This is the capstone design experience for students in mechanical engineering. It is imperative that students have completed and learned all prerequisite course material.

The emphasis in this course in not on studying from a list of topics, but rather it is a project course. Students work in teams on a semester-long project. Some topics covered include presentation and discussions on the design process, intellectual property, task planning and management, quality function deployment, techniques for concept generation, techniques for concept evaluation/selection, and design documentation. Depending upon the projects, other topics may also be included.

Each course section formally meets two hours each day, two days each week. During these scheduled course meetings the instructor typically presents and discusses a design topic for one hour and meets individually with student design teams during the other three hours. In addition each student team is expected to work on their project for an additional 8 to 12 hours per week outside of the scheduled class time.

The following statement indicates which of the following considerations are included in this course: economic, environmental, ethical, political, societal, health and safety, manufacturability, sustainability.

Students are required to consider function and performance, natural physical laws and principles, empirical knowledge and information, appropriate codes and standards, conservation of economic and natural resources, manufacturability, producibility, maintainability, assembility, reliability, serviceability, and safety in their designs.

This course provides students with an opportunity to apply their creative and mechanical engineering skills and knowledge, along with their learned knowledge and understanding of the design process, to identify, solve, and document the solution to a real mechanical engineering design problem.