ENGR10003: Engineering Systems Design 2

Modules:
-Digital Systems: 3 written group assignments, 1 in-class test and team assessment during workshop (10%)
-Programming: 2 solo assignments, 1 in-class test and team assessment during workshop (10%)
-Mechanics: 3 written group assignments, 2 in-class tests and 2 team assessments during 2 different workshop sessions (10%)
-0.5% attendance mark AND ASSESSED PRE-PRAC for each workshop (total 5%)
-Online MC Practice Exam (5%)
-End of Semester Exam 3 hours long, 40 marks MC, 60 marks SA (60%)

I liked this subject, but I get the feeling that many people may also loathe the subejct. I didn't do ESD1 and there is virtually no content that carries over. I think the main reason why people didn't enjoy it is due to the Programming section, where they introduce you to MATLAB. Most people probably did not actively practise coding during the semester and found this component difficult. Coming in from Accelerated Mathematics 1 (MAST10008), where the subject taught MATLAB, I didn't find the MATLAB section too difficult. That being said, this subject teaches MATLAB on a more conceptual and holistic way. Those who enjoy programming/coding will tolerate and enjoy MATLAB.

Yes, with screen capture (the actual lectures are projected from iPad presentation to board)

Dr Gavin Buskes - Digital Systems
Assoc Prof Adrian Pearce - Programming
Professor Andrew Ooi - Mechanics

Yes, online graded practice exam that is fully MC. Also, several past exams were given online but they were only the Short Answer sections (I believe a change was made around 2011 which introduced the MC section). These however had no solutions, so you had to go to tutor sessions during SWOTVAC to obtain the answers. You can also browse the online ESD2-only forum for solutions from your peers.

4/5

I bought the recommended textbook and used it infrequently. You definitely don't need to buy it. The lecture material is good enough for you to do well.

-3 x 1hr lecture per week
-1 x 3hr workshop/tutorial per week (starts in week 3 - on average, they are ~2.5 hours)

2017 Semester 2

H1 (87)

Digital Systems- three written group assignments, Programming- two individual programming assignments (MATLAB), Mechanics- three written group assignments. In-class multiple choice testing at the end of every module in workshops, pre-lab quiz's that count for attendance marks in workshops. Practice exam that was compulsory and ended up being 5% of that 40%. All of above totalling 40% of final mark. End of Semester Exam- 3 hours - 60% of final grade- EXAM IS HURDLE- which means in order to pass the subject you need to pass the exam.

I did not like this subject at all. Having said that, i do completely understand that this subject just may not have been for me and will suit other people better.

Digital Systems:- The course started off with Digital Systems, a nice and easy introduction into binary numbers, number conversions and Boolean Algebra. I enjoyed this and this section was assisted well by the textbook. Gavin Buskes in my opinion is a fantastic lecturer, his lectures were interesting and informative and easy to understand. The combinational circuit design did go at quite a fast pace, so as long as you keep up with this you should be fine. Workshops in this sections were reasonably straightforward, but the final assignment of making a circuit to program an Altera Board, i would not have had any idea, but thankfully i had some very smart people in my group.

Programming: I have only just finished my first year, but out of the 8 subjects i have completed, this lectures section was by miles the worst i have come across. There is no way, someone who has no previous knowledge of MATLAB, can possibly complete to a high standard the assignments that they set. The assignments are all individual, EXTREMELY time consuming, mostly because programming may look easy, but is not. The lectures only take you through very basic MATLAB operations, and nothing in assignments actually relates to them. You do not learn anything in the lectures that will help your assignment. Having said that i do not want to scare people away from doing this subject as i know it is a pre-requisite for further engineering subjects at the university. If you manage to have some friends or know people or have previous knowledge of MATLAB yourself, you should be fine.

Mechanics: The final module of the course was Mechanics- by far my favourite section. Andrew Ooi is in my opinion a fantastic lecturer. His lectures were always entertaining, filled with jokes and more light hearted, which personally i found made it much easier to learn. My only warning is that if you have not done any high school physics or an sort of computing in your life, you will be set back a little, as the mechanics section doesn't assume previous knowledge but you will find it a lot easier if you have some background knowledge. However, as someone with no physics background at all, i managed to keep up with the set work, by doing a few extra questions here and there. Again in this section the three assignments are group assignments, they are not easy, but with a good group should be fine. The workshops are more entertaining in this section as you are physically measuring things, weights and calculating catapult distances.

