What Software do Mechanical Engineers NEED to Know?

What software do Mechanical Engineers use and need to know? As a mechanical engineering student, you have to take a wide spectrum of classes, where you will need to use different software to complete projects and tasks. Should you EVEN invest your valuable time learning these software in the first place OR should you do something more beneficial for landing job offers and making you more competitive? In this video, I explain the 3 key categories of software and provide a list of software that every mechanical engineering student should learn to stand out in job interviews and succeed as a mechanical engineer in the real world.

Amazon Associates Affiliate Links
*** As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases ***
===My Favorite CAD Books ===

===My Favorite CAE Books ===

===My Favorite Programming Books ===

=== Filming Gear ===

=== CAD Software===

=== CAE Software===

=== Computational/ Programming Software===

Follow me:

Time Stamps:
0:00 Intro
1:10 Software Type 1: Computer-Aided Design
4:55 Software Type 2: Computer-Aided Engineering
9:45 Software Type 3: Programming / Computational
12:38 Conclusion

[brandons]

As a machinist PLEASE, PLEASE for the love of god, talk to the people who are ACTALLY going to make your parts. I cannot stress this enough. CAD gives you the ability to design things that are just not feasible to make in a reasonable timeframe/cost. I can't tell you how often I've had to talk to an engineer about a feature/design because they didn't get input from a machinist during the design phase. You'd be surprised at a little input can go a long way. At my current shop we helped out biggest customer save time and money on a part. We cut weeks out of the processing time, while making the part easier to manufacture and eliminating potential failure points. In the end we cut the cost of the part by about 20%.

[yak-machining]

As a hobby machinist, i use Paint as a engineering software

[arods]

I have a PhD in MechEng. I seriously recommend to avoid Matlab. It has no real usage outside academy. Learn Python and C++ instead. Thank me later.

[xyzzy]

If you can design readily manufacturable parts, you will always have a job. This is one of the most underrated skills in mechanical engineering.

[pablocarmona]

It's interesting how way different is the approach that an engineering has depending on where you are. Here in my country (Colombia) Excel is a tool that you MUST know, and they let you know that in the job info. Moreover in the mechanical engineering sphere the most likely job that one can find as an engineer is on maintenance.

[jc]

Great video, the sound reverberates a little in the table shoot. Great stuff, thank you.

[MANIAKRA]

Awesome talk! As a 3D artist this was fascinating for me to see the flipside, how engineers use the same software in the real world. Cool to know fusion 360 is up there for you too.

[frikkied]

I would argue that the most important requirement is to be versatile and willing and able to learn new software whenever needed. Don't fall in love with your tools. Nowadays there are so many different software solutions out there to solve the same tasks and different companies often use different software and you have to be willing to readily adapt to new software. It's good to develop expertise in one specific tool and to try to master it, but know that you might have to learn something new sooner or later, whether it's CAD/CAM, programming languages or wherever.

[garyhilson]

Very Good Information!!! You are REALLY on point !!!! Thank You for the video. It cleared up thinks that I knew and didn't.

[ALONSOMON]

thanks for such valuable information I learned to use the following programs at university

CAM (MasterCAM)
CAD (3D [Solidworks, Catia] 2D [AutoCAD, Draftsight]
CAE ( Patran/Nastran, Ansys )
Programming (Matlab/Simulink, EES, Octave, Java [Texpat, Eclipse])
Simulation (Festo Fluidsim, Itrilogy)

I think that I will look for more than adding a new program is to improve on one of the most demanded in the market

[lewesglen]

A very useful alternative to the CAE analysis software you mentioned is Altair’s ‘SimSolid’. It eliminates the need to simplify the geometry changes required by most traditional FEA software as pointed out in step 1 of your video and also doesn’t use ‘meshing’ so eliminates that part of the preprocessing activity in step 2. It lets you analyse the CAD model as you designed it. It is incredibly good for getting fast and reliable results

[filmweaver]

Ppl don’t understand how practical and extremely important programming is… model based design and understanding the physics behind all our designs is key to great products

[thebloxxer]

One quirk about CAD is that most functions are transferrable from software to software. I use Onshape right now, but have used Inventor and Fusion 360 in the past as part of my education, and a significant chunk of functions are identical or near identical.

Note: I am still in college.

[souravrawat]

Thanks. Great video, just what I was looking for.

[bt]

I work at a company that produces custom parts out of sheet metal. We typically use SOLIDWORKS and I'm fairly comfortable with that but I've found that having a more simple and lightweight software to complement it such as Fusion 360 can really help cut production times on less complex orders.

[abdofast]

Great video!! I support your good work and waiting for your new ones.

[moazzeid]

I have learned how to use SW and I intend to learn about Ansys.
Oh, thank you for this informative and really improtant programs.

[martinliza]

Great video! From the software point of view, I will say that if you are in the modeling and simulations industry you will need to learn C++ and Linux. Modeling and Sims Eng. Is a huge field, unfortunately schools don’t prepare engineers for this field.

[veronical.]

This is very helpful! As a returning engineer, this is a great summary of the tools that employers expect you to have. Nice Summary and exlpanations!

[pruthvimanjunath]

Thank you very much, it was very helpful!!