Report Format

The reports will be due in PDF format via Smartsite by the due dates and times posted in the schedule and on the Smartsite assignment. A single report should be submitted by one team member.

• The report should fit on 8.5" x 11" sheets of paper [1].
• All margins should be 1".
• The font size of main text should be 11 or 12 pt.
• The font size in captions can be as small as 10 pt.
• Number and caption all figures and tables.
• Include page numbers on every sheet.
• Equations should be numbered and rendered as proper mathematical notation.
• Any citation style is permitted.
• The reports should be treated as a professional documents and formatted as such.
• The audience you should write for is a technically competent reader, e.g. another engineering colleague or engineering management, and/or your project sponsor.
• All graphical communication means should be legible.

[1]	Be sure to either scale layout drawings correctly with legible font sizes or print them in the appendices on larger paper sizes.

Definitions

Layout Drawings

You should refer to a good engineering graphics text for examples of layout drawings. The layout drawing is drawn to scale and must show the shape, size, and position of all parts. It should show how the parts fit together and if they will function properly. The design details are worked out on this drawing. The designer additionally uses the layout drawing to show and sell his design and ideas to his management; it is used by drafts people to prepare detailed part drawings and an assembly drawing; it is used by manufacturing engineers to determine manufacturing processes and costs although this has been increasingly incorporated into the design process. How detailed should it be? It must be adequately complete so that it can meet the above uses. If it is not necessary to ask how the design works or what a particular part looks like, etc., then the layout is adequate.

Bill of Materials

The Bill of Materials or Parts List is a tabular list of all of the parts, components, sub-assemblies, etc. that are needed to manufacture and/or test your design. Both manufactured items and purchased items are included. The list should include part numbers, part names, number required, material, whether purchased or fabricated, and if purchased, the name and part number of the supplier with associated costs. The Bill of Materials is used for such aspects as: insuring that all parts are on hand when production begins, to ensure that detailed drawings are prepared for all components, for planning of the manufacturing process, etc.

Report #1: Project Proposal [Due: January 29th, 2016]

The primary purpose of the project proposal is for your team to clearly articulate your understanding of the customer's needs and to share your preliminary research findings, concepts, timeline, budget, and goals. This story should convince your instructors and sponsors that you have a clear understanding of the needs, have a realistic scope, and are ready to move forward with concept selection, design, and analysis.

This document should be shared with your sponsor(s) for feedback in addition to being turned into the instructors. Be sure to adjust the content to best fit this combined audience.

The main content sections of the report should not exceed 6 pages.

The project proposal should address the following things:

Mission Statement

State and define your problem and objectives as clearly as you can. If your proposal deals with the smaller component of a larger problem, discuss your problems significance relative to the total system.

Identified customer needs

Use this section to show a more detailed view of the identified needs. It is important that you sponsor see that you've understood their needs. Note that you may also have discovered needs that your sponsor didn't explicitly describe, so use this opportunity to share those with your sponsor.

Refined target specifications

List as many design specifications as you can at this time including such aspects as capacities, speeds, size, weight, cost, etc. as well as any other specific and/or general requirements and specifications for your design.

External concepts and existing solutions

It should be clear that you've "done your homework", i.e. searched for existing solutions and used them to help develop your specifications and concepts.

Initial design concepts

You should have a large number of concepts to share at this point. Be sure to show these off so that your sponsor can see that there are a wide range of possible solutions to their needs.

Preliminary planning and scheduling

The preliminary plan should give at least a coarse idea of the important milestones you will need to meet over the next several months to complete your project. For example, you can state your objective in terms of what you expect to complete by the end of each quarter, mid-quarter, or month.

Preliminary budget

The purpose of the preliminary budget statement is to give a very rough idea of what expected project costs may be. This will vary based on your or your sponsor's desire to construct a prototype or run testing. The instructors and sponsors will use this number to start planning resource allocation. A refined budget will be presented in the final report of the winter quarter.

You may add other information that is deemed necessary to "sell" your proposal. Use your memos as building blocks for the proposal. The instructors and sponsors will evaluate your report to determine the size and scope of your project and if the objectives are both well thought out and feasible.

Report #2: Preliminary Design [Due: March 13th, 2016]

The purpose of the preliminary design report is to present your selected design, show that it is highly likely to work and that your goals will realistically be able to be completed by the end of the spring quarter. This document should provide sufficient technical information, engineering analyses, and/or test results to give the instructors and your sponsors confidence the presented solution will meet the sponsors' needs and all of your target specs. Additionally, you will need to clearly state what you plan to accomplish by the end of the course and how you will do that.

Note that your design does not yet have to be complete and polished but the main concepts should be formally described in enough technical detail to make your case. Furthermore, it is not a requirement to have a physical realization of your solution for this class. You sponsors are aware of this. You can pass the course with high marks by presenting a comprehensive design that is ready to be built, i.e. enough information to pass onto other engineers and/or fabricators. But we encourage you to develop simple prototypes as part of the design process and a final prototype for your sponsor, as you are likely to learn much more by doing so and be better prepared for the future.

