My Name James B. Francis College of Engineering

Mechanical Engineering Student One University Ave

Tel (978) 999-9999 Lowell, MA 01854

Email.

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

To: Professors Kim or Sullivan

From: Name

Date:

Re: CAD Survey Report

______

Company

Your company name and what the company is producing should be here. You also need to write why you need CAD software for the company. The title is formatted using the Format > Paragraph command with the After option set to 6. Text is Times Roman or Arial font and is 12 pt.

Software Packages

Present how and why you choose the three CAD packages. Compare them in terms of cost, their existing customers, cons, pros and so on. The comparison should present supporting data for your selection at the end.

Each new thought should be in a well organized paragraph. Paragraphs should not be indented. Avoid the use of single-sentence paragraphs. The paragraph should be single spaced 12-pt font. The spacing between paragraphs should be a 6-pt font. To create the 6-pt spacing between paragraphs in MSWord 2003, click Format > Paragraph… > and choose 6-pt from the Spacing/After: menu as shown in Fig. 1. Note that a figure title goes under the figure.

Fig. 1 How to format line spacing after a paragraph

Notice how “6-pt” is hyphenated in the previous paragraph. This hyphenation denotes a compound modifier. The number 6 describes the point size of the font—not how many fonts to be used. Notice the long hyphen in the previous sentence. The long hyphen is used to set off a fragment from the rest of the sentence and is created by typing “--”. MSWord automatically will change the “--” to a long hyphen.

A list of numbers is best reported in a table—not buried in a sentence within a paragraph. Table 1 is an example of the link lengths used for a fourbar linkage. Notice that the entries in Table 1 are centered top to bottom in the cells and the table is “fit” to the cell entries. The entries may be left, right or center justified per the discretion of the author of the report. Table titles are always above the table and should be centered. There is a 6-pt space after the title to the top of the table. The entire table should be on one page, and the table should not appear on a page before it is referenced in the text. Any table or figure in the report should be discussed in the report. Otherwise why is the table or figure necessary to the report?

Table 2 is an example of poorly formatted table. The table should be centered on the page and fit to the data. The data are not centered top to bottom in the cells. Note in the previous sentence “data are”. The word “data” is a plural noun and requires a plural verb “are”. Tables and figures should be distributed on a page so as to avoid having large blank areas on a page.

Table 1. Link Lengths

Link / Length
(inches)
Crank / 2
Coupler / 5.5
Output Rocker / 6
Ground Link (Base Plate) / 5

Table 2. Link Lengths

Link / Length
(inches)
Crank / 2
Coupler / 5.5
Output Rocker / 6
Ground Link (Base Plate) / 5

Fig. 2 is an example of how a plot should be included as a figure in the report. No figure should appear on a page before it is referenced in the report. The axes should be clearly labeled to describe the respective variable on each axis. The tic marks should be labeled, and the labels should be formatted to a reasonable number of significant figures. The numbers should be “nice” numbers. However, in Fig. 2, all tic marks should be formatted to one decimal place, e.g. 1.0 not 1 on the x axis.

Fig. 3 shows an example of a bad plot. Scales on graphs should be 0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5... on the x axis and 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0...4.5 on the y axis. You cannot read a graph to ninedecimal places, so do not label to such precision. All tic labels should be the same format—not 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5... . Rather the axes should be 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5... . Do not use unusual scales, e.g. 1.37, 1.87, 2.37.... Fit axes to the graph—do not have wasted white space with a curve plotted in one corner of a big graph.

Fig. 2 X Location of Point O as a Function of Time

Fig. 3 X Location of Point O as a Function of Time

Most figures should be in the body of the discussion section of the report. Sometimes there are many figures that are not critical to the discussion but may be necessary for documentation purposes. These extra figures should be put into an appendix. No matter where a figure appears, it probably should have at least one sentence referring to it. The report should tell what the author wants the reader to see in graph. The author should not assume that the reader will see the obvious.

All references should be cited in a References section of the memo. For this report, examples of references for a journal paper, web page, memo and book are given as 1 through 4, respectively. Web site references should be as specific as possible to get the reader to the specific web page being referenced. For example, http://m-5.eng.uml.edu is insufficient to get to this example memo. The full web address is
http://m-5.eng.uml.edu/22.321/Fall2008/Labs/Example_Lab_Report_Format.pdf .

Software Package to Buy

Present your selection of the s/w package. Please include why you choose the s/w package. The section should not include any new information that was not already presented in the previous section of the report.

References

1.  Fleisig, G.S., Zheng, N., Stodden, D.F. and Andrews, J.R. (2002). “Relationship between bat mass properties and bat velocity”. Journal of Sports Engineering 5.

2.  “Science of Baseball Activity: Minimizing Handle Force” (2004).

http://www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/handle_forces.html. Date last checked 01-Sep-2008.

3. Sherwood, James A., (28-Sep-2006). “Semester Design Project”. Memo.

4. Lerner, L.S. (1996). Physics for Scientists and Engineers. Jones and Bartlett Publishers Inc., Boston. pp. 308-309.

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