Great Engineering
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We Build Great Engineering Teams
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May 2017, Issue #2
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This issue of Great Engineering introduces the power of VBA programming in Excel, how to start scheduling your project, a book review, 43 volumes of Aerospace Mechanism Design material, and provides some links to quality content. If you find this newsletter useful, please forward it to a colleague you think would benefit. Thank you.
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Eric J. Roulo
President, RCI
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Aerospace Analysis Boot Camp™ Plan 2017 Now
Aerospace Analysis Boot Camps are intensive one-day courses meant to provide the attendee with directly applicable tools to get their jobs done. Budgeting for on-site seminars now is a great way to bring your entire staff up to a baseline level of expertise. Courses in
Initial Sizing & Hand Calcs, Dynamics, Modeling Primary Structures in FEM, Nastran, and
Practical Project Management will increase your teams productivity.
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Great Engineers Program
Programming is one of the few skills that separates the great engineers from the merely good ones.
Programming is also the best tool I'm aware of for teaching one of the three most important traits of great engineers, curiosity. The value of programming is indisputable, however the barrier to entry is fairly high. Which language should you learn? What exactly will you do with it? Will your manager accept that you're not, 'doing your job' while there is a text editor up with strange syntax up on your screen for hours a day? I have programmed and been exposed to these obstacles for 14 of my 16 years as a mechanical engineer. I have some recommendations.
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Scheduling - Or "Who Does What by When?"
Schedule management is easy to implement when it's done right, otherwise get ready to do multiple re-baselines. The process is similar wherever you look, including NASA schedule management guidelines, DoD Program life cycle guidelines, or the Project Management Institute.
The
six steps are: define activities, sequence activities, estimate activity duration and resources, develop schedule, and control schedule.
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Book Review - Materials Selection in Mechanical Design
This book was introduced to me by a materials engineer I recently worked with. It opened my mind on how to select materials based on different performance matrices.
After introducing the concepts of material indices and presenting many families of property selection charts, worked examples are presented to aid the reader in implementing the ideas on their projects. The full spectrum of material properties are used in the examples including thermal conductance, cost, fracture toughness, as well as strength, modulus, and the other usual suspects.
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Design of Aerospace Mechanisms
I have recently had the opportunity to work with some clients who are developing space mechanisms. This is a very specialized field with 60 years of tribal knowledge. When working at NASA I was exposed to the
Aerospace Mechanisms Symposium which is the semi-annual gathering for all things space mechanism. It is the best place that tribal knowledge is shared. RCI is now sharing the previous 43 volumes with you!
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The purpose of
Great Engineering is to provide guidance, tips, and techniques to create great engineering teams. It is meant to be technically dense with an emphasis on adoption of the ideas. Great ideas left unimplemented are by definition not great ideas. Adoption is facilitated by actionable examples of the techniques as well as links to software templates that do most of the heavy lifting for you.
Editor: Eric J. Roulo
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NASA 100+ Lessons Learned for Project Managers
2) Most equipment works "as built," i.e., not as the designer planned. This is due to layout of the design, poor understanding on the designer's part, or poor understanding of component specifications.
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Upcoming Events and Aerospace Analysis Boot Camps
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Aerospace Analysis Boot Camps
Date
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Name
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Location
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Registration Link
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August 9-10
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Initial Sizing and Hand Calcs for Designers and Analysts
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College Park, MD
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Register Now
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September 20-21
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Initial Sizing and Hand Calcs for Designers and Analysts
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Cleveland, OH
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Register
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November 15-16
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Initial Sizing and Hand Calcs for Designers and Analysts
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Los Angeles, CA
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Register
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August 11
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Project Management for Engineers
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College Park, MD
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Register Now
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September 22
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Project Management for Engineers
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Cleveland, OH
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Register
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November 17
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Project Management for Engineers
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Los Angeles, CA
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Register
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Webinars
Date
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Title
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Registration Link
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June 1
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Initial Sizing and Hand Calcs - Metallic Bolted Joints
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June 15
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Initial Sizing and Hand Calcs - Lugs
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Contact Information
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www.rouloconsulting.com
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(855) 724-8811
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Please feel free to
contact us at Roulo Consulting, Inc. with any questions regarding this newsletter or our engineering, training, and project management services.
Submit a
Letter to the Editor
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Copyright © 2017. All Rights Reserved.
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