Name: ______Date: ______Period: ______
Why You Will Keep an Engineering Design Notebook
In each of the Dunwoody High School engineering courses (FET, EC and EA), you are required to keep an engineer's notebook throughout the semester.
INTRODUCTION: The technical notebook is one of the most important tools for any engineering work. This includes: basic research, product development, or engineering design. It is primarily for the experimenter's own use, but another person with similar technical background should be able to understand and duplicate any experiment, data, and conclusion, or to prepare a technical report following only the notebook.
The nature of the work and the purpose of the experimenter will influence the content and format of the notebook. Many companies have a rigid internal requirements based on the company's specific needs. The notebook formats which follow should not be interpreted as "industry standards." They are intended for work within a specific Electrical Engineering Department, and provide experience in following some acceptable format.
Guidelines
History
What is the Rationale for Maintaining an ENB?
Content Requirements
Companion Binder of Reference Materials
Guidelines
1. On the front of the notebook enter your full name, class name, and other information needed to return your notebook in case it is lost.
2. All entries must be done in INK.
3. Keep a table of contents at the front of the notebook (title each project / lesson).
4. Every page of the notebook must be numbered.
5. Do NOT skip pages (with the exception of leaving a couple of pages in the front for a Table of Contents). This is a chronological record of your work for the school year.
6. Design notebooks do not have to be neat but they must be legible.
a. Do not be obsessed with neatness at the expense of faithfully recording everything as it happens.
b. Do NOT crowd the materials on the pages.
7. Always make your entries at the time you do the work.
a. Include all results and learned information whether favorable or unfavorable.
b. Include all information even if you do NOT fully understand it at the time of entry.
8. If you make errors, just cross them out with an X or a single line. Do NOTmark through anything so that it can NOT be read.
9. Do NOTerase anything.
10. Never tear a page out of the notebook.
11. All data must be in their original form (calculations, charts, pictures, sketches on scrap paper, etc.), NOT after recalculation or transformation.
12. Rough drawings should be done directly in the notebook. More careful drawings such as machine drawings or computer-generated plots should be made and entered in.
13. Information on loose sheets of paper should be entered into the notebook by:
a. Taping the loose paper to the next available blank page in the notebook
b. Taping each corner of the loose paper
c. Use a tape that will accept ink permanently
d. Place your signature on the loose paper, continue across the tape and end on the design notebook page. Always sign and date always across tape.
14. Sign and date at the bottom of each notebook page.
Note: A good engineering design notebook is one that can be used to reconstruct your work even years after you have completed the original project. Other engineers should be able to use the notebook to reconstruct your work. The notebook will be used to determine the rightful owner of patents and other proprietary ideas. Design notebooks are important in filing patents, as they document when a discovery was made, and therefore who gets credit for it.
History
Leonardo Da Vinci recorded some 13,000 pages of engineering and scientific notes and drawings recording his designs in the 15th and 16th centuries. This was in addition to his numerous famous works of art. Since the early days of the industrial revolution, engineers have maintained logs documenting their objectives, designs and measurements. Today we refer to such logs as “engineering notebooks”, or ”ENB”.
What is the Rationale for Maintaining an ENB?
You may ask “Why devote time and effort to this? Seems like so much overhead to me and I am not planning to file a patent anyway.” One answer is “to protect your intellectual property.” For example, engineering notebooks have been used to document patent claims in the US since 1832 and even earlier in Europe. Patents are granted to the first person to invent something, not the first person to file for the patent. So having dated notes and drawings may be more valuable than you think.
Maintaining an Engineering Notebook (ENB) is considered an engineering best practice. They reduce project and company risks, preserve design decisions, support team communications, protect against lost knowledge and are essential to maintaining your company’s or your own intellectual property rights, especially as they may relate to patents.
CONTENT REQUIREMENTS: The notebook must be understandable to a person with a comparable technical background. It must be legible. It must stand alone; that is, "We got circuit from data book" is NOT an acceptable entry.
The notebook must answer the following questions:
1. WHAT WAS DONE?
- This includes the approach to the problem or design project.
- Any ideas generated should be included.
- Circuit diagrams, references used, notes taken, etc. should be included.
2. WHO DID IT?
- List all those who participate in the project for a given entry, including yourself, at the beginning of each entry.
- Initial all following pages.
- Any corrections or alterations should also be initialed.
3. WHEN WAS IT DONE?
- It must be obvious to any reader when the work was performed.
- Date all entries; entries that extend beyond one page should be dated on each page.
- A single design will have more than one date.
- Do not leave blank spaces and NEVER "back-date" entries (NEVER make ANY false entries in your engineering notebook).
General: The typical engineer’s notebook available in bookstores will be blue, brown or black, is approximately 9" X 12", and has about 100 to 150 pages. The notebook will be bound, never looseleaf, and the pages should be numbered consecutively, preferably by the printer. For the our purposes you may use composition notebooks, as long as each page is numbered and each entry is dated - if one entry covers more than one page make sure you date each page.
A neat, organized and complete notebook record is as important as the investigation itself. The notebook is the original record of what was done. It is not a report to be written after completing an investigation. Do not write on scratch paper expecting to transfer it later to the notebook. Use a blue or black non-eraseable pen. Errors are not erased, but simply marked through with a single line so that they still can be read - later you may discover that your "error" contains important information.
Leave the first few pages in the notebook blank for a Table of Contents. This is important and necessary so that each design entry can easily be found. Use only the right-hand, odd-numbered pages for the notebook record. Use the left-hand, even-numbered pages for sketches, rough calculations, and memos to yourself. You may also place wiring diagrams and graphs on the left, opposite corresponding procedures and calculations. Do not leave any blank spaces/pages in the notebook.
Format - Technical Diary
Organization of this format type is left to the engineer. This format is suited to experimental work, design work, or research. The general format and content requirements must be met. Wiring diagrams, experimental lists, procedures, data, and calculations are blended together logically and chronologically to form a step-by-step diary describing work. Observations and conclusions are entered as they are made, and summarized at the logical end of a section.
Companion Binder of Reference Materials
Throughout the project you will be collecting critical e-mails, articles, design briefs, relevant technical specifications, interface specifications, etc. The title of all these projects and lessons will appear in your ENB. You should collect these in clearly titled 3-ring binder in chronological order.
Dunwoody Engineering & Technology – Foundations of Engineering & Technology