Computer-Aided Design and Modeling (EML3022C)

Course Description

Computer-Aided Design and Modeling is an introduction to industry standards for graphical representation of objects and simulation of processes utilizing 2D presentations and 3D modeling.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, EML is the Mechanical Engineering prefix and the C suffix marks an integrated lecture-and-laboratory course. The University of West Florida publishes this number unsuffixed as EML3022 at 3 credits, prerequisite MAC2311. Contact hours are approximately 60 at the standard integrated engineering ratio. The number appears at approximately four Florida institutions.

The phrase "industry standards for graphical representation" is the part of this course that outlasts any software. CAD packages change every few years; the conventions of engineering drawing do not. Projection, sectioning, dimensioning, and tolerancing are a language that a machinist in another country reads without translation, and a designer who knows the language but not the software learns the software in a fortnight — while the reverse is not true.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the role of engineering drawings and models in the design and manufacturing process.
• Apply orthographic projection and construct multiview drawings.
• Interpret multiview drawings and visualize the three-dimensional object they describe.
• Construct auxiliary views and section views.
• Construct pictorial views, including isometric and oblique projections.
• Apply line conventions, lettering, and standard drawing formats.
• Apply dimensioning practice according to industry standards.
• Apply tolerancing, including limit, plus-minus, and fits.
• Interpret geometric dimensioning and tolerancing symbols and datum references.
• Describe surface finish specification.
• Create parametric solid models using sketches, constraints, and features.
• Apply design intent through appropriate constraint and feature strategies.
• Create and edit sketches with correct geometric and dimensional constraints.
• Use extrude, revolve, sweep, loft, and pattern features.
• Model complex parts using a logical, editable feature tree.
• Create assemblies using mates and constraints, and check for interference.
• Model and evaluate assembly motion.
• Generate drawings from models with correct views, dimensions, and annotations.
• Create bills of materials and describe part numbering and revision control.
• Apply mass properties and material assignment to models.
• Describe file formats, data exchange, and interoperability between systems.
• Describe simulation of processes using models, including basic analysis and motion study.
• Describe design for manufacturability and how process choice constrains geometry.
• Present a design clearly using models, drawings, and renderings.

Optional Outcomes

• Prepare models for additive manufacturing.
• Describe CAM and toolpath generation.
• Perform introductory finite element analysis within the CAD environment.
• Use configurations, design tables, and parametric families.
• Describe product data management and version control.
• Prepare for a CAD professional certification.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Drawings and models in the design process
• Orthographic projection and multiview drawing
• Visualization and drawing interpretation
• Auxiliary and section views
• Pictorial projections
• Line conventions and drawing formats
• Dimensioning standards
• Tolerancing and fits
• Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing
• Surface finish
• Parametric solid modelling
• Design intent
• Sketching and constraints
• Feature creation
• Feature trees and model editability
• Assemblies, mates, and interference
• Assembly motion
• Drawing generation from models
• Bills of materials and revision control
• Mass properties and materials
• File formats and interoperability
• Process simulation and motion study
• Design for manufacturability
• Design presentation

Optional Topics

• Additive manufacturing preparation
• CAM and toolpaths
• Introductory FEA in CAD
• Configurations and design tables
• Product data management
• CAD certification preparation

Resources & Tools

• Engineering Graphics or Technical Drawing with Engineering Graphics (Giesecke) — the standard reference on projection, sectioning, and dimensioning.
• Engineering Design Graphics (Leake) — a good modern treatment integrating CAD.
• Machinery's Handbook — the machinist's reference; expensive, and the fits and tolerances tables are what industry actually uses.
• ASME Y14.5 — the geometric dimensioning and tolerancing standard; institutions normally provide access, and it is the operative document in industry.
• SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor, CATIA, Creo, or NX — whichever your programme uses. Autodesk provides free education licences, and Fusion 360 has a free personal tier. Onshape is free for public documents and runs in a browser.
• FreeCAD — free and open source; capable, if less polished.
• CSWA and CSWP (SolidWorks) or the Autodesk Certified User credentials — genuinely valuable on a résumé, achievable as a student, and frequently discounted or free through institutions. See the certification note.
• GrabCAD — free model library; excellent for studying how experienced modellers structure a feature tree.
• A 3D printer, if your institution has one — printing a part you modelled reveals tolerance and manufacturability lessons no lecture conveys.
• Your own hands. Take apart a mechanical assembly and model it; reverse engineering a real object teaches more than any tutorial.

