) does offer sections on Rapid Prototyping in Europe and Rapid Prototyping in North America, together with a list RP machines in Scandinavia, but this page was last updated in 1996.

For a more up-to-date listing in these areas and also Asia and the Far East, see Zhiwen Zhao's The World of Rapid Prototyping (http://ecoleing.uqtr.uquebec.ca/geniedoc/gmm/productique/RP_RESEA.HTM)

In the Far East can be found the

Practical applications of RP use via the Web may be found on sites like the

 

Full-text, E-Conferences, E-Journals

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Full-Text Documents available include:

The Institute of Industrial Technology and Applied Work Science at the University of Bremen - Rapid Prototyping Site (http://www.biba.uni-bremen.de/groups/rp/rp_page.html) not only offers an article on the Introduction to Rapid Prototyping Technology but also contains a classification of rapid prototyping technologies.

Another forum in which full-text documents may be found is the e-conference. Within the rapid prototyping field, there are two Internet Conferences on Rapid Prototyping: the

There appear to be no full-text electronic journals available at present, although the Rapid Prototyping Newsletter is available on the Rapid Prototyping Association of the SME site at http://www.sme.org/cgi-bin/find-issues.pl?&&RPA&RPA&.

Details of three journals of relevance are given, however. Both the

It is possible to search for items appearing in the free engineering e-journals on the Web. You can use the Engineering E-journal Search Engine (EESE) (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/eese/) for this purpose.

Some documents are also available as part of sites which offer courseware for users to access. An excellent example of such a site is: the Penn State Rapid Prototyping at The Learning Factory (http://www.me.psu.edu/lamancusa/rapidpro/index.htm), which not only includes a tutorial, but also slides and a brief introduction to the RP technology.

Other sites include: The Use of Solid Rapid Prototyping in Computer Graphics and Scientific Visualization course notes at http://www.sdsc.edu/tmf/Sig96Notes/RpForSciVis.html, and Reuleaux!, the first WWW CAD/CAM prototyping service coming out of the CyberParts project, which provides a tutorial on the history and design of the Reuleaux (http://madmax.me.berkeley.edu/~willchui/main.html)

 

Mailing Lists

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For those wishing to interact with others rather than just read (i.e. use mailing lists/ discussion groups), the

 

Patents

The Chatham Research site (http://members.aol.com/chathamres/ChathamRes.html) announces the availability for sale of 3D Rapid Prototyping Patents 99, a database and search software consists of 475+ patents in CD ROM format on the technology area of rapid prototyping/solid freeform fabrication.

A list of RP-related patents is offered on Zhiwen Zhao's The World of Rapid Prototyping (http://ecoleing.uqtr.uquebec.ca/geniedoc/gmm/productique/rpworld.htm) site.

Searchable access to patents may be found on other sites such as

 

Conclusion

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Rapid prototyping is [appropriately] a fast-changing field. You will find that a number of prominent sites which appear in all the Resource Guides mentioned no longer exist, and you should also be aware, as indicated above, of the dates sites were last updated. (State of the Art Review: Rapid Prototyping for Manufacturing, for instance, (http://mtiac.hq.iitri.com/MTIAC/pubs/rp/rpintro.htm) was only accurate as of March 1993). However, I hope I have shown that there is still a lot of interesting information out there.

It is, of course, just a taste of what is available on the Web - there are many other sites I could have included. Note that most of these &endash; and many other - resources can be retrieved via the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL) at http://www.eevl.ac.uk/. For further information, you can try Recent Advances in Manufacturing (RAM) (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/ram/), a free database containing many references to articles on rapid prototyping, rapid tooling, and other exciting fields.

