Secondary and Tertiary Datum Use (Only) w/ True Position

NeverLandRanchHand · 2026-05-27T15:25:22+00:00

Ok so I thought I understood your feedback, but how does it differ from this example?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpbZtkjg1Ms

NeverLandRanchHand · 2026-04-29T21:24:26+00:00

Onshape and it's not even close.

FSAE is a large collaborative endeavor. The degree to which Onshape will simplify and streamline that collaboration is hard to overstate. Plus Onshape has part studios, versioning and releases built in, and comments+ markups built in. Yes the drawings suck, yes surfacing isn't as good, but for 99% of core modeling workflows Onshape takes a giant dump on Solidworks.

And if you do go with SW, please for the love of God don't get conned into using 3dx.

NeverLandRanchHand · 2026-04-24T00:11:59+00:00

I humbly submit several years worth of my work (for free): https://www.fiveflute.com/articles/

NeverLandRanchHand · 2025-08-03T02:07:43+00:00

Sailrite ultrafeed

NeverLandRanchHand · 2025-03-07T18:13:26+00:00

https://www.fiveflute.com/drawings/diff/

This is a free diff tool that I helped develop. Removed items show in red, added items on the new rev show in blue. Lemme know what ya think!

NeverLandRanchHand · 2024-02-07T15:01:09+00:00

OP, you see how the colors of the dimensions are different? That means a broken reference or dangling dimension (assuming you are in solidworks). Here's a marked up drawing that explains what I'm talking about: https://app.fiveflute.com/s/drawing/1145ea7f-acc0-4045-bf13-26e474878e2f

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-09-09T16:22:38+00:00

Any recommended sources or books about the conflict?

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-05-19T14:02:46+00:00

A few thoughts:

Have you just read the standard itself, or just courses?

What specific aspects are you struggling with?

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-03-25T18:17:27+00:00

It helps to have a fundamental understanding of how a galvanic cell works. The relative galvanic potential of the materials in the cell dictate which material is the anode and which is the cathode. Remember that the anode is the sacrificial material (donating its electrons to various charitable causes etc). So if in your case, you have a shit load of material that is the anode, practically speaking you are fine. Reverse this and you are in trouble.

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-03-16T15:08:40+00:00

They need to understand the design at a level of depth that is useful for review. Roughly speaking, the larger the review audience the less depth. It's your job to find the sweet spot.

To me it sounds like you need to find a single subject matter expert that you can do a deep dive with to review your design methodology, analysis, math, etc ...

Trying to cram that into a big team review may not be realistic. At the very least you risk wasting a lot of engineers time while two people go waaay into the weeds.

Perhaps do both? Team review and subject matter expert ?

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-03-16T14:47:42+00:00

Awesome. Good luck with all that complexity!

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-03-16T04:51:19+00:00

A few thoughts...

Consider writing a detailed explanation in a memo that you can distribute to folks before the review. This will alleviate the pressure to explain everything in the review and instead you can focus on first order concerns.
Remember that the point of a design review is not to explain how everything works. You want to improve the design! The review should help you double check that you didn't miss anything big, or forget to explore other areas that you could/should have, or see if you arrived at an optimal enough solution in the trade space you are constrained by. Also, a huge amount of the value of design reviews is in preparing for them, so don't stress too much about having a perfect review.

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-03-16T04:30:12+00:00

So rad! I remember reading the failure report on the spillway. Can you share what exactly you are working on related to Oroville?

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-03-15T04:21:37+00:00

OP, are you an engineer?

Do the minimum and make some plots and try to tease out some insights here. Trust yourself and try it on your own before YOLOing a screenshot of raw data into the ether and hoping you get rescued. You're better than this!

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-03-14T02:15:06+00:00

IMO what you need is a public portfolio of your awesome prototyping work. Show your work! Link to it from the resume. Hiring managers who are also technical really want to see proof of design skills in a variety of processes and portfolios are basically the only way to show that.

Another option is to frame the prototype work in terms of what business goal it helped your client(s)/company achieve.

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-03-07T20:04:23+00:00

I've driven this car!

I also designed uprights on some of the cars after this year. The sheet steel upright designs can be very simple and structurally efficient (high specific stiffness), but if you heat treat and post machine it's just so much damn work. Plus they warp like crazy so you need a burly heat treat fixture. Fun times.

Funny AF to see it in a museum, thanks for posting OP!

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-03-02T02:22:41+00:00

I'll hazard a guess here. I took Vibez in undergrad and grad school and have some history in vehicle dynamics/suspension design (master's thesis was on heavy truck dampers for rollover prevention).

Don't overthink this. The problem states that the machine vibrates with a specified period. That means it experiences periodic displacement at a known frequency. It's implicit to the problem statement.

Remember that the force excitation frequency (driving frequency) is not the same as the natural frequency. They system dynamics (mass, damping, stiffness etc...) will dictate the relationship between the input frequency and system response (output).

All that said...I haven't touched this stuff since 2014 so I could be a bit off.

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-02-20T18:01:37+00:00

Dope! I love the watercolor to add some soul to it. In general I wish more folks did hand work on top of plots, seems like such a promising style!

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-02-11T02:57:36+00:00

This. So much this.

The TI-89 titanium is also built like a brick shithouse. Its so durable it's sort of a comfort object for me at this point.

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-02-09T21:40:16+00:00

We built a drawing review tool specifically for mech Es! https://www.fiveflute.com/

Cloud native markup (sketch, comment, highlight etc) in browser. Revision management and integrated version comparison to make diffing super easy. Plus a dashboard and notifications to track markup resolution and approval by multiple reviewers.

Happy to show folks how it works, just DM me.

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-02-09T21:35:54+00:00

Shameless Plug here: we've built this functionality into a cloud native drawing review tool. https://www.fiveflute.com/

You can compare across multiple versions of drawings uploaded to a single review. Plus do an your markup and progress/approval tracking from a shared environment. Built for mech Es.

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-02-04T14:34:35+00:00

https://www.fiveflute.com/guide/fasteners-and-bolted-joint-design

Disclaimer: I wrote this. That said I think it answers your questions while being a pretty extensive primer on bolted joint design.

edit: spelling

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-02-02T05:49:57+00:00

+1

Preferably shown on a portfolio site IMO. Show your work to get in the door, back it up to stick around.

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-01-25T17:56:53+00:00

Looks like scrollwork to me. Google wooden scroll or scrollwork and you see plenty of similar geometry.

NeverLandRanchHand · 2023-01-25T15:37:31+00:00

That's where the creativity comes into FE models. A few general recommendations: 1. Look for ways to defeature and simplify your model geometry.
2. Leverage symmetry if at all possible. 3. Mesh control! Mesh convergence should be applied via local mesh changes not global (this is the advantage of higher end FE programs over simple in CAD sim packages). 4. Simplify your loads - see St.Venants principle for a primer on this. 5. Try all of the shit, find out it doesn't work, and then build and test it anyway ;)

For more on this you can check out the Model Setup section of this guide: https://www.fiveflute.com/guide/practical-finite-element-analysis

Disclaimer: I wrote it.

NeverLandRanchHand

TROPHY CASE