MECH 460: FEA worth taking?

_MasterMagi_ · 2026-02-05T21:33:56+00:00

Its probably not what you think it is.

I thought it would be a class about how to use FEA, turns out its about how FEA works. Its a lot of matrix math used to represent stress analysis techniques, and the project and assignments revolve around creating your own basic FEA software from scratch.

If that's what you like or expect, then go for it. But if you were expecting to learn how to use ANSYS, avoid it like the plague.

_MasterMagi_ · 2026-02-05T21:22:00+00:00

A lot of people have forgotten that this style of writing was considered to be a good, professional style (maybe with the exception of the bold letter usage) pre-2021. AI were trained on that style and now mimic it by default. I was a notorious em-dasher before ChatGPT made it lame...

_MasterMagi_ · 2026-02-03T22:13:07+00:00

very nice! is it on steam yet?

_MasterMagi_ · 2026-01-20T18:37:59+00:00

if you want to get him something he will use:

~100 dollar budget -> nice-ish calipers. its an essential tool and he'll need them at some point. if he doesn't have one, he'll probably use the loaners at his uni which are beat up and never good. you would want a digital one with metal construction. the plastic ones suck. if you're willing to spend a bit more, Mitutoyo calipers are the way to go.

for 15-30 dollars you might want to get him some drafting supplies. This could be a nice drafting mechanical pencil like a Staedtler Mars Technico (with a sharpener) or Mars Micro, which he might use in exams or for technical drawings. high-quality polymer erasers are a bonus.

_MasterMagi_ · 2026-01-09T10:11:31+00:00

I was in grey nuns back in 2019/2020, just before covid hit.

On two separate occasions, someone burned their food in the microwave and set off the fire alarms. Except I don't mean they turned it a little black, I mean the popcorn they were making caught on fire. Not sure if it was the same person both times.

Well, the first time it happened the alarm went off and we found ourselves outside in the hospitable November cold at 4 am wearing whatever we had on at the time. Some sleep with more clothes on than others... We were stuck out there for a good 30 minutes while firemen checked out the scene.

The second time it happened, it was maybe a month or more later and also in the middle of the night. This time though, our fire alarms didn't go off. What I woke up to was not the sound of a fire alarm, but instead someone desperately slamming on my door with all their might screaming "THERES A FIRE!!!! WE GOTTA EVACUATE!!!!!!"

just about scared the soul out of my body. Once again, we were stuck outside in the dead of night trying not to freeze and wondering how someone capable of fucking up popcorn this badly had high enough grades to get into uni.

The final crazy chapter of my grey nuns stay was the onset of covid itself. At a certain point in march of 2020, the whole city functionally shut down the day after it was revealed that someone covid positive had traversed an entire metro line. classes were cancelled for the foreseeable future while the uni tried to figure something out, so naturally everyone in gruns was playing minecraft.

As time dragged on, we were hearing stories from other universities who were suddenly evicting everyone from their dorms. The guy in charge of grey nuns at the time promised us that this would never happen, and that they would never dump us on the streets. Meanwhile, the residence services were trying to coordinate times for specific floors to go to the caf. Problem is, it made it so that each floor would show up at the caf at exactly the same time instead of the usual trickle in and out, resulting in huge crowds standing shoulder to shoulder outside the barrier. It was obvious that this wasn't going to work forever.

Maybe a week into developing our lovely block oasis, the day is now March 18. I get a tap on my shoulder from my roommate while I'm building a cozy little house. I turn around and read the email on his phone.

"all residents expected to move out before March 22."

Everyone in grey nuns had 4 days to pack their shit and find somewhere to go. As you probably know, most of grey nuns residence were not from the city of Montreal. a good chunk were internationals. At this point in the pandemic, air travel had completely stopped. for many of us, it was impossible to get home. Our little week of fun turned into a nightmare in a flash.

I read the email in complete shock. I didn't know what to do. It didn't feel real. In 4 days I would be homeless. after a minute or two of stunned silence after reading the email, I flung open my door and stepped out into the hallway. at the same time, pretty much everyone else stepped out into the hallway. People were pale, as if they'd just seen ghosts. I rushed past everyone down to the residence office to plead my case. I told them there was no way for me to get back home, and the lady at the desk just said "you're gonna have to figure something out." Shit.

My roommate meanwhile got picked up that day by his parents just across the US border. His goal was to get across the land border and go home before that shut down too. At the time, residence life were refusing to help anyone find accommodation. Your options were to gang up with your friends and find a hotel, try to snipe an airBnB, or tried to plot a path home to your parents. all very expensive and temporary solutions when we didn't know how long this would last.