 

Jim Corlett

Manufacturing Information Services Manager
CADE, Boots Library
The Nottingham Trent University
http://www.ntu.ac.uk
Nottingham NG1 4FZ
United Kingdom

(The Editor: You can email to Jim via: cimware@cimwareukandusa.com. For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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A summary of all references / hot-web-links mentioned in this article

http://intell-lab.engi.cf.ac.uk/franck/RPB.html

http://www.wohlersassociates.com/

http://www.cc.utah.edu/~asn8200/rapid.html

http://ecoleing.uqtr.uquebec.ca/geniedoc/gmm/productique/rpworld.htm

http://azizia.dtm-corp.com/~nelson/rpindex1.html

http://cadserv.cadlab.vt.edu/bohn/RP.html

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/2549/proto.htm

http://www.icom.cz/mcltd/RPdatabase.html

http://nak.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/rpjp/

http://members.aol.com/RonGraham1/innovate.html

http://www.wohlersassociates.com/

http://www.imeche.org.uk/imeche2/rpma/index2.htm

http://www.apri-rapid.it/

http://ltk.hut.fi/firpa/

http://www.sme.org/rpa/

http://hkumea.hku.hk/~CRPDT/RP&T.html

http://www.adl.dmt.csiro.au/external/arpa/arpahome.htm

http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena/org/t/tdp/www/home.html

http://www.sanders-prototype.com/

http://www.soligentechnologies.com/

http://www.stratasys.com/

http://helisys.com/

http://www.dtm-corp.com/

http://www.iquest.net/cubital/

http://www.3dsystems.com/

http://www.eos-gmbh.de/

http://www.optomec.com/

http://www.solidconcepts.com/

http://www.materialise.be/

http://www.imcuk.org/

http://www.damvig.com/

http://www.adveng.on.ca/

http://www.promau.it/

http://www.kl-technik.com/

http://www.artcorp.com/

http://www.valla.fr/

http://www.multistation.com/Pages/indexeng.htm

http://rpmi.marc.gatech.edu/

http://www.udri.udayton.edu/rpdl/

http://www-rpl.stanford.edu/

http://www.buckscol.ac.uk/tech/crdm/crdm.html

http://blake.sunderland.ac.uk/~ta5sva/research.html

http://www.wmg.warwick.ac.uk/Research/index.htm

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/meom/Research/rp/index.html

http://www.biba.uni-bremen.de/groups/rp/rp_page.html

http://www.ikp2.uni-stuttgart.de/RP_IKP/Eindex.html

http://www.cadcam.kth.se/public/computer/fff/RP.html

http://ecoleing.uqtr.uquebec.ca/geniedoc/gmm/productique/RP_RESEA.HTM

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Lab/8600/clrf.htm

http://hkumea.hku.hk:80/~mensing/rphome.htm

http://www.sdsc.edu/tmf/

http://cybercut.berkeley.edu/

http://itri.loyola.edu/rp/

http://www.cs.hut.fi/~ado/rp/rp.html

http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1998/980112/imt.html

http://www.implog.com/foundry/foundrp.htm

http://www.wohlersassociates.com/

http://www.rpi.edu/~rocks/

http://www.udri.udayton.edu/rpdl/

http://www.biba.uni-bremen.de/groups/rp/rp_page.html

http://www.mcb.co.uk/services/conferen/dec95/rapidpd/rapidpd.htm

http://www.mcb.co.uk/services/conferen/jun98/forp/

http://www.sme.org/cgi-bin/find-issues.pl?&&RPA&RPA&

http://www.cadcamnet.com/welcome.htm

http://www.mcb.co.uk/cgi-bin/journal1/rpj/

http://www.rapidnews.com/

http://www.eevl.ac.uk/eese/

http://www.me.psu.edu/lamancusa/rapidpro/index.htm

http://www.sdsc.edu/tmf/Sig96Notes/RpForSciVis.html

http://madmax.me.berkeley.edu/~willchui/main.html

http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/

http://www.me.vt.edu/mail/medicalRP/

http://members.aol.com/chathamres/ChathamRes.html

http://ecoleing.uqtr.uquebec.ca/geniedoc/gmm/productique/rpworld.htm

http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

http://www.ukpats.org.uk/

http://www.jpo-miti.go.jp/index.htm

http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/intro-e.html

http://www.eevl.ac.uk/

http://www.eevl.ac.uk/ram/

(For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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Product Design (incl. Industrial Design) Information on the Web (by Jim Corlett)

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My first article in this series tried to point a path through the jungle of Web search tools towards the most efficient way to approach Web searching, in general terms &endash; i.e. which of the many search tools to use in what order. This current article &endash; on product design - and other articles in the series highlight sites on specific topics of potential interest to manufacturing and design engineers.

