As part of curriculum, engineers need to complete a significant project at a college level which either demonstrates understanding of the topic or solves some existing engineering problem. While there's no dearth of topics for engineering students to explore, however, in my opinion, budget becomes a problem since it may involve buying material to create a project and demonstrate problem solving ability. An alternative to this is using Catia or CAD to demonstrate problem solution or demonstrate problem solving ability. I have listed below four such projects and you can use ideas similar to the ones I have mentioned below.
Using animate constraints to solve simple mechanism problem
The sketcher workbench in Catia, offers a tool known as = Animate constraints. This tool can be used to solve simple problems that may be related to four bar chain mechanism or some other simple mechanism. For example, you can make combination of sketch profiles in 2D, resembling an engine and can animate it.
Using this, you can find out several parameters of interest like if for a certain connecting rod length, crank length etc. will clearance be enough or not. This is ofcourse the simplest example, and you can read more about it here. Another application of the tool can be found here.
Using parametric design to create multiple test cases for analysis
The main benefit of the parametric design is that you can drive dimension and design changes using relations, formula or parameters. The main advantage it offers is that knowledge can be built into design and several design scenarios can therefore be created and checked quite quickly. Integrating knowledge into design is something that requires some forethought and knowhow. I modeled a glass bottle cap and drove the design using set of angle parameters.
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| Multiple design cases created quickly |
There are of course other parameters built-in that you can use to modify design quickly and check which one works better by simulating load conditions. This particular way of working is generally referred to as design-optimization and you can simulate load conditions within in Catia itself and check how design changes impact the part.
Using formula, laws in Catia to design parametric gear
This is one of the most popular small project among college students that you can also take up. It require good knowledge of working with Catia. A tutorial for this is available and you can follow the steps as I explain here.
I would suggest you do this only after you have become comfortable working with Catia since this is relatively advanced and may take some time to wrap your head around it, but with working knowledge of Catia this should be relatively easy. You can show some ingenuity and use the concept to even create something new.
Using DMU kinematics to analyse machines / mechanisms
DMU kinematics is one of my favourite workbench in Catia. You can use this to analyse any kind of mechanism or machine. The workbench can not only be used to test mechanism, but you can investigate other things like what is the volume traced by any specific part, the range of motion, collision detection etc. I used this to analyse a machine and wrote about it here.
Using DMU kinematics workbench also requires decent modeling as well as assembly skills together with knowledge of DMU kinematics workbench. So I would advise you to envision from the beginning which project you wish to do well ahead of time so that it can be completed on schedule.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.