[Ownaginatios]

This is one of the courses that are mandatory for all first year engineering students in McMaster.

The purpose of this course is to teach you how to do technical drawing, which includes multiviews and isometric sketches. The difference between this course and typical technical design courses, which you may have taken in highschool, is that you aren't allowed to use tools to help sketch (i.e. rules, compasses, etc.). Quickness is apparently favored over neatness when it comes to sketching these days. The majority of what you learn includes methods for drawing a straight line and for making perfect circles, along with other things like auxilery views, multiviews. etc. This is what you do in the tutorials, and you get an assignment in each that is due the following week.

Along side that component of the course is lab sessions where you learn how to create 3D models from sketches and vice-versa all on the computer. At the end of the course, around week 8 I believe, you get a project where you must take apart a product and model all the parts individually, and then put them all back together on the computer. It takes a pretty long time.

Overall, I found a lot of this course to be pretty pointless. The sketching assignments are ridiculously long and can take a significant amount of time. I'm never going to be in a situation where I need to design something without a straight edge to help draw. I found that drawing without tools actually takes longer than with tools. I don't know who came up with the logic in that...

The 3D modeling component was interesting, and may or may not be useful to you in the future. The project was really stupid though. As a group, we spent nearly 40 hours on something that was worth less than our 2 hour exam.

Make sure that you DO NOT buy the book for the modeling program (Solid Edge v20). It's completely useless and costs around $80. The other one is required for the sketching though (your assignments come from there).

Again like the reviewer above DO NOT buy the Solid Edge V20 book as it is a waste of money. I found this course to be a little fun apart from the sketching part. The labs which consisted of using Solid Edge to design various objects given an isometric or multiview was something new and I found that I enjoyed it.

Exactly how much were each of the labs worth? I think you should also add that this course, like 1D04 is a hit or miss..like right now its a complete miss (for me) cause I cant seem to think visually and I find these labs a little more harder than I had expected...Practice, practice, practice!

The labs individually were worth about 1% of your overall grade I think. For the first 2 labs I was completely lost and did not get a very good mark but after some practice I got the hang of it and I found it to be really easy after a while. If it takes a while for you to make a part then you'll find it harder in the last few labs because you have to assembly more than 1 part and they give you 2-3 pre-made parts and then you have put everything together.

I'm not finding this course hard at all thus far.
Solid Edge is easy to jump into, and the tutorials aren't as hard. Granted you do a bit of drawing or have a bit of a background with anything similar to Edge, it should not be that much of a hassle!

Main Project is a time eater and is not introduced until 2/3's through course, this was annoying because it creates a time crunch that you don't need. Project can be rough if you get lazy partners. Labs became easier as you figure out the quirks of Solid Edge. Didn't use Solid Edge book at all, save your money don't buy it.

My general grading of the course from the end result of the course. It's a good course, but you can only appreciate it if you really like the mechanical/design aspect to it. I personally loved working through this stuff this term!

From my experience, this class was an easy average booster. As boring and pointless as it may seem now, I guarantee you won't be complaining when you get your final mark back if you just put in minimal effort with your assignments and project.

Practice your visualization and drawing skills if that's not your strong point. It can get to be a little bit of a bother when all your other classes are also starting to pile up on work, but really... why pass up an easy grade?

i cant draw for sh!t and i cant register for 1p03 for headstart. Do you recommended me doing this course this summer if it doesnt affect my gpa?

This course is really not that bad at all. The only parts which gave me any trouble were the group project and the inane questions on the final. Labs and tutorials, however, were a complete joke. I found it best to skip the lectures... the iclicker marks weren't worth the mental deterioration.

Do you need to purchase Maple Sim?

Originally Posted by swordmas

Do you need to purchase Maple Sim?

No idea what that is, so I guess no. lol

I got physical mail from mail saying all these things to buy like Maple and MapleSIM, Autodesl Inventor 2011, a Series Strathmore sketchpad, i>clicker, the book "making sense in Engineering and the Technical Sciences", and a Staedtle drafting pencil (model MARS-780).

I dunno which one I should actually buy, if any at all, I'm pretty sure the i>clicker is needed for tutorials, right?

Just buy the i>Clicker. The pencil thing is bullshit (any pencil works, and they don't care). All the other stuff you can get for free from the internet :p.

What about the book?