Contents

 

Introduction

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Product design encompasses such a wide range of topics that I can necessarily only skim the surface of many of them, indeed may have missed some. However, some may crop up in subsequent Web Corners, in which case I'll come back to this one and put links in as required.

A useful overview of what design is may be found in the Innovation & Technology Transfer newsletter article on Best Practices in Design (http://www.cordis.lu/itt/itt-en/97-2/dossier.htm), which reviews design practices in some of the companies shortlisted for the European Design Prize. For a much more detailed how-to exposition, see the 299-page textbook on Learning How to Design: A Minds-on, Hands-on, Decision-Based Approach (http://www.srl.gatech.edu/education/ME3110/textbook/textbook.pdf).

A general site devoted to design is The Consummate Design Center (TCDC) (http://www.tcdc.com/), a virtual resource centre for all types of designers. Its purpose is to help promote design principles, methods, and technologies that lead to the creation of quality products and services. [N.B. Some of the sections are incomplete at present].

Putting the whole issue of product design into context, the

A final "general" set of pages worth highlighting is Design inSite (http://www.ipt.dtu.dk/~tl/inspsite/htmsider/home.htm), which aims to be the Designer's guide to manufacturing. It describes various manufacturing processes and materials as well as the products for which they are used. Its purpose is to inspire designers in their design work to consider materials and processes which are new or unknown to them.

 

Local lists, resource guides and FAQs

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My introductory article mentioned local lists, collections (often compiled by individuals) in very specific subject areas, and slightly more "official" (often produced by companies) specific resource guides and directories.

Local lists include

Of course, my two previous Web Corners also constitute local lists which may well be of interest to product designers: polymer processing (see above) (http://www.cimwareukandusa.com/HotEngWebSites.html#PolimProc) and rapid prototyping (also above) (http://www.cimwareukandusa.com/HotEngWebSites.html#RapidProto).

In terms of resource directories, Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL) (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/) has a significant section on product and process design.

Three key areas to start browsing in engineering design are the:

Strathclyde University's CAD Centre produces Engineering Information Guides (http://www.cad.strath.ac.uk/EIG/EIG.html) which also focus on the influence of design across engineering disciplines.

For topics on other areas of design, the

Resource directories may also be found for more specific topics. To give a flavour of the range involved, here are a few examples:

Frequently Asked Questions can be a useful source on information. FAQs in the product design area include the

Illustrations of more specific FAQ sites:

 

Institutions, Associations

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Professional societies and trade organisations with Web sites include the

More specialist institutions include:

The Industrial and Graphic Design Association of Mexico has a useful page of links to design organisations worldwide at http://spin.com.mx/~jlatapi/organizations.html.

 

Companies

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Thousands of companies are now producing their own Web sites. Directories of companies can be found, often on general resource sites such as those mentioned above and others in the same vein:

Many of the individual company sites only provide company information and product details, some (for example, MultiSimplex Experimental Design & Optimization Software at http://www.multisimplex.com/) in greater details than others, but some go much further:

More specific data can be found in some of the general resources sites, including:

A further valuable source of information is the Weblinks to Databooks and Datasheets at the University of Cincinnati (http://www.engrlib.uc.edu/databooks/index.html).

