Integration of Collaborative Engineering Design Using Teamcenter Community in Mechanical Engineering Curricula

Abstract

This paper presents a collaborative project conducted by Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) and University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) to jointly develop collaborative engineering design instructional projects, utilizing the Teamcenter Community and NX3 software provided by UGS PLM Solutions, and to implement these collaborative design projects in the teaching of two CAD courses in the Fall 2006 semester at the two universities. The collaborative design projects have been implemented in both the freshman level course MCEG1213 “Creative Engineering” at PVAMU and the senior/graduate level course ME363 “Principles and Practices of Computer-Aided Design” at UMR. This paper describes how to effectively prepare such a collaborative effort and how to implement the Teamcenter Community software. It was observed in this project that thorough communication among the team members is the key to guaranteeing the success of collaborative design. This paper also discusses the challenges in conducting a collaborative engineering design. The planned improvements for the future implementation are discussed.