E. Nothani Bryant joined the Action Engineering team as a 2020 summer intern.
Learn about his experiences creating a reference for the ASME Y14.41 standard and developing training content.
Before I started the internship in earnest, I thought I would be mainly doing GD&T and analyzing models through 3D PDFs. GD&T was the only part of model-based design that I learned about in classes, and from that I knew it was difficult, yet very informative when done correctly. Most of my time was spent making a quick reference sheet of ASME Y14.41 and making quizzes based on training videos. Making those quizzes was really eye-opening.
In my classes, the stress was put on the science of engineering, with the art of engineering on the side. We never really covered the practice of engineering, how it is done at a 21st-century business. I enjoyed having a taste of how vast engineering is in practice, how it has interesting niches, and how an industry that solves problems grows and improves itself.
Writing problems and solutions is very different from solving them. The material that I am used to working with either has very clear answers, like stress analysis, or is completely open-ended, like a design project. Model-based design has nuance and difficulty that I was not expecting since it was completely new to me. The most challenging and rewarding part of creating those quizzes was trying to come up with the wrong answers, since the assessments are multiple-choice. It really forced me to imagine the background and the perspective of the would-be quiz taker. I wanted the correct answer itself to be clear and make sense based on watching the training videos, but not so obvious that someone could skip the videos and still pass with flying colors.
Being on the other side of a test was enlightening. It took a different set of skills to break down the material. I had the opportunity to reflect not just on what I learned from training, but what I thought others would learn and what I thought was the essential material to understand.
In my deep dive of ASME Y14.41, I learned how important standards are in general, and why they are stressed heavily in MBD. I chose to make a reference sheet from Y14.41 because I could not find something similar when I searched for it. I have seen reference charts for Y14.5 from my brief foray into GD&T during my undergraduate education, so I wanted to learn something I knew very little about and attempt to make something that isn’t as widely available. I was surprised how codified everything was. Every type of annotation had a specific placement and orientation. Leader lines would have a different style of termination based on the context.
It made sense. When designing something to a customer’s requirements, and then using that model to seed manufacturing and quality and the rest of the supply chain, it would pay dividends to be as clear as possible. Given the variation and complexity of what can be designed, standards really set a common foundation for everyone.
E. Nothani Bryant
B.S. Mechanical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Nothani graduated in May 2020 from Carnegie Mellon University with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Philosophy. He is passionate about solving difficult problems across a wide spectrum of fields and advancing the practice of mechanical engineering.
Nothani is actively seeking a position in the field of Mechanical Engineering. Please reach out with available opportunities.