 

Research Centres & Higher Education

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Areas of current research, and the people involved in them, can be traced via directories such as:

 

Most individual academic departments will also include details of their research. Examples of the variety to be found include:

U.S. Government programmes include the

Noticeboards about important European research projects in general can be traced via Cordis (http://www.cordis.lu/). Examples include multinational projects like

Courses; outside research, academic sites often provide more than just a list of their courses, offering links to sites of relevant interest. For those looking for courses (i.e. education programs in US terms):

 

Courseware, Design Case Studies and Tutorials

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Good examples of Web as an environment for undergraduate engineering design may be found at the

Courseware, notes and tutorials provide a valuable source of understanding of the design process.

An Introduction to Engineering Design (http://fulton.seas.Virginia.EDU/~shj2n/) is a tutorial intended to act as a resource for students and engineers to learn about engineering concepts and the design process. In similar vein, there are:

John Cannaday and Ken Weddle present the framework for a Product Design Engineering project (http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~teps/images/ProductDesign.pdf) for high school students which may have relevance at a more advanced level.

David Price has created a Mechanical Engineering Design (http://www.soton.ac.uk/~cds/) site containing engineering design notes.

The Virtual Reality Engineering Library Home Page at the University of Bristol (http://www.dig.bris.ac.uk/virtual_lib/) is a library of virtual engineering artefacts.

The LBD (Learning By Design) Concept Index (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/edutech/LBD/indexL.html) is a collection of concepts related to Learning by Design as it is perceived by the EduTech group working on middle school projects (but of wider interest) at Georgia Institute of Technology.

The Green Design Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University contains some examples of environmental modules and case studies.

Tutorials; There are also tutorials for engineering CAD packages such as Pro/Engineer, at:

and AutoCAD, at:

[N.B. Some of these are based around the software's use in an architectural environment].

A more research-based site is the How Things Work Project (http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/htw/htw-overview.html) which aims at developing knowledge-based technology to offer intellectual assistance in all stages of the life cycle of engineered products. Demonstrations are offered as hypermedia documents on the Web.

As an example of how things don't work, Bad Human Factors Designs (http://www.baddesigns.com/index.shtml) is a scrapbook of illustrated examples of things that are hard to use because they do not follow human factors principles.

Case studies are also useful for enhancing the understanding of the design process. The Engineering Case Studies site (http://www.civeng.carleton.ca/ECL/) offers a number of design-related cases. Further examples can be found at the:

Brief studies in ecodesign are described in issues of the

while ergonomics is covered on the ErgoWeb (http://www.ergoweb.com/) site.

The Histories of Engineering (http://www.historiesofengineering.org/) site presents work of a consortium piloting the use of the World Wide Web to locate, preserve, and expand access to historical documentation of engineering and technology.

 

E-Journals/ Full-Text and Bibliographies

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A growing number of e-journals (electronically published journals) are becoming available. Apart from ADAM (hosted by http://www.cimwareukandusa.com) the one in which this Web Corner appears, examples include:

In addition, Penton's Design Engineering & Manufacturing Network (http://www.pdem.net/) has been created to provide comprehensive information on all aspects of design, engineering and manufacturing, based on the company's journals in this area.

EEVL's Engineering E-journal Search Engine (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/eese/) searches the full text of one hundred engineering e-journals which are free, full text (or offer most of their content as full text) and available without registration.

Other full text publications and articles can also be found. Their discovery can be a bit hit-and-miss using global search engines, but are much more easily traceable in more focused services such as EEVL (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/).

Some conference proceedings make available their papers on the Web. A notable example in this area, with a good many papers on design education, is the Frontiers in Education Conferences (http://fairway.ecn.purdue.edu/~fie/).

Other examples range from single general items such as:

to single, more specific items like:

to lists of full-text papers available from groups or individuals:

and companies:

 

Other bibliographies are obtainable online. The Design for Competitive Advantage (http://dfca.larc.nasa.gov/) site, mentioned above, contains bibliographies for each of its sections (although they are a bit dated now).

