Hi,
i’m in australia and am about to complete my mechanical engineering with honours degree
i was wondering if i should get an MBA directly after uni or if i should work for a couple of years first ?
i heard people with an MBA get better salaries
Thank you
I’m getting really overwhelmed trying to start these calculations to work out the bending moment and reaction forces of a column designed to have a beam attached.
I need to work out my compressive force to then work out the thickness of the plate I need. What’s stopping me getting there is my initial calculations. I have done it so many times I’m not confident. Fresh graduate engineer everything has left my brain I feel really helpless.
Hi good people
Is it normal to feel like you've forgotten all the material you studied in college? I'm currently doing my internship and I feel like I don't know anything, even though my GPA is +3.5. I don't know what the problem is. Should I review everything I studied?
Hi everyone,
I wanted to share a free Excel tool I've developed called AirChange Basic.
I built it during my third-year mechanical engineering placement, where I worked as an HVAC commissioning engineer in a hospital.
I found myself repeatedly calculating air changes per hour, so I decided to make a simple tool to speed things up and reduce mistakes on site.
The goal of AirChange Basic is to make those calculations quicker and easier for any fellow engineers, technicians or interns carrying out air balancing.
I've put together a short 2.5-minute video showing how it works, and the Excel calculator is completely free to download and use.
I'd really appreciate any feedback from people working in the industry.
If you notice any bugs or have ideas for improvements, please let me know, I'd love to keep improving it.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DXwCMwLjzI&t=4s
Download: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1D1sDe00XOWzkK4ajbiLy6KfxLS1esML_
Thanks, and I hope some of you find it useful!
I had this idea from a dream of mine I was driving in the sand dunes of Saudi Arabia (turn on dune music) and then I faced a lot of corpo and gov. vehicles escaping the sand storm so logically I take a U turn and go beck to the sand rig :) yes sand rig and there it is a line of bullet rockets waiting for passengers to run or fly to safety.
I flied it to safety and then I woke up and drew what I saw. Obviously you’d know Im not taking this idea seriously by know but its kinda cool and I wanted to know why people didn’t do it.
Hi everyone!
I'm currently an engineering student, and I already have a decent amount of experience using Autodesk Inventor for 3D modeling and designing mechanical parts. However, looking at job requirements and freelance gigs across different engineering fields, I see SolidWorks and Fusion 360 mentioned everywhere.
For those of you already working in the industry, what are the main pros and cons of each? Is it worth the time to transition to SolidWorks, or should I just stick with Inventor and maybe learn Fusion 360 on the side?
Would appreciate any advice or insights from your experience!
I (24M) Mechanical Engineer with an MSc in Engineering Design, am doing an apprenticeship in India at an MNC.
Straight to the point -
I’m so lost. When I started my bachelors I was so passionate about machine design and I excelled at it and even did a specialisation in it. Then did my masters in engineering design in UK and when I couldn’t find a company that would sponsor my visa there, I came back to India and started an apprenticeship where I get paid peanuts. I leave home at 6:30am and come back at 8pm because work is so far from home and no, I cannot afford to rent a place. Now they’re offering me a permanent role which is still very very less from living standards (and yes, I still won’t be able to afford to rent a place near work).
The job market is such that I am scared to leave this place and honestly, I love the work I’m doing right now. But I am living the bare minimum life here. After talking to my colleagues, they have told me not to expect anything more in pay and until I dedicate 15 years of my life, it’s not going to get any better.
This is not a rant. It’s a cry for help.
I am brainstorming projects that solve real engineering problems instead of just making another AI chatbot. Here are a few ideas:
AI-powered engineering learning studios
Interactive 3D equipment simulators
Electrical system design software
HVAC design and load calculation tools
Plumbing system design applications
Fire alarm and life safety design tools
Structural design assistants
SCADA/PLC virtual training labs
BIM/Revit productivity tools
RF and antenna design utilities
Power system analysis software
Substation design tools
Solar PV and battery storage design software
Engineering calculation libraries
Code compliance and standards assistants (NEC, ASME, NFPA, etc.)
Technical drawing and diagram generators
AI proposal/RFP assistants for engineering firms
Digital twins for industrial facilities
Manufacturing process optimization tools
Engineering exam preparation platforms (FE, PE, NICET, etc.)