The final exam: I was terrified by the thought of this exam. I had done reasonably well throughout the semester on assignments but i had a number of very smart people that i was lucky to be grouped with. However, the exam was very fair, the practice exam questions were very similar to those on the actual exam, one question on the exam was exactly the same as three years before, one programming question was from a previous assignment and the layout was as expected.

Overall the subject was alright. But if you are doing this to fill a gap, i don't recommend it purely because of the amount of time and work and number of group assignments.
Also please keep in mind that this is purely my opinion, but it is my honest opinion and i am sure many people will tell you otherwise.

Yes, with screen capture.

Dr Gavin Buskes- Digital Systems, Professor Andrew Ooi- Mechanics, Associate Professor Shanika Karunasekera- Programming

Yes, a graded online practice exam was made available, but was all multiple choice. About 5/6 past papers were provided but no answers were given, forcing students to go to consults to work through solutions. However i managed to find a Facebook group of very dedicated people who had written suggested solutions to past exams.

1/5

The textbook suggested is a university compiled resource from a number of different texts. I did buy it and when i used it, i found it very useful for extra practice questions, however, the lecture material is enough to pass.

Weekly: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 3 hour workshop

2015, Semester 2

H2

3 hours end of semester written examination: 60% HURDLE, must get 50%+
Weekly workshops (team assignments and projects and individual quizzes): 30%
Online assignments: 5%
Online forum participation: 5%

This is the best subject I have done at university so far. It is just very well organised and very well taught. The workshops and assignments are excellent and very useful and teach stuff relevant to the final exam. Also I really like the fact that the final exam is only worth 60%. I would prefer if it was worth even less and the assignments/workshops worth more because I believe that continuous assessment throughout the semester is more accurate than just basing the entire assessment on the final.

However, there are some drawbacks to this subject.

The biggest drawback is the groups. Group members can be really boring and lazy but they can also be awesome. Depends on how lucky you are. Luckily the final is a hurdle so those who don't participate in the assignments will not get away with it.

The second biggest drawback is the programming section. It is just very boring and badly taught. They replaced the lecturer due to student feedback last semester and redone the lecture notes but the programming section is still terrible. One reason why the programming section is so bad is that they use MATLAB... anyone who knows any other language knows how bad MATLAB is. I didn't go to most of the programming lectures but went to all other lectures and I didn't even read the lecture notes, that is how useless they are.

One other thing I don't like about this subject is that it covers too many topics such that it is not possible to go into much depth about any one particular topic. Technical universities in the USA unusually have separate introductory subjects for mechanical end electrical engineering. For example, MIT's 6.01 Intro to electrical engineering and computer science I. They also use python instead of MATLAB, which is great. The reason why I prefer separate subjects for mechanical and electrical engineering is that one can go into more depth in a more specialised subject.
This subject isn't easy, it is very demanding, by far the most demanding subject I have done yet but it isn't as difficult as I would like it to be, and that is due to the fact that it covers too many topics so it isn't possible to go into much depth. The lectures are very comprehensive and there are no tricks in this subject, you know exactly what you need to do to get the marks. Getting a H1 is very manageable IMO, unless you are super lazy and don't participate in assignments and workshops.

Yes, with screen capture etc.

Digital Circuits: Gavin Buskes
MATLAB: Shanika Karunasekera
Mechanics: Andrew Ooi

Yes, 5, without solutions.

5 out of 5

There is a custom textbook for the subject that is compiled from 4 other textbooks but it is useless since lectures and workshops are excellent.

Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures and 1 x three hour workshop per week. Total Time Commitment: 170 hours.

2014, semester 2.

TBA

group assignments, in class tests after every topic, online pre workshop quizzes due the night before the workshop, certain projects during workshops (practice questions which you do together at the start aren't accessed but they pop up on exams) and peer wise (this interactive thing where you have to make up 2 questions and answer 30. sounds dumb, but it's actually quite useful since the lecturers put up some of these questions on the exam for multiple choice)

This is by far one of the best level 1 subjects. The assignments are EXTREMELY CHALLENGING, even the smartest of the smartest will find them difficult, which is why you do them in groups. You will be using the computer for most of this subject (even mechanics) so be prepared. Also, do the workshop questions BEFORE the actual workshop because the tutors tend to go through them really fast and don't give you a chance to actually attempt the questions in class. The workshops are 3 hours but most of the time you can leave one hour early because the projects usually don't take that long.. use this time to ask the tutors questions (better than asking the lecturers imo because there usually isn't a long line).

