Overview:

Central Engineering (CE) Design/Drafting staff includes both mechanical and electronic designers having an average of 25 years experience relevant to the design of unique scientific instrumentation. On any given project, individual CE designers or drafters are paired with engineers to provide a team approach to hardware design, fabrication, and assembly. Using common hardware platforms and CAD software, engineers and designers are able to share files and develop designs interactively. Senior designers work from the engineering concepts provided to detail a design: Drafters standardize the drawings of those designs that have been completed by an engineer. For NASA flight hardware projects, drawings are reviewed by NASA qualified checkers to ensure that all technical data complies with NASA requirements.

Members of this group also implement CE's Configuration Management plans and procedures.

Tools:

All staff are issued fast processor computer workstations. Opto/mechanical designers work primarily in SolidWorks, which has full 3D Modeling capabilities. Electrical design is typically done using Viewlogic's electrical design package.

To provide engineering staff with universal access to current drawings and related materials, both on-site and in the field; a separate, fully functional, web-accessible database is created and maintained for each project utilizing Intuit Quickbase software that has been custom designed for this purpose. Links to the latest revision of any drawing (.PDF), Mechanical Part (.IGS), and Change Order or Document Change Request are available to the engineering staff through a secure access.

Reprographic Services:

Central Engineering maintains both an Oce TDS400 Scanner/Copier/Plotter and a Hewlett Packard W750C printer/plotter with full color options to provide engineering staff with a complete range of plotting, scanning, and copying capabilities.

Projects:

Members of the Design/Drafting Group have been key members of the project teams that designed and built AIA, the Solar-B (Hinode) XRT, instruments for the converted MMT, TRACE, Chandra HRC and HXDS, and the Submillimeter Array.

Design/Drafting & Configuration Control Point of Contact:

Supervisor: (Vacant) Contact Central Engineering (617) 496-7990 / 7814

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