Career Pathways

• Mechanical design engineer — SOC 17-2141; CAD is the daily tool.
• Product design engineer.
• Drafter and design technician — SOC 17-3013; an entry route, and one where certification matters.
• Manufacturing engineer — design for manufacturability is the bridge.
• Tooling and fixture designer.
• Aerospace design — Florida's Space Coast and Melbourne electronics and defence sector; CATIA and NX are common there specifically.
• Marine and boat design — a Florida specialization.
• Additive manufacturing engineer.
• CAD administrator and PDM specialist — managing data, standards, and libraries in a design organization.
• Simulation analyst — CAD is where the geometry comes from.
• Technical sales and applications engineering — CAD vendors and component manufacturers.
• This is the most immediately employable single skill in a mechanical engineering curriculum, and internships frequently hire on it.

Special Information

⚠ The drawing standards outlast the software — learn them properly

• The software you learn will be replaced; the conventions will not. Orthographic projection and dimensioning practice have been stable for generations, and they are what makes a drawing readable by a machinist who has never met you.
• Learn to read a drawing before you learn to make one. Being handed a print and understanding what part it describes is the underlying competency, and CAD does not teach it.
• Third-angle projection is the North American convention and first-angle is common elsewhere — and the projection symbol on the title block tells you which. Misreading it inverts the part.
• Dimension for function and for inspection. Where dimensions originate determines how tolerances stack and how the part is measured — dimensioning a part the way it happens to have been modelled is a common beginner's error with real manufacturing consequences.
• Tolerances cost money. Every additional decimal place raises the price, and specifying tight tolerances where they are not needed is the most common way inexperienced designers make parts expensive.
• Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing is a genuine language, defined by ASME Y14.5, and it expresses functional requirements that plus-minus tolerancing cannot. It is difficult, it is examinable, and it is what distinguishes a competent drawing from a decorative one.
• Datums define how the part is held and measured. Choosing them badly produces a drawing that cannot be inspected.
• A drawing is a contract. It specifies what is acceptable, and anything not specified is not required — which cuts both ways.

⚠ Design intent — the difference between a model and a good model

• Two models can look identical and behave completely differently when edited. One updates cleanly when a dimension changes; the other collapses. That difference is design intent, and it is the actual skill this course teaches.
• Fully constrain your sketches. An under-constrained sketch moves unpredictably when anything upstream changes, and it is the root cause of most model failures.
• Think about what should change together. If two holes must always be symmetric, constrain them symmetrically rather than dimensioning both — then a single edit maintains the relationship.
• Keep the feature tree logical and shallow. Features should follow the order in which the part would be made where possible, and a tree with two hundred features nobody can navigate is unmaintainable.
• Avoid unnecessary external references. They create fragile dependencies that break when a referenced face is renamed or removed.
• Name features and sketches. "Extrude17" tells the next person nothing; "MountingBossPattern" tells them everything.
• Model the way the part is manufactured where you sensibly can — it makes the model comprehensible and it surfaces manufacturability problems early.
• Someone else will edit your model. That is the professional reality, and it is the whole argument for structure and naming.
• Study well-built models. Opening a professional model from GrabCAD and reading its feature tree teaches structure faster than tutorials do.

⚠ Design for manufacturability — the constraint students discover too late

• Anything can be modelled; not everything can be made. CAD imposes no physical constraints, and a student who has never made anything routinely designs parts that cannot be machined, moulded, or printed.
• Every process constrains geometry. Machining needs tool access and cannot produce sharp internal corners; injection moulding needs draft angles and uniform wall thickness; casting needs draft and cannot hold tight tolerances; additive manufacturing needs supports and has anisotropic properties.
• Internal corners have a radius because the cutting tool does. Modelling a sharp internal corner specifies something a mill cannot produce.
• Design for assembly matters as much as for manufacture. Fewer parts, self-locating features, and access for tools all reduce cost more than material savings do.
• Use standard parts. Standard fasteners, bearings, and stock sizes are cheap and available; custom equivalents are neither.
• Ask a machinist. If your institution has a machine shop, show a drawing to the person who would have to make it — this is the single most educational fifteen minutes available in the course.
• Print or make something you designed. The gap between a model and a physical object is where the real lessons are.

