Are you lost in the complex world of Computer Aided Engineering? Do you feel like you need a map or some guidance to navigate through the endless concepts, career options and technical jargon?
Welcome to CAE Compass - the only beginner's guide to CAE that shows you the reality, expands your knowledge base and steers you away from making any potential mistakes (or at least avoid most of them).
Are you ready? Let's begin.
In this article, we will see:
1) Overview of FEA
2) Misconceptions about CAE
3) CAE - Fitness factor
Separating fact from fiction
When you are new and starting a career in CAE, you encounter a lot of things like meshing, modeling, analysis, post-processing. You get bombarded by terms like implicit, explicit, nonlinear, iterations, timestep, first order, second order and what not which makes CAE seem like a difficult field to work.
At first, it’s really hard to make sense of what’s happening around you as it's not easy to connect the dots.
The worst thing is, if you miss-out on anything important, you tend to lose focus and fail to see the big picture. CAE then remains no more interesting, and you start doing things merely because it's your job.
There’s actually a ton of material available all over the internet that explains ‘How to become a successful CAE Engineer’. But you would be surprised to know that it’s not as hard as it seems.
In fact, if you are willing to put a little effort, understanding and connecting everything becomes really simple. To help you reach that level of realization, I’ve created this module which will act as a compass to guide you through all the overwhelming stuff.
And yes, along with giving a step-by-step explanation, I’ll also be sharing all the required material which will be free of cost. Don't believe it?
here's an example - 12 free resources for CAE Engineers
Unlike other fields, CAE has a vast but interesting background. If you’re curious to just stop for a moment, look back in time and realize how far we have come, take a look at below picture.
Are you still thinking that CAE is a fancy term for some simulation software? Well, it's time to bust those crazy misconceptions and wake up!
Many individuals tend to think narrowly, wherein they readily accept others' statements without verifying facts from reliable and knowledgeable sources. Same goes with CAE. This article is titled, "Don't believe everything you hear" and now you'll understand 'why'.
Forget what you thought you already knew and get ready for implementation of physics in a more practical way with some problem-solving stuff.
Here's the truth! 👇
Did you just absorb more knowledge than a sponge in a car wash? That's amazing! But hold on - why not relax for a bit before we move on to the next step?
CAE - Fitness factor
“Where do I begin?”
This is the first question that comes to our mind when we see someone posting on LinkedIn about CAE openings in so and so company or that they are looking for CAE Analyst with X years of experience who possess Y types of skills, etc.
If you are starting as a fresher, there are certain skills which a company expects you to possess or at least must be familiar with before joining. These skills come under one of the three basic factors. What are those factors? Let’s take a look.
The first important thing to keep in mind is that CAE is about ‘Problem Solving’ and problem solving in engineering requires a good knowledge of the Fundamentals, Imagination and Toolset.
FIT i.e Fundamentals, Imagination and Toolsets – these form the backbone (FITness!) or building blocks of a good problem-solver in CAE.
For an entry level or fresher job, having a good knowledge of the fundamentals (or sound technical knowledge or Engineering basics) is essential. The other two factors i.e Tool expertise and Imagination can be developed later or in most cases the company might train him/her on it as per their requirements.
Let's try to understand three possible scenarios based on these factors:
Case-1: If someone possesses Tool expertise but is not good at Fundamentals or Imagination, he/she probably works as a CAE Engineer or modeler which is by the way also a part of problem solving, and some industries even prefer such people.
Case-2: If someone is good with Fundamentals and Imagination but not so good with the Tools, he/she also works as a CAE Engineer. But eventually he/she needs to gain Tool expertise quickly or else it might become a struggle (problem may remain unsolved!).
Case-3: If someone is good with Imagination as most people are (especially freshers) but is neither familiar with the Tool nor good at the Fundamentals, he/she should look for a career in the entertainment industry like Animation or Graphic design.
Just kidding! In such cases he/she can acquire the other two skills by taking extra efforts or taking help from their peers already working in the CAE domain.
Having a strong grasp of the fundamentals can solve majority of the challenges in CAE. 👈 Read that again.
Now, the next big question that should come to your mind is, how do these three elements FIT together or work together in co-ordination for problem solving? Let’s discuss this with an example in the next step.
If you've got any questions or feedback, don't hesitate to write them in comments and I'd be happy to answer them.
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