To the Editor: In reading the article "Pros and Cons of CAD" (September, page 38), I was reminded of my own experiences as chief design engineer at Solar Turbines in San Diego. In interviewing young graduate engineers, I found that most didn't want to be design engineers, as they had little training or experience in creating something from an idea. In addition, few had any previous contact manufacturing a part.

As a result, even with some experienced designers, final drawings are often left to experienced non-degreed drafting and layout personnel who had good contact with the shop, to settle on such things as manufacturing tolerances and relationships to mating assemblies. To help ensure producible parts, I placed a manufacturing engineer within the design groups to maintain contact with manufacturing early on in the design process and, in addition, to initial all detail drawings before release.

My own mechanical engineering education at Ohio State University required three quarters on theory, labs, and machine design, and summer quarters on shop practice. Our four-year project, where patterns were made, castings were poured, and parts machined and assembled, resulted in our own half-inch table drill press and 1/4-hp electric motor. I was quite familiar with how parts were made.

Starting with the transition from slide rules to programmable calculators and computers, the path from initial design to final product has become harder to trace. Not many engineers today can look at a design, and say, "It doesn't look right," without being confronted with computer printouts, showing it's "OK."

Thomas Ask, P.E.
Cogan Station, Pa.

To the Editor: Your article "Pros and Cons of CAD" (September, page 38) provided good insights into the impact of CAD use.

About two years ago, I did an investigation of its use in concept development (Ask, T., "Motivating Creative Designs," Proceedings American Society of Engineering Education, St. Lawrence Section, 2005) that revealed some interesting results. My study found that even among highly proficient CAD users, about 55 percent of college seniors studying product design preferred to develop concepts with paper and pencil. These were students who lived and breathed CAD from their high school years. CAD is like math, a tool to be used as needed.

To the Editor: In the September issue (Letters), William J. Billet writes that Milorganite was developed during World War II. While waiting for an engineering job to open up in 1938, I worked in a fertilizer store in Florida and Milorganite was an established product we sold. Maybe he had the wrong World War.

Editor's note: According to the Web site Milorganite.com, the fertilizer was introduced in 1925 by the Milwaukee Sewerage Authority. The name is derived from the phrase "Milwaukee organic nitrogen."

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