Digital systems:
The best component of this subject (also my favorite). The lecturer was such a good explainer and posted up lecture notes and working out on the lms so you could just relax and listen during the lectures without worrying about having to note anything down. This requires the most "maths" out of the other two. The first 2 assignments were pretty decent.. the last one was really hard. But if you have a smart person in your group, it's all good. You get to chose your group members for this part, but for programming and mechanics they are chosen for you. This topic has no PHYSICS at all.. coming into this i thought we were going to have to learn about boring resistors and diodes like but nope.. you learn about binary numbers, bolean algebra, logic gates...very mathematical and fun.. but its not like boring calculus/spesh.. i can't really explain it but you will see:)

Programming:
There really is no point attending the lectures for these, even if the lecturer is good (ours wasn't) because you simply can not be taught programming no matter how hard you try to listen. My suggestion is download matlab beforehand. Doing the workshop and assignment questions will be sufficient enough for you to ace this component. (note that the exam questions are never actually this tough, so don;t get scared if you can't answer most of them). The first assignment was hard, the last two were alright (BEWARE THAT THESE ASSIGNMENTS ARE EXTREMELY LONGGGGGGG). This topic is one of those where you just have to have the brains to work the problems out... you can't really "learn" how to do these types of algotihmic questions. i now have complete respect for those in computer science/software engineering... just wow... how do you guys do this?! in my opinion they are smarter than doctors.

Mechanics:
This lecturer was alright, but his lecture notes had millions of silly errors which confuses A LOT OF PEOPLE. You will have to use a lot of matlab for this part since this takes place after programming unlike digital systems where you use no matlab. So beware ... MATLAB MATLAB MATLAB...although you do get to draw on diagrams as well . The assignments were consistently even in terms of difficulty (unlike the other two which had easy assignment and hard assignment.. these ones were all above average hard). If you liked structures and materials in yr11/12.. you will like this (spring constants, trusses, static equilibrium etc). The last week is based on eular's method which= calculus.

Another warning is that you don't get solutions for the assignments you do and when they are marked the tutors are extremely vague and don't bother to put any comments (just these weird dashes) so you won't know where you went wrong. After you get your assignments back, i suggest you approach the tutors IMMEDIATELY. Having no solutions for a lot of things really pissed me off because sometimes i really can't be bothered asking. This subject gives you a really good insight on engineering.. well electrical, software, mechanical and civil engineering...i didn't see anything related to chemical. If you find this subject enjoyable, then engineering is for you.

yes, with screen capture

gavin buskes (digital systems), adrian something (programming) & eric poon(mechanics)

2- from 2010 and 2011. NO SOLUTIONS. you either have to find out through asking friends, tutors/lecturers or through an online discussion thread

4.8 out of 5

don't buy any of the textbooks. the lecture notes are sufficient.

I'm doing it in the summer semester right now but in a usual semester it would be 3 one-hour lectures and 1 three-hour workshop per wk

summer 2014- exam is next week

85 H1

5% attendance for workshops (0.5% per workshop provided you completed pre-workshop on LMS),
30% compromising of 20% homework tasks, 6% from 4 tests, and 4% from in-class assessment (the 30% is split equally between Mechanics, Programming and Digital Circuits sections),
5% Online Student Questions forum (answer 30 questions and contribute 3 questions)
60% End of Semester Exam

With ESD2, you begin your technical electives at the University of Melbourne. This subject covers the principle of digital circuits (electrical engineering), programming and an introduction to statics (through structures) and dynamics (through modelling aerodynamic affects on projectile motion, torque around a point among other things). Succeeding from a very boring subject about ethics and Chem Eng in ESD1, ESD2 really did ramp up the difficulty a bit and was much, much more interesting that it's predecessor.

Digital Circuits: Electrical Engineering

We'll start with digital circuits. In this topic, you learn about the abstraction of analog circuits to create digital ones, and how these logic circuits behave. You start off with number system and bases, with particular reference to base 2 (binary), base 8 (octal) and base 16 (hex). The Hamming Code and other error correction techniques and their implementation is taught in detail, and is covered as well in workshops where you program a PLD to implement it. You'll be learning how to represent digits and letters in ASCII code and how to transmit them efficiently. I found this part of the course pretty easy, but make sure you master the basics (especially in Hamming Code) otherwise you'll get lost.