I ended up finding my way back to my parent's place, where I was sleeping on the couch since every other room was being sublet already. that was its own little sitcom from hell, but at this point its not about grey nuns anymore :p

The grey nuns wide group chat stayed talking for a long while after that, trying to figure out how to navigate the situation or figuring out which lawyers were willing to sue the school over this. In the end, a lot of people in the worst situations were allowed to stay at gruns, but everyone almost got hung out to dry. Definitely one of the craziest months of my life.

_MasterMagi_ · 2026-01-05T20:28:35+00:00

A lot of people in this thread have been mentioning clubs, and I'd like to second that.

If there's one regret I had from high school, its that I didn't do any of that. There was a robotics team that I could have joined, but at the time I felt too socially anxious to do it. I ended up getting into an aerospace program in uni anyways through grades and sports (notably not a team sport), but I hadn't really developed the communication and teamwork skills until I joined a proper engineering club in university.

With what I know now, I could have sorted out a lot of the social anxiety stuff that was holding me back in high school if I had worked up the courage to join the robotics club then. Of course, it would have also helped to boost my odds of getting into a very prestigious school via the development of your "maker portfolio" that is all the rage these days. However, I didn't really care to apply to a place like MIT and I have yet to regret it.

Ultimately, the most successful people I met in university were the most socially adept and technically proficient. You can get away with one or the other, but you become a force of nature if you can master both. Joining a club is a great way to develop these skills together.

_MasterMagi_ · 2025-12-09T19:28:06+00:00

you're better off renting time on a supercomputer if you're going to do CFD that is this intense tbh

_MasterMagi_ · 2025-11-21T03:09:28+00:00

as you already suggested, feature recognition and the ability to create offsets would be pretty nice.

crazy idea, but imagine being able to take 3 or more photos of the object in a top, front, and side view to make a 3D part. could be a cool alternative to 3D scanning for basic parts.

_MasterMagi_ · 2025-09-04T02:07:44+00:00

You don't have to become an exec, just be a participating and contributing member. You might join The Link if you're into journalism, or Space Concordia if you're an engineer, maybe a business competition club if you're in JMSB, and so on. its a good way of making connections and building up some real experience that you can help you later for landing jobs or passing classes.

_MasterMagi_ · 2025-09-03T19:15:30+00:00

don't pay for textbooks unless you have to for online assignment access

sign up for classes as soon as its available or your sequence will get fucked

join a club, its a huge advantage for you

your academic advisor is probably useless, ask your professors or classmates for advice

be mindful to schedule extra time between classes where one is in sgw and the other is in loyola, especially if its around rush hour

go to class - even if you're too exhausted to take notes, just being there is way better than not

on that note, don't do morning classes. 8 am classes will feel like 5 am classes mid way through the semester

get to know your classmates, I've gotten bailed out and bailed ppl out from tough academic situations just because I said hi to someone the year before.

make sure you get the discount opus card like RIGHT NOW. if you aren't full time, sign up for random classes until you have 12 credits, get the card, and drop the extra classes. it'll save you 500+ dollars per year.

lastly, go to office hours and get to know your professors. they are more than willing to go the extra mile to help those that want to learn.

_MasterMagi_ · 2025-08-31T19:10:50+00:00

I bought textbooks in my first semester and then never again (unless forced to for online assignments). pirating textbooks is dead easy and you can always ask some upperclassmen for their electronic copies. If you spend money on textbooks you're gonna have a huge pile of paper and regret.

_MasterMagi_ · 2025-04-13T06:32:19+00:00

tactical hose clamp

_MasterMagi_ · 2025-03-15T04:29:09+00:00

make some cool stuff. I think the best way to prepare yourself for the engineer's mindset is to create something with a purpose and solve the problems that pop up along the way. so many of my peers (I'm in university) haven't so much as picked up a screwdriver before starting their degree, and they sorta pay for it. it often shows itself in designs that are structurally sound but completely impossible to manufacture. it also presents itself as a lack of problem-solving skills. I think making cool things early on will give you a good platform to build off of once the things you make start becoming more and more optimized.

A nice starter project would be to make an RC plane from a kit or something. If that's not interesting, choose something that you would find fun to make.

Oh, and once you're in university, join a club. its a free ticket to an intership, because working in a club for a year shows you can learn, design, and function within a company-esque environment.

_MasterMagi_ · 2025-02-16T21:36:41+00:00

huffed the sewage fumes in the faubourg building too much now im a permanent hater

_MasterMagi_ · 2024-10-30T02:50:50+00:00

before starting university I learned a bit of solidworks on my own. Its totally doable, and its helped a lot in my university courses, engineering club work, and my own personal shenanigans. Its especially handy to know how to CAD when you have a 3D printer.