⚠ Get a CAD certification — it is unusually high-value for the effort

• CAD certifications are among the few credentials an undergraduate can obtain that employers screen on directly, and they are achievable in a term.
• The SolidWorks CSWA is the common entry credential; CSWP is the professional level. Autodesk has equivalents for Inventor and Fusion 360.
• Institutions frequently provide exam vouchers free or at heavy discount — ask, because students routinely do not.
• Name the specific software on your résumé. Employers search for named packages, and "CAD experience" matches nothing.
• Learn the package your target industry uses. Aerospace and automotive lean toward CATIA and NX; general industry and smaller firms use SolidWorks and Inventor heavily. Florida's aerospace sector makes CATIA knowledge locally valuable.
• Build a portfolio. A handful of well-executed models with drawings — including a real assembly with a bill of materials — demonstrates competence far better than a transcript line.
• The skills transfer between packages more than the marketing suggests. Parametric modelling concepts are common; learning a second package is much faster than the first.
• This is frequently what gets a student their first internship, which is a practical reason to take a course that can feel like a soft option seriously.

⚠ The EGN / EML numbering divergence and the 2000/3000 boundary

• Florida teaches much of the mechanical engineering core under two prefixes. Many institutions use the general engineering prefix EGN — EGN3343 for thermodynamics, EGN3353C for fluid mechanics — while the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and others use EML numbers.
• Under SCNS these are different courses, and equivalency does not cross prefixes automatically or cross a C suffix. Get transfer determinations in writing.
• Lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement, and the sophomore/junior pairing documented across the EGN prefix in this repository is the trap: the same subject appears at both levels and programmes use one consistently.
• Florida's 2+2 articulation guarantees admission to the State University System with junior standing, but it does not guarantee that a specific lower-division course satisfies a specific upper-division requirement in a limited-access engineering programme.
• Check with the receiving engineering department, and note that answers can differ between catalog years.
• Plan the mathematics and physics sequence early. Calculus and calculus-based physics are the real gatekeepers, and the engineering-technology variants close the A.B.E.T.-EAC route.

⚠ FE exam and PE licensure — this is the accredited engineering pathway

• This course sits inside an A.B.E.T.-EAC accredited engineering programme, which is the pathway that leads directly to professional licensure. That distinguishes it sharply from engineering technology, where the route to a P.E. is longer and carries additional experience requirements — see this repository's ETG, EET, and ETC guides.
• Florida licenses professional engineers under Chapter 471, Florida Statutes, through the Florida Board of Professional Engineers. The sequence is: A.B.E.T.-EAC accredited degree → Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) examination → qualifying experience → Principles and Practice of Engineering (PE) examination → licensure.
• This subject is directly examined on the FE Mechanical exam. Most students sit the FE in their final year while the material is fresh, and pass rates are markedly higher for recent graduates than for people who wait.
• The NCEES FE Reference Handbook is the only reference permitted in the exam, and it is free to download. Use it as your reference now so that finding an equation in it is automatic by exam day.
• Only a licensed P.E. may offer engineering services to the public in Florida, seal drawings, or use the title in a way implying licensure.
• Rule 11 applies — verify current requirements with FBPE and NCEES directly.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

EML3022 / EML3022C is 3 credits and approximately 60 contact hours, and it is a laboratory-intensive course whatever the local number carries as a suffix. Expect modelling assignments, drawing packages, and a design project rather than examinations alone — and expect substantial out-of-class software time.

Under SCNS the suffix is part of the course number, so EML3022 and EML3022C are distinct courses and equivalency does not cross between them. This subject also appears under EGN1111C, EML2023, and various engineering technology numbers — get any transfer determination in writing, and note that lower-division CAD credit will not satisfy a 3000-level requirement.