Logic gates (AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, NOT, XNOR etc), their truth tables, Karnaugh maps and Boolean Algebra is covered and taught how to create larger combinatorial circuits with those. I found that this section of the course started of incredibly easy, but then ramped up towards the end when they started creating larger circuits such as 4 bit comparators starting from first principles. Boolean Algebra was a little weird to start off with, but now, after doing it in ESD2 and FoEN, it's become almost second nature after you've mastered truth tables and memorized Boolean laws. The rest of the course, for EE, is used on design principles and how to tackle problems in order to find the "best" solution.

I found that the assignment questions for EE, especially towards the end of Assignment 2 and Assignment 3, quite difficult and requires you to be proficient at the lecture topics. They are true design problems, such as creating a large (I mean, large) combinatorial logic circuit in order to meet the specs. Make sure you pay attention in workshops because these questions usually end up on the exam.

Matlab Coding: Software Engineering/ Computer Science

This is by far the worst portion of this course. Learning how to code using lectures just failed in my opinion. The best way that I learned how to code was by getting MATLAB myself and practising. This portion of the course runs through operators, function, input-outputs, branching, loops, iterations, "games", cryptography and algorithms. The MATLAB assignments, like the EE assignments, we're pretty difficult if you did not have MATLAB yourself. YOU NEED TO PRACTISE CODING. GOING TO LECTURES WILL NOT BE ENOUGH! The programming question on the exam is quite easy, and just relies on you being able to use imbedded functions and how to write functions. No need to stress if you are finding the long-winded assignment questions hard.

Structural Analysis and Aerodynamics: Mechanical/Civil Engineering

Probably my favourite part of the course. We started off by doing a recap on springs, both linear and non-linear and parallel/series equivalents. Non-linear analysis was run through, but not in depth. Resultant forces in vector notation is run through quickly, including a recap on addition of vectors and via cosine and sine rules. Rigid bodies come in now, where the application point of the force must be taken into consideration. The principle of transmissibility (PAY ATTENTION IN THIS LECTURE) is taught and how to use it is vital. Moments, torques and couples are covered, and various methods of finding moments about a point is discussed. Resultant forces are brought back and covered in more depth, specifically to the x and y- intercepts of the resultant force via moment calculations. This is something I always took for granted. Even if you sum up the force vectors, where does that vector R start and finishing in order to get the same torque on the body.

Structural analysis begins after all of this, and we start by looking at different reaction forces due to different types of contact. The method of joint and sections for structural analysis is run through in depth and buckling forces and ultimate stress failure is covered. The assignment about struss analysis with wind forces applied at an angle of -90 < x < 90 was by far the coolest MATLAB analysis I've done at university.

The Mechanical section covered Euler's method of solving differential equations via MATLAB which is very useful for later assignments and subjects (or so said my tutor). You basically create a replica function for the ode45 (D.E. solving in MATLAB) and discuss how to apply it to projectile motion with air resistance and pendulum problems with the string length changing (think Spiderman swinging and pulling in his web as he does). These type of D.E.s are quite difficult to solve because they are coupled differential equations, so I found this section and method very interesting and applicable to engineering problems. Dynamics is recovered quickly and advanced. I found that the lecturer tried a little too hard to be funny and didn't teach enough, and I wasn't the only one with that opinion. Regardless, when he did teach, he did it well.

Digital Circuits: Electrical Engineering - 9/10
Matlab Coding: Software Engineering/ Computer Science - 3/10
Structural Analysis and Aerodynamics: Mechanical/Civil Engineering - 9/10


If you're an Eng. Sys major, you have to take this class. It's pretty good, I'll admit, but some aspects did suck hardcore (programming). Hopefully you enjoy it as much as I did.

Yes, with screen capture (I think, honestly never watched a lecture online if I missed one)

Gavin Buskes (Electrical Engineering), Rao Kotagiri (Programming), Andrew Ooi (Mechanics - Civil and Mechanical Engineering)

Yes, ~3 from the library and 1 (I got the 2011) provided at the end of the semester.

4.5 Out of 5

Dr. Buskes has complied a book from from different authors which is surprisingly good. You definitely do not have to buy it, but it will come in handy for ENGR20004 - Engineering Mechanics and FoEN - Foundations of Electrical Networks (not that you'll need it for FoEN with Brian's notes). The

3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 3 hour workshop per week

Semester 2, 2012

H1 (93)