Three bibliographies taken from the Collection of design and mostly CAD related Computer Science Bibliographies are the:

In another specialised field, the Interesting Literature on Shape Memory Alloys and Smart Materials pages (http://www.mtm.kuleuven.ac.be/Research/Physical/ShapeMem/litcon.htm) include references for the various specific topics covered.

In addition, there is a site which gives details of Books on Pro/Engineer and CAD/CAM (http://www.mdeservices.ltd.uk/books/proebks.htm)

 

Discussion Lists

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E-mail discussion lists can provide a valuable source in information. Relevant lists include the:

EEVL's Engineering Newsgroup Archive (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/nwi/) is a search system which queries a 40-day archive of News articles from Engineering newsgroups such as these.

 

Standards & Patents

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Standards &endash; The World Standards Services Network http://www.wssn.net/WSSN/index.html offers a network of publicly accessible Web servers of standards organisations around the world. Individual international and national standards bodies include the:

The Technical Standards Services Ltd (http://www.techstandards.co.uk/) is an example of a company providing a (fee-based) service to the engineering and technical community in Europe and the Middle East, while ILI (http://www.ili.co.uk/) has a free searchable web catalogue of standards linked to an Internet ordering facility.

Patents - as with standards, various international and national bodies may be found, such as the:

Various USA sites cover patents, two of which, the

Patent searching tutorials at

 

Conclusion

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This listing is necessarily just a taste of the ingredients on the web which could succour the designer. Trying to find precisely what you require can take time. If the individual resources listed do not satisfy your requirements, then using the focused information gateways like EEVL, together with resource lists as indicated, should make your task that much easier.

For further reading, you can trace articles on product design in non-electronic journals by using the free Recent Advances in Manufacturing (RAM) (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/ram/) bibliographic database.

Happy hunting!

 

Jim Corlett

Manufacturing Information Services Manager
CADE, Boots Library
The Nottingham Trent University
http://www.ntu.ac.uk
Nottingham NG1 4FZ
United Kingdom

(The Editor: You can email to Jim via: cimware@cimwareukandusa.com. For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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A summary of all references / hot-web-links mentioned in this article:

http://www.cordis.lu/itt/itt-en/97-2/dossier.htm

http://www.srl.gatech.edu/education/ME3110/textbook/textbook.pdf

http://www.tcdc.com/

http://members.aol.com/drmassoc/pdforum.html

http://dfca.larc.nasa.gov/

http://www.ipt.dtu.dk/~tl/inspsite/htmsider/home.htm)

http://users.choice.net/~shender4/englinks.htm)

http://www.sms.utwente.nl/vakgr/br/links.htm

http://www.faps.uni-erlangen.de/persons/schloegl/vm_links.html

http://www.cimwareukandusa.com/HotEngWebSites.html#PolimProc

http://www.cimwareukandusa.com/HotEngWebSites.html#RapidProto

http://www.eevl.ac.uk/

http://www.eevl.ac.uk

http://CDR.stanford.edu/html/WWW-ME/home.html

http://www.rxn.con/~demu001/mech_des2.html

http://www.cad.strath.ac.uk/EIG/EIG.html

http://www.dh.umu.se/design_lib/design_library.html

http://www.core77.com

http://www.adam.ac.uk

http://hawaii.cogsci.uiuc.edu/invent/invention.html

http://www.cam.org/~flamy/cadcam.html

http://www.flash.net/~cdhb/Cadlinks.htm

http://www.pdmic.com

http://www.nist.gov/step

http://cadserv.cadlab.vd.edu/bohn/RP.html#WWW/

http://ce-toolkit.crd.ge.com/ce-toolkit/homepage.html

http://www.acad.co.uk

http://www.questlink.com

http://www.shef.ac.uk/~mpe/tribology/tribo.html

http://wwwhighfiber.com/~tes/analysis.htm

http://members.aol.com/RonGraham1/innovate.html

http://www.core77.com:80/AWID/faq.html

http://www.landfield.com/faqs/CAD/AutoCAD-faq

http://www.xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/news/faq/autolisp.html

