Engineering Design and Rapid Prototyping
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this hands-on design course from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, built around a two-phase team project. In phase one, student teams conceive, design, fabricate, and validate a structural component that must meet a defined set of requirements and constraints, working through iterative rounds of prototyping using rapid prototyping methods and computer-aided design tools. Phase two returns to that same prototype as a baseline and puts it through design optimization using structural analysis software, so teams see directly how simulation-driven refinement changes a physical design they already built by hand. The course materials cover the full design cycle, from initial concept and manual fabrication through computational optimization. As with other MIT OCW offerings, lecture and project materials are free to access, with no certificate offered.