Construction field inspection apps
Asset management and predictive maintenance systems
Engineering knowledge bases with interactive examples
Engineering workflow automation tools
What engineering software, app, or tool do you wish existed but doesn’t? Or what problem at work wastes the most time today?
IN EGYPT I’m looking at an engineering program outside the US that holds direct ABET accreditation (not a US campus — a fully local university accredited by ABET internationally). Before committing, I wanted to sanity-check what this credential actually gets me, because I dug into the details and it’s more nuanced than I expected.
What I found so far:
ABET accredits programs in around 42 countries outside the US, using the same review process as domestic programs — so it’s not a “lesser” accreditation on paper. But ABET is also a founding member of the Washington Accord, the big international mutual-recognition agreement for engineering degrees (covers the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and ~20 other countries).
Here’s the part that surprised me: the Washington Accord explicitly only recognizes engineering programs accredited within each signatory’s own home jurisdiction. So even though ABET itself is a signatory, a program it accredits outside the US doesn’t get automatic Washington Accord coverage. Basically: same accreditor, same rigor, but zero treaty-level recognition abroad just because the campus isn’t on US soil.
From what I can tell, the concrete benefit of a foreign ABET degree seems to mostly be:
Skipping the credential evaluation step for US engineering licensing exams (confirmed this directly with the US licensing body’s own FAQ)
Maybe being a recognized name on a resume for multinational HR departments
But it doesn’t seem to unlock any automatic recognition in the UK, Canada, Australia, Gulf countries, or Europe — you’d still go through each country’s individual foreign-credential evaluation like anyone else.
Questions for people with real experience:
Is my understanding above accurate, or am I missing some nuance?
Has anyone actually used a foreign ABET-accredited degree to get licensed or hired in the US, Canada, UK, Gulf, or Europe? What was that actually like?
Does holding ABET (even without Accord coverage) meaningfully help when going through an individual country’s credential evaluation process, or does it not matter once it’s not “automatic”?
Outside the US, do employers/HR even recognize “ABET” as a name, or is it a total non-factor once you leave North America?
Practically speaking, is there a real difference between a foreign ABET degree and a strong non-ABET foreign degree once you’re job-hunting internationally, or does it mostly wash out?
Any help would be great!
I want to join pipes together on specific angles. I drew this but I feel it took too long to get to an acceptable solution:
My steps were:
draw circle for the pipe diameter, draw the flat end rectangle, create the pipe thickness by adding offsets within the geometry.
Create the loft, to form the tube and the flat end.
Create the radiused angled flat end at the top using sweep, subtract to remove inside of flat end
Does anyone have any ideas of how to make this part faster but also accurate, or is this the only way to do it?
Thanks
Hello all,
I’m coming from SolidWorks and trying to learn NX. I’m looking for succinct tutorials or worked examples that show realistic part-building workflows for surfacing, rather than isolated feature demos.
Using SolidWorks terminology, I’m especially interested in things like:
A lot of the videos I’ve found so far demonstrate individual features in idealised examples, but not much feature interaction, recovery, or rework like when associativity can break down. but even more basically when I start modelling real parts, I quickly hit situations where in SolidWorks I’d use a familiar sequence of steps, but in NX I don’t yet know the equivalent workflow, or where the mental model differs.
Does anyone know good NX tutorials, channels, example files, or documentation paths that teach this kind of practical modelling flow, where some back and forth between sketches, bodies, and surfaces is required to get things working?
Bonus points if it shows how things can fail or need to be revised. So many tutorials are made to have everything work first time, which I find unrealistic in practice, especially once surfacing or more complex feature interaction is involved.
Basically: Andrew Jackson tutorials*, but for NX instead of SolidWorks.
(*100% recommended for SolidWorks.)
Image mostly for clicks, but it does show where I’m at: I can get basic solids going, and it’s easy enough to create a Studio Surface in isolation. The part I’m struggling with is getting the surrounding geometry set up correctly so there’s actually somewhere useful to put that surface. I hit a wall of “errr… hmmmm, ummmm” 🤷
Hi folks,
For background, I graduated from a Big 10 university 2 years ago with the minimum recommended GPA and while I did robotics in highschool, sort of focused on design and manufacturing in my courses. One manufacturing internship later I realized I didn’t really want to be a production engineer, but I landed a job with a petrochemical company and work with big static and rotating equipment. I always dreamt of being a product engineer or working for a company I can get behind (renewable energy, etc).
