Electronic Design Engineers Designing New Products

Lesley,

Your question inspired me.

I remembered an effort by Argonne National Labs that is packed with inspiration, serendipity, and innovation I found out about recently. So, I wrote a post about it.

See, it really comes from everywhere.

Cabe

Hi Lesley,

I agree with Cabe, ideas come from everywhere.  You never know when you suddenly see how to do something really neat.  One of my major sources has always been reading Science Fiction.  Every once in a while, I will read about an idea and after my subconcious has a while to absorb it, I will get a great idea for a new project.

The next part is the hardest, going from the idea to actually going through the process to define it, design it and build it.  Usually only the most useful ideas get to this stage.  Every engineer will tell you, time management is the hardest part of the job.  No matter how neat an idea may be, being able to carve out the time to actually do it is the most difficult part.  Most of the rest of the job is just applying your engineering skills.

The best part of being an engineer is that you are seldom bored.  You can always find something interesting everyday and almost every concious moment.  Engineers are always driven by a desire to create.  It's what we do.

DAB

Hi,

Thankyou ever so much for all your replies - you have all given me a better insight into your areas of expertise and ultimately what your pain points are - time mostly!! I think we could all do with a few extra hours in the day.

I have been especially taken aback by the utter creativity/passion that comes through in your replies. Despite the pain of time management and the rest it sounds like you really enjoy what you are doing..............do you all own your own businesses or work for larger organisations and do your own designing/developing in your own time?

Do you have to use branded products in your line of work or can you use own brand,i.e Multicomp,Pro-Lec etc?

And lastly - do you all have your own accounts with Farnell? If so what are your experiences in transacting with us - please be honest - we want to help and make a difference and make purchasing with us an enjoyable experience.

Thank you guys for sharing

Take care,

Lesley

Hi Lesley,

I have worked for small and large companies.  Each offers different advantages.  Larger companies can get you access to very interesting projects, but you really have to work to get onto one and build up a record of success to make a name there.  I prefer to work a smaller companies, but you end up working a lot harder just because there are fewer of you to do the work.  Still, you find yourself participating in all stages of a project just from the lack of others to do the work.

As an engineer, I would use the tools available, but I would also always been on the lookout for new and better tools.  When the chance to influence purchasing arose, I would go with the parts that had either proven to be good or had been demonstrated to be better than what I had.

Since I was disabled about ten years ago, I have just been doing small home projects, so I do not have an account with Farnell.  My purchasing needs are usually erratic and tend to be small volume. Though interacting with the E14 crowd has spurred me to get back into doing embedded projects, which is something I did early in my career and greatly enjoyed.

Now that I no longer have the pain of time management, I find myself limited by the time of my pain management.  You just can't win.

DAB

Hi DAB,

Nice to hear from you again!

I too am also disabled after being in an accident ion 2004 so I know how you feel with the restrictions of pain management - and no, you can NEVER win...........

It's great that you have found this site useful and that you have found people with the same interests to interact with and I find it absolutely fabulous that they have spurred you on to become involved in your chosen passion once again.

If embedded projects are your thing have you tried looking at 'The Knode' on the Farnell website? This string of our site is aimed specifically at engineers like yourself interested in embedded projects and I'm sure you'll find it very useful to your line of interest and interact with even more with people and engineers who share your passion.

I hope there are more people out there that will join this discussion - it's fascinating hearing all your feedback and will really help me understand how best I can support you all, so come on all you engineers out there, let's hear from you.......................

Take care......Lesley

Hi Lesley,

I have to agree with DAB on the small company.  For many years I was a repair technician, and always complained about how they designed something.  Along the way I went to school so I could be on the other side of the fence to make things that made sense to some one who has to fix them.  Long story short, I ended up moving away from what I was working with and joined a small company in a niche market.  Because it's a smaller market, the areas of innovation are limited to the application.  I have to think outside the box more to find better ways to compete with the others in our field, and also to accomplish moving forward on a much smaller budget :-).

We do get tasking from our customers for custom configurations of our equipment, which usually drives some of our design inspiration.  Others are driven by having to move the equipment way from older technology, and still be able to maintain the backward compatibility with pre-existing units that have been in the field for 30+ years.  Usually though my tasking changes when something doesn't quite fit with what we have and need to be able to adapt to available components etc. 

Lesley,

I use the following major programs regularly when designing:

SolidWorks

AutoCAD

Multisim

OrCAD

Altium

I do have a Farnell account. In fact, I recently ordered some parts from the element14 store. Not to sound like a salesman, but the element14 store had the best prices on some parts I needed.

Cabe

Hi Cabe,

Hope you are well,

What about Cadsoft Eagle? ever used this ? if so how did you find it compares to the other software - any benefits or pitfalls you could feed back?

Thank you - have a great day !!

Lesley