Everybody is required to keep an up-to-date design notebook. It is a major portion of your grade because it details all of your work. A design notebook a way to organize your thoughts and document the design process. It is ultimately a legal document used to apply for and defend patents. However, this does not mean that it is a formal document. The design notebook should document all of your ideas and the calculations used to validate your design. It will contain drawings, equations, summary thoughts, and writings.
Your design notebook will be evaluated periodically throughout the term. In order for your notebook to be evaluated you must fill out the Peer Evaluation Form and staple or tape it into your Design Notebook. Failure to do so will result in an automatic F for that evaluation.
You will pick up your design notebook from Prof. Spenko in his office. It will be due during finals week the same day as your final exam.
Technically each page should be dated and signed both by you and a witness. I have never seen that in practice. Instead, just sign and date every page. In fact, just dating the page would be great.
In summary, your design notebook needs to:
Your design notebook will be evaluated periodically throughout the term. In order for your notebook to be evaluated you must fill out the Peer Evaluation Form and staple or tape it into your Design Notebook. Failure to do so will result in an automatic F for that evaluation.
You will pick up your design notebook from Prof. Spenko in his office. It will be due during finals week the same day as your final exam.
Technically each page should be dated and signed both by you and a witness. I have never seen that in practice. Instead, just sign and date every page. In fact, just dating the page would be great.
In summary, your design notebook needs to:
- be a bound notebook with numbered pages;
- be signed by you;
- be dated on each page;
- be legible, illegible notebooks fail to get or defend patents;
- contain all of the work that you have done and nothing extraneous;
- contain pictures of your designs
- contain sketches of your designs
- contain engineering analysis of your design
- contain market research and background information
- contain summary thoughts about your designs
- contain how you results of background research of your design;
- contain the team project planning approach for each step of the problem including who is responsible for what and when the due dates are.
- something you are proud of.
- a stapled together bunch of loose leaf pages;
- a scrapbook of the fun times you had working with your teammates;
- a diary of the engineering analysis you did yesterday or the week before - you should be doing all your work in the notebook;
- a summary of the engineering analysis that you did elsewhere (unless of course you are doing work on a whiteboard or something similar
- detailed drawings (by hand or CAD) with notes that describe your ideas (the Kirk)
- good analysis of the engineering that is used to make your ideas a reality (the Spock)
- some indication of project planning.
- some retrospection on the work. That is, you need to periodically look back at what you have written in your notebook and comment on it.
- an indication that you have followed each of the steps in the design process.
- 20 A Simply amazing, complete throughout the entire class. Thorough, contains both crazy ideas (Captain Kirk) and thoughtful analysis (Spock). (I usually see a few of these throughout the semester)
- 18 A-
- 17 B+
- 15 B
- 13 B-
- 11 C+
- 10 C
- 8 C-
- 6 D+
- 5 D
- 4 and below - Failure