I’ve seen comments of people’s pivot to entirely different industries. Also, while I value what I’ve gained from not knowing anything to at least knowing how some stuff gets done, I can’t help but still dream of a job that fits my previous hopes. I believe its not impossible but here are my questions:
Are the skills for engineering on large equipment really different from products/appliances?
One job I’ve read about that seems cool is a systems engineer; would I have to step back if I pivoted, and start over as a mechanical engineer if I want to work in a different industry (to then be a systems engineer there, because they don’t exist in petrochemicals)?
Does pivoting usually involve stagnating pay increases to accomplish getting the role/industry you want?
I very much appreciate any insight because it can be really easy to overthink career trajectories especially when I’m not in the location/industry I really want.
I'm doing some research to better understand the software engineers actually use in industry and where the biggest productivity pain points are.
I'm interested in both professional tools and the smaller utilities you can't live without.
Some examples:
\- CAD: SolidWorks, CATIA, Creo, Inventor, Fusion 360, NX
\- Simulation: ANSYS, Abaqus, COMSOL
\- Electrical: Altium Designer, KiCad, OrCAD, LTspice, PSpice
\- Controls: MATLAB/Simulink, LabVIEW
\- PLC/SCADA: TIA Portal, Studio 5000, Ignition
\- Programming: VS Code, Visual Studio, Eclipse
\- Other engineering tools you use regularly
A few questions:
\- Which software do you spend the most time in?
\- What's the most repetitive or frustrating task you do every day?
\- Is there a feature you've always wished existed but still doesn't?
\- Are there tasks you still have to do manually because the software makes them painful?
\- If you could improve one engineering tool tomorrow, what would you add?
I'm especially interested in hearing from mechanical, electrical, civil, controls, embedded, HVAC, manufacturing, and automation engineers, but I'd love to hear from anyone.
Not trying to sell anything—I'm just trying to understand where engineers lose the most time so I can identify opportunities for better tools. Looking forward to hearing what drives you crazy every day.
Hi guys-- I came across this link where a group of automotive veterans from GM and Chrysler have compiled a list of essays-- mostly around vehicle development-- damper tuning, steering development, war stories with bushing/bar tuning etc etc. It feels like a growing gold mine. Check it out and I'd be curious if anyone might want to join me (active suspension engineer from ClearMotion here.)
I am a mechanical engineering student that will be graduating at the end of this year (Fall 2026).
When would be the time to apply to engineering jobs that require clearance?
Cause I know students that graduate in the spring are applying and starting their search the previous fall.
I’m 24 yrs old just bought a house and get married in sept. We want to have 6 kids and I need to make atleast 100k a yr to support my future family. I won’t be able to afford college so I would say most of it will be putting me in debt, if my math is right, taking the first 2 yrs at a community college then transferring to ASU for their online program will cost me about 50-60k total for the degree but I will be 28 when I graduate. I have 4 yrs experience drilling in the oilfield and about 2 yrs currently working as a commercial flooring estimator/PM. I want to get into the aerospace and or government defense contractor industry with my degree. I’m asking for advice since this is a big life decision. Thank you
Graduated a year ago BEng and have struggled finding a job related to my degree. I’m wanting to do hands on work, the less time behind a desk the better for me. I’ve been told to look at field service engineering and maintenance engineering roles but don’t seem to find much for graduates in these roles. Also considering retraining as a mechanic or an aircraft mechanic (not sure how to get into this one).
I saw an advert for a “Vehicle and mechanical equipment technician” in the RAF and it got me thinking if the RAF would be a suitable career choice if I’m looking for hands on work opposed to sitting behind a desk being a design engineer.
I’m aware the RAF offer Engineering Officer roles for graduates but from what I read it seems to be very admin and desk oriented and being in charge of people. Not sure this would be for me.
If anyone could shine some light on working in the forces and if you can transfer into the civil world afterwards, that would be great.
Thanks in advance.
