Presented as team project

For ENME 414

By

The purpose of the Information Technologies Conference is to provide information to students on the availability of engineering software packages throughout the College of Engineering. In addition, the conference gives students and faculty insight and demonstration of some software packages such as EES, Pro/Engineering, ANSYS, and MatLab. This will allow listeners to find out more about the potential of the software presented at the conference. Since this project is part of the ENME414 class, a more elaborate presentation of ANSYS, Pro/Engineering and Pro Fly Through will take place.

The conference is aimed at giving those in attendance a better understanding of the options available to them in the College of Engineering. It will be most helpful to students and faculty who are trying to widen their understanding of which software packages they can use in their classes and research. During the course of the conference, we will explain how to access difference types of software, which computer labs are available on campus, and where to find additional sources of information.

The main purpose of this conference was informing the available computer software at university of Maryland the college of Engineering, and how powerful they are. Therefore, the most popular and useful software for engineering students was selected.

In the beginning of the semester, the computer software on Windows NT systems, WAM, and GLUE systems were researched, then discussed with Dr. Zhang to decide which software should be presented. During the first stages of discussion Pro-Engineer, ANSYS, MatLab, and Unix system were selected for presentation. Over the course of several later meetings we talked about number of other packages as well. Finally, FEM packages (such as ANSYS and Algor), CAD systems (such as Pro/ENGINEER and Pro/FLY-THROUGH), and numerical solvers (MatLab and EES) were selected for presentation during the conference.

The information about computer labs on campus is available in the Computer and Space Sciences building (CSS). To obtain the brief explanation of software, we visited numerous websites and studied the software manuals. Moreover, we went to every engineering department and talked to professors and students about which software packages they are using in their classes, so we could decide which software is the most popular and useful in the engineering school. We talked to Dr. Jackson and Dr. Herold in Mechanical Engineering Department to get an advice and examples for demonstrating EES and MatLab. Other example for MatLab, ANSYS, and Pro/ENGINEER were the class assignment in ENME 471, Integrated Product and Process Development, and ENME 414, Computer Aided Design.

To have a successful conference, there were several things to be prepared. The most importance was the scheduling of the conference. However, there was no choice to decide the conference day and time because of the room reservation. The first preparation was the announcement of the conference to get more people to attend the conference, and the announcement was advertised in every engineering department in two weeks before the conference, and we made sign up program on the computer to collect the name of visitors. We also made a poster with brief explanation of our conference, and the poster was displayed during the conference. The day before the conference, we set up all computers that we needed in the conference room and installed Power Point presentation and software we were going to use.

The Information Technologies Conference took place on May 5^th A.V. Williams building. The conference ran from 8:30 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. The schedule for the conference went as follows:

8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Registration and guest sign-in

9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Finite Element Analysis (Pro/MECHANICA and ANSYS)

The conference went relatively well. There were no major problems with the presentation and the material was presented in its entirety. There were some difficulties with running some software packages, however, we felt that the conference was relatively successful, in that it was a first conference of its kind.

The biggest problem with the conference was the attendance. The success of every conference largely depends on the audience, and how many people attend it. In our case, the turnout for the conference was relatively poor. There was a number of students and faculty during the first hour of the conference, but as the conference went on, the number of people decreased. We feel that the lack of people in attendance can be attributed to mostly to the timing of the conference. The conference took place early in the morning, at the end of the semester. This time is the busiest time of the semester for most faculty and students, therefore we felt that not too many people could attend.

There are a number of suggestions that we felt will help a group of students to prepare a conference in the future. The important questions affecting the Information Technologies Conference are:

• What software packages to present
• When to schedule a conference
• How to get more people to attend the conference

Based on our experience with running the conference, there are two major groups of people who would like to attend such a conference. First group is the students, who are trying to find out how to use a particular software package used in one of their classes. The second group is the faculty and the students who are trying to find out what software packages are available out there for use in research or studies. Both groups are generally interested in location of the software and how to access it.

Given those two major groups of listeners, we feel that the software packages presented should fall into following categories:

• Software packages used by number of classes throughout of College of Engineering. These packages should be covered in more detail, citing particular examples and giving demos. Packages which should be discussed in this section:
• MatLab
• EES
• Pro/ENGINEER
• FEA package (such as ANSYS or Pro/MECHANICA)
• Any other package which is widely used at the time of the conference
• Specific packages owned by the College of Engineering, but which are not widely used throughout classes. Brief overview of these packages is appropriate. Some of these packages can be used for various purposes, such as FEA, CAD applications, and general programming. Examples of software packages in this category include:
• ABYQUS
• AutoCAD
• 3D Studio
• VRML editors
• Pro/FLY-THROUGH

The scheduling of the conference is extremely important for the its success. If the timing of the conference is not chosen carefully, the turnout of people attending the conference will be low.

Below are the suggestions for the successful scheduling of the conference:

• Do not schedule conference early in the morning. Afternoon to late afternoon are probable the more preferred times.
• Do not schedule conference before midterms or at the end of the semester before the finals. The optimal time for the conference to be successful will be sometime in the middle of the semester.

There are a number of factors that can help increase the number of people attending the conference. As mentioned above, thoughtful scheduling of the conference will help increasing the number of people who can attend. Here are the additional suggestions for increasing the number of people attending:

• Start advertising the conference early. Post fliers and announcements well in advance. Make sure to state the benefits people will carry out of attending the conference.
• Address all groups of people who could possible be interested. Inform professors, make announcements in classes. Make sure to inform freshmen and new students of the conference.
• Possible make the attendance if not mandatory then extra bonus activity for students in ENES100. They are one of the groups who can benefit the most from such a conference.
• Provide free food. Free food always brings people in.
• Work with different engineering societies to bring more people in.

The Information Technologies Conference is an important event that needs to take place in the School of Engineering on regular basis. The College of Engineering provides student and faculty with access to various software packages, and it is extremely important to inform people which options are available to them.

Out team, consisting of four students in ENME 414 class has organized and presented the conference with help of Dr. Zhang of Mechanical Engineering Department and number of the graduate students under his supervision. The conference took place in the beginning of May and ran for three hours. General overview of software packages and their availability were presented as well as more detailed examples of some important software packages. These packages include:

• Pro/ENGINEER
• Pro/MECHANICA
• MatLab
• EES
• ANSYS
• Pro/FLY-THROUGH

While the turnout for the conference was relatively low, we feel that the conference was a success. It showed that such a conference is possible and it is important to continue to inform students and faculty of options available to them. This conference allowed all the members of our team to learn more about every software package that we have presented. We have also learned how to find information about the software available in the University of Maryland system and College of Engineering in particular.

Our team has put together number of suggestions for the success of future conferences (as discussed above), which we feel will be helpful to students trying to organize such a conference in the future.