The report should cover at least the following topics:

Introduction

You should introduce your problem in context with respect to your sponsors work and their broader goals. The sponsor's needs should be clearly explained along with the associated target specifications that you've developed from the needs. Your mission statement should be clearly defined with respect to these. The sub-problems you have to solve should be clearly described and how they relate to the main problem. This can also include comparisons of your solution to existing solutions and any relevant literature that helps put your problem and solution into context.

Concept Description

Ideally, you are down to one concept or one plan of action (for computational and physical experiments) that you are ready to move forward with. You should fully describe your design to clearly explain how it functions. The goal is to provide sufficient technical details to get across the conceptual design. For example, how a mechanism will work or how all your parts will fit together in the limited physical space. Be sure to make heavy use of graphical means to communicate the design. The minimal description should be based on the "product architecture" described in Chapter 10 of the book and in class. The system architecture will be presented through preliminary schematics and layout drawings of the design, discussion of the various subsystems, and discussion of the interface between the various subsystems. But you are welcome to present more details of your design if you are further along.

Concept Justification

Your selected design should have sufficient justification to prove that it is very likely to work. You can prove this in a number of ways, e.g. engineering analysis, experimental testing, or through simple prototyping. You are not required to have highly detailed precise analysis and testing. Simple analytical models and tests are sufficient to prove that concepts will likely work. You will be able to refine these during the second quarter to further justify your work. You can also describe your decisions to abandon other design concepts. This helps build your case that your design is the right choice.

Plan

You should include a very refined project plan that breaks the remainder of the project timeline into a set of dependent tasks and milestones. Every task should have a duration, due date, its dependencies, and an assignee(s). You can present this information in any way that you would like. The graphical methods presented in the book and in class are good options for this.

Financing

The costs should be refined as much as possible to give a very realistic estimate of what you plan to spend. A bill of materials should be included with best estimates of all project costs. Be sure to account for shipping, tax, and any other indirect costs. If your sponsor is not covering the costs (or all of the costs) of your project you will need to include a statement that requests money from the MAE department. You must include the amount of money from any other sources with this request. We will evaluate the requests and try to provide you with your requested amount from the limited available money by the start of the Spring quarter. There is no guarantee that you will get what you ask for. This will be based off the amount requested and the quality of your work.

Appendices

The appendices should include any details that support the content of your paper. It should include sufficient details that document your work this quarter. This should be highly organized and easy to follow. At this point you can include details of your concept generation and selection process, your full set of needs and specs, CAD renderings, sketches, diagrams, abandoned designs, in-depth tasks lists and charts, extensive bill of materials, etc.

This report should be self contained. Imagine if someone that has never seen your work picks up your report and wants to understand it in depth without you present. Your report should include sufficient information for them to understand your design and justification.

Note that the main content of the report should not exceed 10 pages.

Be sure to utilize your memos, proposal, and critical design review as a basis for your report. Use the feedback from them all to improve the work for this final written presentation of your preliminary design.

Report #3: Spring Midterm Progress [Due: April 29, 2016]

The purpose of this report is to update the instructors and sponsors on your progress, outline your deliverables, and to provide us with draft technical documentation for your project.

Note that the main content of the report should not exceed 3 pages but will likely have a large appendix.

Deliverables

This section should describe the deliverables you plan to give to your project sponsor at the end of the quarter. Example deliverables are design reports, prototypes, software, user manuals, technical documentation, manufacturing plans, analyses, etc. At the minimum, you must provide a final design report for the class and the sponsors. If you build a prototype (physical and/or software) you need to provide sufficient documentation so that the sponsor can use or move forward with your design when you are no longer involved.

Progress Update

This section should give us a clear picture of how well you are meeting your schedule. It should show your current progress with respect to your original schedule and any modifications you have now made to the schedule to meet your goal given delays or saved time. Additionally, give an estimate of the likelihood of providing the deliverables.

Technical Documentation

This section should provide us with a description and drafts of any of the technical documentation that you plan to create. Examples are:

• Working drawings of your mechanical and electrical designs. These should include all information needed to manufacture your designs including dimensions, material specifications, assembly diagrams, circuit diagrams, wiring layouts, complete bill of materials, etc.
• Engineering standards that are relevant to your design. For example, if you are designing a car for public roads it should meet SAE standards. Or if you are designing an elevator it should meet ASME elevator standards.
• User documentation: This could be a user manual that describes how to use and maintain the product or documentation on how to use software, etc.
• Test results: The experimental/testing methodology and any results you obtained.

We will provide feedback on this material so that your documentation can be improved for the final report.

Report #4: Final Design [Due: June 5, 2016]

The final design report should be a comprehensive report detailing the final version of your project. It is not necessary to provide information about the process that led to this design. This report should have sufficient information for someone unfamiliar with your project to understand what it is for, how to fabricate it, and how to use it. The report should be self contained.

Be sure to utilize your past memos, reports, and critical design review as a basis for your report. Use the feedback from them all to improve the work for this final written presentation of your design.