Category: Tag: engineering-design
Figure 1: Empire State BuildingAn important objective of our Energy3D software is to explore how to create CAD software that support students to practice the full cycle of engineering design from conceptual design to detailed design in a single piece o…
Figure 1: Hypothetical student responses to an intervention. In the fourth issue this year, the International Journal of Engineering Education published our 19-page-long paper on the instructional sensitivity of computer-aided design (CAD) logs. This study was based on our Energy3D software, which supports students to learn science and engineering concepts and skills through creating sustainable […]
One of the useful features of our Energy3D software is the ability to record the entire design process of a student behind the scenes. We call the reconstruction of a design process from fine-grained process data design replay.Design replay is not a sc…
Figure 1. Global insolation pattern from Pole to PoleThe Sun’s power drives the climate of the Earth. Accurately modeling the incident solar radiation, namely, insolation, at a given location is important to the design of high-performance buildings. As…
Figure 1 As it travels through the atmosphere of the Earth, the light from the Sun interacts with the molecules in the air and are scattered or absorbed, causing the radiation energy that ultimately reaches the ground to weaken. This effect is more significant in early morning or late afternoon than at noon because sunlight […]
Energy3D (Tree image credit: SketchUp Warehouse and Ethan McElroy)A zero-energy building is a building with zero net energy consumption over a year. In other words, the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is equal to or even …
Figure 1The International Journal of Engineering Education published our paper (“A Time Series Analysis Method for Assessing Engineering Design Processes Using a CAD Tool”) on learning analytics and educational data mining for assessing student perform…
A student designIn a pilot study conducted in December 2012, high school students in an engineering class used our Energy3D CAD tool to do an urban solar design project — they must consider the sun path in four seasons and the existing buildings in th…
The day/night cycle of an SUTThe solar updraft tower is a new-concept clean energy power plant for generating electricity from the sun. Sunshine falling on a greenhouse collector structure around the base of a tall chimney heats the air within it. The …
A house designed using our Energy3D CAD software. Perhaps the most important change in the Next Generation Science Standards to be released in March 2013 is the elevation of engineering design to the same level of importance as of scientific inquiry (which was enshrined as a doctrine of science education in the 1996 science standards). […]