The engineer must identify and understand the relevant constraints in order to produce a successful design. Constraints include available resources, physical or technical limitations, flexibility for future modifications and additions, and other factors such as requirements for cost, manufacturability, serviceability, and marketing and aesthetic considerations. By understanding the constraints, engineers deduce specifications for the limits within which an object or system may be produced and operated.
Engineers utilize knowledge of science and mathematics, and appropriate experience, to find suitable solutions to the problem at hand. Creating an appropriate mathematical models of the problem allows them to rigorously analyze it, and to test potential solutions. If multiple reasonable solutions exist, engineers evaluate the different design choices on their merits and choose the solution that best meets the requirements.
Engineers typically attempt to project how well their designs will perform to their specifications prior to full-scale production. They use, among other things: scale models[?], simulations, destructive tests, and stress tests. Testing ensures that artifacts will perform as predicted.
To make designs standardized and easily accessible, computers play an increasingly important role. Using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software, engineers are able to capture more information about their designs. The computer can automatically translate some models to instructions suitable for milling machines to fabricate (part of) a design. The computer also allows increased reuse of previously developed designs by presenting an engineer with a library of predefined parts ready to be used in his own designs.
Engineers as professionals take seriously their responsibility to produce designs that the will perform as expected and will not cause unintended harm to the public at large. Engineers typically include a factor of safety[?] in their designs to reduce the risk of unexpected failure.
It is a myth that engineer originated to describe those who built engines. In fact, the word derives from the Latin, ingeniosus, the root of the modern English word 'ingenious'. An engineer was thus a clever, practical, problem solver. The spelling of the word was later influenced by back-formation from the word 'engine'. The term later evolved to include all fields where the skills of application of the scientific method are used. In other languages like Arabic, the word for "engineering" also means "geometry".
Science attempts to explain newly observed and unexplained phenomena, creating mathematical models to closely match the experimental results. Technology and engineering are the application of knowledge gained through science, and yields practical results. Scientists work on science; engineers work on technology. However, there can be overlap between science and engineering. It is not uncommon for scientists to become involved in the practical application of their discoveries. Conversely, in the process of developing technology engineers sometimes find themselves exploring new phenomena.
Some engineering related topics are:
some engineering related books are:-