Computer-Aided Engineering Lab

The mechanical engineering computer lab is a computer lab with special software for our undergraduate mechanical engineering students. It has 12 IBM compatible PC's on a Novell network, three vax workstations and a new DEC Alpha workstation.

The software available on these PC's includes Microsoft Office (for word processing and spreadsheets), Algor (a program for modeling stresses, deflection and temperature in solid mechanics), Matlab (a program for mathematical analysis ) and PSI Plot (graphing software). In addition students in their freshman year purchase a license for AutoCAD (computer-aided design software) that allows them to use that on our PC's as well.

The three vax stations (larger computers than the PC's) are used to run IDEAS, a program that allows 3D modeling of solids.

Finally the DEC Alpha workstation is connected to two other Alpha workstations in our department. These three UNIX workstations give us the most powerful departmental computer facilities on campus. The software available on the UNIX platform includes MARC (a program for modeling solids), FIDAP ( a program for modeling fluids) and compilers for the programming languages C, C++, FORTRAN 77, FORTRAN 90 and Pascal.

All of these facilities, as always in Mechanical Engineering at UMass Dartmouth, are dedicated to undergraduate education.