http://tiger.eea.eu.int/projects/EnvMaST/lca/aboutthi.htm

http://www.johnstark.com/faqs1.html

http://members.aol.com/RonGraham1/failure1.html

http://www.edc.nl

http://www.iaehv.nl/users/ldjc/edaa.html

http://www.ied.org.uk

http://www.design-council.org.uk

http://www.spd.louisville.edu/~ergonomics/iea.html

http://www.adda.org

http://kona.ee.pitt.edu

http://www.soce.org/index.html

http://www.core77.com/AWID

http://www.idsa.org

http://www.sem.org

http://www.designmgt.org

http://www.drs.org.uk

http://www.brighton.ac.uk/dhs

http://eurosim.tuwein.ac.at/eurosim/home-eurosim.html

http://spin.com.mx/~jlatapi/organizations.html.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Engineering/Mechanical_Engineering/Product_Design

http://www.designdirectory.co.uk/

http://www.developages.com/

http://www.designselectorglobal.co.uk/

http://www.designinfo.com/

http://www.multisimplex.com/

http://www.granta.co.uk/

http://www.endura.com/

http://www.skf.com/

http://www.eastman.com/ppbo/design/contents.htm

http://www.flash.net/~cdhb/Cadlinks.htm

http://pmdi.com/php2.php/

http://www.esdu.com/

http://www.engrlib.uc.edu/databooks/index.html

http://cs.wpi.edu/Research/DD/

http://www.bath.ac.uk/Departments/Eng/design/dweb/

http://www.tue.nl/bwk/gom/design/index.html

http://www.cs.wpi.edu/Research/aidg/AIinD-hotlist.html

http://www.bath.ac.uk/Departments/Eng/edc/home.html

http://www.edc.ncl.ac.uk/

http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/edc/edc.html

http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~idf/edc

http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/research/edc/pedc.htm

http://www.ider.herts.ac.uk/ider

http://www.insa.lyon.fr/Insa/Laboratoires/casm.html

http://www.io.tudelft.nl/research/research.html

http://rkk.mv.uni-kl.de/rkk.html

http://design.mit.edu/

http://rafiki.vr.clemson.edu/credo/index.htm

http://cdr.stanford.edu/CDR/cdr.html

http://dfe.stanford.edu/

http://www.me.mtu.edu/research/envmfg/

http://www.cfd.rmit.edu.au/

http://elib.cme.nist.gov/radeo

http://www.mel.nist.gov/pptb/

http://www.cordis.lu/

http://sumatra.mv.uni-kl.de/FIORES/FIORES.html

http://innsrv.casaccia.enea.it/CETMA/cetma2.htm

http://leva.leeds.ac.uk/www_moses/moses.html

http://www.ucas.ac.uk/ucc/index.html

http://freedom.artm.ulst.ac.uk/

http://www.srl.gatech.edu/education/ME3110/

http://cvu.strath.ac.uk/courseware/cvds2/start.html

http://homepages.strath.ac.uk/~clds13/SEED/seed.htm

http://homepages.strath.ac.uk/~clds13/SEED/seed.htm

http://fulton.seas.Virginia.EDU/~shj2n/

http://www.ecs.umass.edu/mie/labs/mda/dlib/dlib.html

http://rcs.ee.washington.edu/CE/notes/Library.html.

http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~teps/images/ProductDesign.pdf

http://www.soton.ac.uk/~cds/

http://www.dig.bris.ac.uk/virtual_lib

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/edutech/LBD/indexL.html

http://rpmi.marc.gatech.edu/tutorial/proe_main.html,

http://cadstudio.mae.cornell.edu/ProE.tutorial.html,

http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/cep/oed/gc/proetut/proetut-home.html,

http://www.mech.nwu.edu/proe/intro.htm

http://www.arch.unsw.edu.au/subjects/arch/comsem3/acadtuts.htm

http://csaws.brynmawr.edu:443/web1/tutorial.html

http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/Learning/AutoCAD/CADnotes/

