<p>I'm going to put one possibility forward: doing technical drawings by hand. Yes, at my school's "intro to engineering 1" class that anybody in the college of engineering must take we did a lot of technical drawings by hand as well as on Inventor. Do they still teach it purely out of momentum or do professional engineers ever really do technical drawings by hand? I guess I'm biased because I got a perfect score on the Purdue visualization test and I have a natural knack for seeing a 3D shape in a 2D drawing. To say nothing of the fact that, well, unless you're a mechanical or civil or aero major, it seems like you'll never see a technical drawing again after that class (circuit diagrams are a whole other bucket of tacos), but I could be wrong.</p>
<p>We still do some structural design drawings by hand - it’s cheaper for the engineer to draw it up as he/she goes, compared to sketching it and then having an AutoCAD operator redraw it on the computer. Even when engineers are preparing sketches for technicians, it’s helpful if they can draw by hand competently. I worked for a large firm last summer, and even the very young engineers were sketching things by hand for the AutoCAD people.</p>
<p>I’m envious of your 3D ability. I’ve never taken the Purdue visualization test, but I know I would score badly on it! I can “see” 3D shapes better now, but it’s taken a lot of practice. It does not come naturally to me. When the economy was very slow in the 90s, I worked in a precast concrete plant, preparing the shop drawings for fabrication. I had to visualize all sorts of complicated shapes! I probably should have become an accountant, seriously.</p>
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<p>You’d be surprised how often there’s a need to take apart old machines where all you have are some rough schematics. The other thing that I’ve found happens frequently is needing to be able to sketch/draw out ideas for machines, modifications, or whatever from either minimal detail for brainstorming sessions to fairly detailed if you’re getting a machinist or technician to do a task for you.</p>
<p>Just today, I saw this quote from “STRUCTURE” magazine: “Sketch ideas of structural systems or buildings. Buy a sketchbook and use a pen, so that you cannot erase your mistakes. Mistakes are important reminders that you are fallible (like everyone else). The best preparation for life as an engineer is the understanding of our ignorance.”</p>
<p>I think sketching ability, and the ability to draw clean schematics, is very important.</p>
<p>My notebook is full of such things, and is an important tool for me. If you are able to use CAD very well and are always without your computer than maybe it’s not so needed. However, when in brainstorming sessions or meetings nothing beats a good, quick picture.</p>
<p>Okay, so it looks like hand drawings are still in wide use, even if “just” as part of the brainstorming/design process. But I do wonder if it’s limited to just certain types of engineering majors. Seems to me that it is. I can’t see a computer science major ever doing a technical drawing, and yet they have to do a lot of them as part of their generic engineering intro stuff. Why not make that part of those fields that actually use it?</p>
<p>And so this thread doesn’t derail, are there any areas of engineering (doesn’t have to be across all fields, could just be something in one field) that are pretty much obsolete but still taught?</p>
<p>Or, to go along with the technical drawings thing, what are some things in engineering that you’d think would be obsolete but are still in non-trivial use in research and industry? Off the top of my head, COBOL, a language from the 50s, is still taught and textbooks on it are still printed, because it is so prevalent in the financial world. I believe something like half of all financial transactions take place on COBOL-based systems (it’s a large fraction, whatever it is). In the Y2K scam/scare, they had to bring COBOL programmers out of retirement to fix their problems, and now they are trying to make sure there are enough younger COBOL programmers to maintain the systems as needed.</p>
<p>I found differential equations a bit puzzling. From what I’ve been told, we learned techniques to solve approximately 2% of differential equations.</p>
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<p>I’ve never done that nor heard of any other CS majors required to do that…maybe it’s just something that was done at your school?</p>
<p>A lot also depends on the school. The computer science majors here (cal poly SLO) don’t have to take any technical drawing classes.</p>
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I could think of quite a few applications of the DiffEq’s I learned (but the math is such a pain), but numerical methods seemed to be by far the most usable (Runge-Kutta 4 etc).</p>
<p>@noleguy</p>
<p>Those 2% of differential equations include those used to describe the behavior of circuits in Electrical Engineering. Definitely not useless.</p>
<p>Sounds like a good course for EE’s then.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting the course is useless, I just think it is a bit odd to teach an entire class to help you deal with 2% of the scenarios you will see.</p>
<p>Oh, you’ll see more than 2%. A lot of potential, non-studied DiffEq’s pertains to the abstract.</p>
<p>noleguy, could you elaborate more on your complaint?</p>
<p>As I scan some of the math programs at colleges (yeah, I do that doing free time), I have noticed some schools now have differential equations as an elective. I would have never thought that would happen.</p>
<p>@TomServo</p>
<p>Absolutely.</p>
<p>I definitely think differential equations is extremely valuable and has many uses throughout engineering. I look back on the course, and what I took from it was 5-6 techniques used to solve differential equations and ~1-2 lectures on how to set up differential equations The lectures on how to set up differential equations were tank problems, decay problems, spring problems, circuit problems etc. I’m sure they are similar in each course. I found that section to be helpful, taking real world applications and modeling the behavior using differential equations. The 5-6 techniques we learned to solve them, however, seemed to be a bit limited. In talking to the professor, I was told those techniques would only solve ~2% of the possible differential equations we might see. Now, my teacher might have been way off with that estimate, I just haven’t seen anything to the contrary. So basically I feel like I took a class with 2 useful lectures, and the rest was preparation to solve 2% of the possible problems we might see. I just found that a bit bizarre. Computers will be used to solve the rest.</p>
<p>Now, the same could be said about integration, and that computers can be used to solve most integrals. But I have found, in most of my applications, the integration techniques I learn cover 95% of integrals I have seen. For me, it was a useful course.</p>
<p>That may be because individual, non-math classes will discuss how to solve those differential equations. A lot of physics/engineering courses will make time to talk about how to solve the relevant equations for the class. In fact it may even become a primary focus of the class. Many classes that are nominally physics or engineering classes are in fact math classes.</p>
<p>Personally I think diffy qs and linear algebra should be combined into the same class, everywhere. I think my math education was compromised by <em>not</em> being able to study systems of differential equations with matrices.</p>
<p>Nah, DiffEqs is obnoxious to learn as it is. Don’t need to combine them with tedious LinAlg.
If you haven’t had your fill (or just plain need them), take PDEs. Those use concepts from both ODE and LinAlg.</p>
<p>If individual non-math classes go over how to solve specific DE’s, why do I need to take an entire class devoted to solving them?</p>
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That’s how it works at my school.</p>