CAE/CAD/CAM curricula implementation-experience at the National University of Singapore

This paper presents a step-by-step approach in implementing CAE/CAD/CAM curricula for undergraduate engineering courses at the National University of Singapore. As the student workload is already quite heavy, each course is examined in detail and the CAE/CAD/CAM contents are carefully blended with the existing course structure. Experiments and projects are reviewed to allow further avenues of CAE introduction. Examples are given to illustrate a number of courses where this measure has been taken. In addition to the normal use of the application packages, some students are also assigned CAD/CAM specific projects to allow them to develop their own routines and programs from scratch and build their interfaces to the existing packages. Several student projects are described and some of the projects with good application potential have been acquired by commercial vendors. The paper concludes that CAE/CAD/CAM implementation at the undergraduate level has to be performed in various phases. It is also necessary to consider the state of the local industries in the adoption of the CAD/CAM technology so that the effort by the university is well synchronized with industry.