http://www.archit.ncl.ac.uk/sess/index.html

http://www.arch.unsw.edu.au/subjects/arch/modlrend/

http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/htw/htw-overview.html

http://www.baddesigns.com/index.shtml

http://www.civeng.carleton.ca/ECL

http://helios.njit.edu:1949/papyrus/dev/gif/gway/njit/classes.html,

http://www.srl.gatech.edu/education/educ-index.html

http://www.ecs.umass.edu/mie/labs/mda/dlib/dlib.html

http://www.sintef.no/units/matek/projects/dfm/

http://www.cfd.rmit.edu.au/outcomes/erdnews/contents.html

http://unep.frw.uva.nl/

http://www.ergoweb.com/

http://www.historiesofengineering.org

http://www.cimwareukandusa.com

http://www.adeptscience.co.uk/it/

http://www.designengineering.co.uk

http://www.mhbizlink.com/designen/

http://www.mfg-net.com/dfx

http://www.manufacturing.net/magazine/dn/

http://www.igd.fhg.de/www/pr/topics/topics_home.html

http://www.penton.com/md

http://www.mfg-net.com/med

http://www.penton.com/ed

http://www.atj.com

http://www.cadence-mag.com

http://www.iwtnet.de/autocad/homepage.html

http://www.pddnet.com

http://www.pdem.net

http://www.eevl.ac.uk

http://www.techstandards.co.uk

http://fairway.ecn.purdue.edu/~fie/

http://fulton.seas.Virginia.EDU/~shj2n/

http://www.trenton.edu/~teched/designprocess.html

http://150.237.204.194/hf/hf_home.htm

http://www.isdale.com/jerry/VR/WhatIsVR.html

http://128.143.168.25/book/book.html

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/NORVH/chapter2.html

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/NORVH/chapter9.html

http://www.cad.strath.ac.uk/~frank/CAL/pde96.html

http://me.wpi.edu/~cirrus/Publications/SmartMaterials/SmartMaterialExtension.html

http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/cmh/electrobook/intro.html

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/timd/ieee_expert/toc.html

http://www.pre.nl/lca.html

http://www.dig.bris.ac.uk/hbook/bmenu.htm

http://www.isd.uni-stuttgart.de/~rudolph/engdesign/design_publications.html

http://www.pt.wb.utwente.nl/staff/otto/

http://www.wssn.net/WSSN/index.html

http://www.engr.orst.edu/~ullman/resear.htm

http://www.srl.gatech.edu/e_library/index.html

http://wallstreet.colorado.edu/projects/Napkin/Electronic_Cocktail_Napkin

http://www.netzone.com/~rqriley

http://www.cimdata.com

http://www.pdmic.com

http://dfca.larc.nasa.gov/

http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Graphics/cagd.html

http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Graphics/geometric.modeling.html

http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Graphics/feature.html

http://www.mtm.kuleuven.ac.be/Research/Physical/ShapeMem/litcon.htm

http://www.mdeservices.ltd.uk/books/proebks.htm

http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists-a-e/design-research/)

http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists-a-e/engineering-design

http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists-p-t/seed

http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/engpsy

http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/biomimetics

http://www.eevl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/nwi

http://www.iso.ch

http://www.ansi.org

http://www.nssn.org

http://www.nist.gov

http://www.bsi.org.uk

http://www.din.de

http://www.ili.co.uk

http://www.wipo.org

http://www.epo.co.at/epo/

http://www.ukpats.org.uk

http://www.inpi.fr

http://www.jpo-miti.go.jp/index.htm

http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/intro-e.htm

http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/ibm.html

http://www.uspto.gov

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/ENG/PTUT/ptut.html

http://scilib.ucsd.edu/electclass/patsearch/index.html

http://www.law.vill.edu/~rgruner/patport.htm

http://www.eevl.ac.uk/ram

(For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing with IT websites and search engines listed by topic).

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