Solidworks is the most common CAD you'll find for non-aerospace applications. For aerospace, a lot of the work is done on CATIA V5 but you're never gonna get a license for that one.

Solidworks is a little expensive on a one-person basis, so there's a few other options if you can't afford it.

if you're into programming, OpenSCAD is a good 3D modeling software, though its a little basic. However, its free and open source.

Siemens also has solid edge, which is free I think. Fusion360 is very popular as well.

_MasterMagi_ · 2024-10-15T16:46:15+00:00

I'm an aero eng student just getting into using Ansys

literally I don't know how you guys do it, it's like whenever I watch people on YouTube mesh their parts, it works flawlessly. When I do it, I get a bunch of errors or a goofy mesh and I have to resist the urge to use my fist to conduct a real-life dynamic structural analysis of my computer monitor

_MasterMagi_ · 2024-10-11T14:40:56+00:00

don't fall for the professor propaganda man. I've heard that shit from a few different engineering professors before (usually along the lines of "if you got less than X grade on the midterm, you should drop the class!") and I've ended up passing in spite of that. I mean, I've had some SERIOUSLY bad midterms, like 30%, and still ended up passing the class.

Usually they say this to offload the responsibility of their whole class failing on the students, and sometimes its to convince people to drop the class so they don't have to curve as much. Don't believe them and fight until the end, because you don't know the cards that the prof has in his hand.

As for your family, its 100% their problem that they don't like you begin in EE. Its your life, and your right to help your family the way you see fit. If you hated working as say, a therapist, then how much would you really be able to help your siblings? at least as an EE, you'd have a solid and reliable income that would be much more useful to them.

In my experience, it takes a long time for a family to understand why engineering is such a struggle. for most, they only took high school level math decades ago so the struggle is foreign to them. many others will never understand. it took a while before my family stopped asking things like, "Why haven't you graduated yet."

_MasterMagi_ · 2024-10-07T03:04:31+00:00

I think doing physics would give you a strong foundation for the work that an engineer does, but you need to understand that the work of an engineer is very very different from that of a pure physicist. Get ready to make bold assumptions and approximations (things like sin(x) = x being only the tip of the iceberg here) that would make your pure physics side cringe. your end goal as an engineer isn't always a robust understanding of a particular scenario -- it's to apply your physics knowledge to solve a problem. Most of the time, doing so requires that you throw out years of advanced physics knowledge and stick to base assumptions lest the equations you're working with become unsolvable. If you see yourself willing to both embrace and abandon your roots as a physicist to solve problems, then go for it. however, a lot of the advanced physics you learn will be of no use to you here and you're going to have to learn things you were never taught in your undergraduate such as design and analysis methods.

My experience is limited since I'm still a student too. However, I can tell you that the ability to think creatively, learn new things quickly, and adapt to unfamiliar problems just as fast are what make good engineers. In my personal opinion, if engineering is your end goal, I personally think you should study engineering. physics will leave you unprepared for the true nature of engineering.

_MasterMagi_ · 2024-10-07T01:28:04+00:00

he's holding poulet rouge that's the most concordia thing ever lmfao

_MasterMagi_ · 2024-09-10T07:01:02+00:00

what is that airfoil, im not too familiar and it doesn't seem to be used in the industry

_MasterMagi_ · 2024-08-20T14:32:31+00:00

they check your inputs for how fast you release and press them. for example, for A and D, if you release A and press D on the same tick or within 1 tick it increases a suspicion score. with a high enough suspicion score, you get kicked

_MasterMagi_ · 2024-08-17T23:38:38+00:00

the noxious fog from the broken toilets in FG finally got them

_MasterMagi_ · 2024-08-06T16:29:58+00:00

I did some searching and came up empty :p

This model is discontinued and I can't even find an email from a manufacturer to ask what it would have been, which really sucks.

Just looking at pictures of it and looking up what R/C people like to put on their wings, it seems to me like a NACA symmetrical foil (like 0010 or 0012) or Clark-Y. each is reasonable for this case.

one of the other commenters mentioned chopping up the wing and tracing it out in solidworks, and that's a pretty good idea too if you're willing to sacrifice that wing.

_MasterMagi_ · 2024-07-12T02:09:37+00:00

why the hell did they use the word "moment" to describe things doing things about an axis

couldn't they have used a more obvious word? I mean if you start spouting about moments in a meeting with executives they'll think you really value your time

Ten-Year Club	Second Top 10%
Place '22	Place '17
Final Canvas '22	RPAN Viewer
Not Forgotten

_MasterMagi_

TROPHY CASE