Uni Stuff > The University Journey Journal
Jamon Being an Adult
jamonwindeyer:
--- Quote from: owidjaja on April 10, 2018, 08:09:54 pm ---Ooh all these diagrams look fancy and I don't even know what it is lol (I looked at one of these diagrams for a construction site and I was so lost what the diagram was trying to say lmao). What exactly are you using to design these documentations?
--- End quote ---
Neither did I three months ago ;) It's a program called AutoCAD - Engineers use a lot of CAD (Computer Assisted Design) software. It's a broad range of tools that help you do things like produce technical diagrams, run simulations, and create to scale 3D models ;D
CAD is to engineers what Adobe is to film makers, photographers and designers ;D
Edit: You can download AutoCAD for free if you are a student and feel like mucking around with it!
owidjaja:
--- Quote from: jamonwindeyer on April 10, 2018, 08:50:39 pm ---Neither did I three months ago ;) It's a program called AutoCAD - Engineers use a lot of CAD (Computer Assisted Design) software. It's a broad range of tools that help you do things like produce technical diagrams, run simulations, and create to scale 3D models ;D
CAD is to engineers what Adobe is to film makers, photographers and designers ;D
Edit: You can download AutoCAD for free if you are a student and feel like mucking around with it!
--- End quote ---
Ooh looks like I found something to waste my time on in the holidays ;)
Is it compatible with IOS system?
jamonwindeyer:
--- Quote from: owidjaja on April 10, 2018, 08:54:42 pm ---Ooh looks like I found something to waste my time on in the holidays ;)
Is it compatible with IOS system?
--- End quote ---
Aha you can get CAD stuff on iPads, yes!! And it's a good way to muck around with it ;D otherwise you can get it for free on Windows or Mac, here! :)
jamonwindeyer:
Week 12
Halfway through the internship! Gone crazy quick, actually ;D
With the project done, I've shifted into a very different style of work. Rather than a single project where all the deadlines are self mandated (no one else is really waiting on me, the client has deadlines but I work at my pace and in the order I choose), this week was about doing lots of smaller tasks for many people.
This is something I struggled with hardcore in my first placement. I think its a big difference between proper work and work in say, retail - In retail, your manager tells you what to do and that is that. This week, I made myself available to many people and so had lots of people asking me to help them out, independently. This means that, not only do I need to prioritise the tasks, I need to communicate properly with everyone to make sure they know how I'm travelling. If Person A's task is more important than Person B's, Person B needs to know that I'll be getting to their work later - Etc, etc.
In my first placement, I found it hard to juggle work and communicate this properly. I would be hesitant to take any additional work on top of the first given task, which is not how things work. This week, I feel I did a way better job arranging things and keeping everyone happy ;D
One of my colleagues has been conducting checks on a purchase order from a client. Basically, they are buying millions of dollars worth of equipment based on documents supplied to them, we need to make sure they actually need what they are buying based on the design they have. This involved lots of work in Excel, including (finally, after not touching it for agees) getting back into VBA, writing scripts to trawl through the thousands of instruments to look for matches and stuff. Definitely don't feel like doing that manually.
A little note - Any Engineers reading this wanting to improve their employability, learn Excel. Become a wizard with it, including Macros if you can. Seriously the most broadly useful piece of software ever. I've used it in every Engineering workplace environment I've been around, used it at university, hell, I use it for AN work.
The previous intern developed a booking system for electronic software licenses using some fancy features in Outlook. It was supposed to go live last year, but for whatever reason, didn't quite get there. Updated the documentation, ran some tests and got the system going ;D
I spent the remainder of my time becoming familiar with the design for the project I'll be helping with next - This one is much bigger. The design I was involved with previously was a few dozen drawings, this one is hundreds - We're designing a system to automate operation in a big smelter. Automation is good, it reduces human error and keeps personnel away from super hot temperatures and dangerous high voltages.
