Innovation in teaching mechanical engineering applications

Engineering educators usually resort to either general purpose computer programming languages or specific software packages for high level problem solving. The balance has recently tipped in favor of specific packages. These, however, inhibit the development of programming skills for active, innovative and dynamic education processes. One reason is that the syntax of traditional languages adds one more level of distraction to the point that the engineering context of the problem may be lost. The recent emergence of graphical programming languages for engineers (such as LabVIEW) remedies this situation by providing an environment which focuses on the process. The modularity of such languages enables the instructor to adjust the programming challenge so that the engineering content of the problem may be highlighted. In this paper, three representative problems from the subjects of manufacturing, dynamics and component design are selected to illustrate the use of a graphical programming language to both introduce early basic engineering and programming concepts and in the solution of typical mechanical engineering problems. These problems are all parametric in nature and simulate real world problems.