Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) Lab

This college-wide laboratory supports both undergraduate and graduate design courses. The lab uses a variety of commercially available 3-D engineering software packages used by engineering and manufacturing firms. MSC/NASTRAN, P3/PATRAN, Hypermesh, Pro-Engineer, and GENESIS software packages are all taught and used. These software modules encompass teaching the entire product development process.

Students not only learn the goals of design and analysis in this laboratory, they experience the product development process by modeling a design concept and analyzing the performance of the product for future modifications and evaluation. They can also experiment with design changes and test the product's performance -- all without leaving the computer environment.

Graduate students in Aerospace, Mechanical, and Civil use benchmarked problems solved by the software to verify their in-house developed codes or procedures. Currently, a team of graduate students and faculty from Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering are modeling and analyzing the vibration characteristics of the body of the MagLev Test Vehicle.

• MSC/NASTRAN
• PE/PATRAN
• Hypemesh
• Pro-Engineer
• GENESIS

These resources can be accessed by industry due to the discounted rate of the software license, but the specified use is for educational purposes only. However, the site could be utilized during semester breaks as an official training site for various types of software, instead of traveling out of town for training.