This design is intense, mostly because the voltages are just so high. A little fault somewhere and you can literally reduce your circuits (and anyone near them) to ash. There's lots of use of radio and fibre-optics to reduce the amount of actual electrical connections between zones, to reduce the change of a stray high voltage getting somewhere where it shouldn't.
Anyway, I spent a solid day and a half looking over the current design, wrapping my head around it, making notes for us to use when we start making changes next week to get things working automatically. It's really cool to be given time to just understand stuff - It felt weird though, I needed to remind myself that I was working even though I wasn't necessarily producing a deliverable ;D
Lots more to write about now that my work is more varied! :)
jamonwindeyer:
Week 13
Another really busy week!!
Last week I spent a heap of time reviewing a design for an aluminium smelter. Basically, they've got a big crane 'thing' that refills all the big pots of liquid metal. Right now this is done/controlled by an operator, but they want to make it automatic - Less chance of stuff getting missed, less chance of damage, etc etc.
The crane works using a bunch of switches (relays) that turn each other on and off in the right sequence to do things in the right order. No processing, no computer - Purely hardwired, which is amazing! For me, at least - The more experienced Engineers used to do everything like that, aha. Anyway, automation requires processing, so we need to take that design and add a controller. This involves finding the electrical signals we want to bring in as inputs, and those we want to control as outputs, and wiring them up.
To do that, we need drawings of exactly what we want - That's what I spent the first couple of days doing this week. Adding red pen to the existing drawings to indicate the changes we actually want, to be done more professionally/properly by a draftsperson later.
Second half of the week, new project! This one is working with a SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) System - Something I've actually worked on before, exciting! These systems are how pretty much any 'plant' monitors and controls their equipment from a central location. It's essentially a run time environment, with graphics/behaviour/roles/permissions/alarms/logging developed as needed, that runs on your machine and communicates with external processors and equipment.
What I was doing was helping set up some brand spanking new machines with the right configurations for an existing SCADA system. Had to get them to talk, so lots of changing firewall settings and IP addresses and such. Did lots of modifications to the SCADA to make it work nicely on the new hardware. Set up partitions for recovery environments and backups and such. The coolest thing for me though was actually modifying the registry to completely disable Windows for the user account - So, when you log in, you don't get a Desktop and Taskbar. You get the SCADA environment, and that's it. But like, you can't just do that - What if you need to update the machine or access a backup file? So in the SCADA system, behind a password, you need to add a backdoor that manually starts the relevant processes and lets you get into Windows if you need it. Messy stuff!
I felt really good at work this week - I think because I've actually got experience working with SCADA systems, I can be more to my boss than just a "yes man." I can actually challenge his thoughts and provide a different perspective. At one stage we were discussing something and I caught myself saying, "I don't think that's right mate, I think it's actually _________," and I sort of went on autopilot then because I was too busy thinking, "Wait, what am I doing." I'm actually at the point now where I can be a member of the team, and it sort of took me by surprise, because I haven't ever had the confidence in my own work to do that yet. Really cool ;D
Question for Computer Whizzes, if any happen to be readingI have installed a piece of software that automatically generates backup images of my C Drive at regular intervals, and stores these on a spare disk. They have also provided a disc image that is supposed to be a recovery environment. I imagine the idea is I boot into this environment if the C Drive were ever to fail, and it would give me the functionality to restore my system. However, no matter what I try, I can't get the machine to boot into the environment, whether I've burned the recovery image onto a USB or a disc (will probably eventually be its own partition on the spare disk). I've no reason to think the image is faulty, and I've every reason to believe I've screwed up something because I don't do much of this sort of stuff - Anything I might have likely stuffed?
Haven't spoken about my home-life much lately, mostly because I've settled in to the new apartment and not much is happening. I'm majorly hating the lack of daylight atm though, has made it so hard to go for a run after work or generally do anything outside.
Think I'm due for a rental inspection soon, I'm sure my tenancy agreement said after three months and it has been longer. I'm not even concerned - I left this morning for a trip back home after work, and I looked back as I walked out and thought, "Wait, does anyone live here?" Honestly could probably clean up and leave the place with all my stuff within a couple of hours ::)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version