I'd argue that software development is much more like other engineering disciplines than, say, fiction writing or athletics. Mechanical design is an area still very much like software design. There are are high level designers, sometimes called "engineers" and lower level designers, the people who used to be draftsmen, but now use CAD workstations. This is because there is still far too much low level detail work to make it cost effective to employ the most highly trained/skilled people for all tasks.
Low level designers can wreck havoc in mechanical design. If the hole for the mounting bracket is modeled 1 cm to the left of where it ought to be, you may end up having a $10,000 paper weight instead of a die. Worse still, if you shipped the model off to a subcontractor without checking what came back from the pilot run, you may own 100,000 paper weights. This happens a lot more than most people think; "material recovery" is a euphemism for what to do with all the paper weights. On the other hand, designers often have more experience with actual manufacturing processes and environments than engineers, and they may catch types of errors that the mechanical engineers miss. In mechanical design processes, there is typically a review step, but often it is primarily a standards compliance review step - has the designer put stuff on the right layers on the drawing, etc. Less often, there is some subtantive content checking. The time lapse between committing a design error and the discovery of the error can be quite long. A lot of recalls in the automotive world are probably due to design errors, and it can take two or three years to discover the problem. Design errors in bridges or buildings can take even longer to appear. In the mechanical world, the use of simulation is playing an increasing role in avoiding design errors. I note that simulation is really just a variety of testing with the same problems in determining what/how to test. The mechnical testers have the advantage of much more powerful computer hardware and much flashier graphics. Also in the mechanical world, failure analysis is a recognized subdiscipline - read Petrovski's books. This may have evolved because mechanical system failure can arise either in the design of the product or in the manufacturing process. Failure analysis engineering may have evolved to settle the disputes between product engineering and manufacturing engineering as to who was to blame. Ruven Brooks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
