6 lessons
Module 1: Reading and creating technical drawings
Title blocks, projection, lines and sections, dimensioning and general tolerances, surface finish, thread and weld symbols, and a full drawing read end to end.
Design engineering for industry
The basics a design office expects you to know on day one, taught for the job rather than the exam. Each lesson explains the standard, shows the maths where it is needed, and ends with a short self-check.
Who this is for
| You are | You will get |
|---|---|
| New graduate, mechanical or aerospace | The conventions a degree rarely covers: drawings, tolerances, margins of safety, reviews |
| Junior design engineer | The standards behind the CAD defaults, with numbers, editions and what goes wrong |
| Technician or apprentice moving into design | The maths, stated plainly, with worked examples you can check by hand |
| Engineer changing sector or convention | ISO and ASME practice side by side, so an ISO drawing office and an ASME one both make sense |
No sign-up, no tracking, no certificate. The lessons are free to read in any order, though each module builds on the one before it. UK spelling is used throughout, with US terms given where they differ.
Modules
Ten modules, five or six lessons each. Module 1 is published in full and Module 2 is being released two lessons a week. Later modules follow one lesson at a time, after each has been checked by a practising design engineer.
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- 2 of 6 lessons
Module 2: GD&T essentials
Datums, feature control frames, form, orientation, position, profile and run-out, in ISO 1101 and ASME Y14.5 side by side.
- In preparation
Module 3: Limits, fits and tolerance stacks in practice
The ISO 286 system, choosing a fit, bearing seats, and worst case, RSS and Monte Carlo stack-ups.
- In preparation
Module 4: Materials selection for design
Properties that matter, common grades and designations, allowables, corrosion, heat treatment and trade studies.
- In preparation
Module 5: Strength of materials for design
Free body diagrams, factors of safety, margins of safety and reserve factors, combined stress, stress concentration and buckling.
- In preparation
Module 6: Bolted and pinned joints
Preloaded joints, torque and the nut factor, thread engagement, shear joints, pins, clevises and lugs.
- In preparation
Module 7: Fatigue and fracture basics
S-N curves, mean stress corrections, cumulative damage, crack growth and the design details that decide fatigue life.
- In preparation
Module 8: Dynamics and vibration for designers
Natural frequency, resonance, damping, isolation, shock loads and critical speed, at the level a designer needs.
- In preparation
Module 9: Design for manufacture and assembly
What drives cost in machining, sheet metal, castings and additive, tolerances versus cost, and designing for assembly.
- In preparation
Module 10: The engineering workflow
Drawing checking, design reviews, change control, configuration management and working with stress, manufacturing and quality.
How the lessons are written
| Rule | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Standards cited with editions | Every lesson ends with a table of the standards it relies on, with the edition checked when the lesson was written. |
| Original diagrams | Every figure is drawn for the lesson. Nothing is copied from a standard, which you should still read for the full rules. |
| On the job | Short notes on how the topic shows up in a real design office: what checkers reject, what suppliers ask. |
| Worked examples and self-checks | Numbers you can reproduce by hand, and a short quiz with explanations. Nothing is stored. |
| Linked to the calculators | Where a lesson meets a calculation, it links to the calculator that does it. |
Written and reviewed by the CheckedCalc editor, a mechanical design engineer. See the editorial policy for how corrections are handled.