The term 'Over engineered'
The term 'Over engineered'
(OP)
This is a minor issue that I come against every now and then.
Where I started engineering the terms over engineered and over designed meant opposite things i.e. overdesigned meant it was large than required and over engineered meant that you spent a whole week designing one beam to the nth degree.
Where I am in the UK they tend to use the two interchangeably to mean that it is larger than necessary.
What do people out there take as the meaning of these 2 terms?
Where I started engineering the terms over engineered and over designed meant opposite things i.e. overdesigned meant it was large than required and over engineered meant that you spent a whole week designing one beam to the nth degree.
Where I am in the UK they tend to use the two interchangeably to mean that it is larger than necessary.
What do people out there take as the meaning of these 2 terms?





RE: The term 'Over engineered'
Peter Stockhausen ://www.lin kedin.com/ profile/vi ew?id=3006 4526&t rk=tab_pro
Senior Design Analyst (Checker)
Infotech Aerospace Services
www.infotechpr.net
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RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
yes thats more like what I was trying to get at, like having 10 beams when 2 larger ones will do e.t.c.
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."
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RE: The term 'Over engineered'
An electrical example would be specifying an air power circuit breaker with sophisticated relays where a simple switch-fuse or a molded case breaker is the norm.
Rafiq Bulsara
http://www.srengineersct.com
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
A.
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
Over Designed, as in too much time spent on the analysis...
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto: KISS
Motivation: Don't ask
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
1) Form >> Function
2) Safety factor >> 1.0
- Steve
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
However, in general conversation, I've heard/seen Over Engineered to mean both 'excessively complicated' and 'significantly exceeded requirements' (e.g. well over strength).
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
In 1963 they designed a new domestic water meter.
The Metropolitan Water Company said it was a "Rolls Royce" of water meters.
They bought the Kent "Bomb" instead.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
msquared48,
Your interpretation is the exact opposite of mine.
I will be very careful if this term comes up in future.
Probabaly best to use terms such as 'overly conservative' and over complicated design rather than these terms.
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
"a girl too pretty" and take care of "too much money" problem.
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
-Kirby
Kirby Wilkerson
Remember, first define the problem, then solve it.
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
I'd better explain why.
How well a product is designed depends on what the client wants and will pay for.
Sales and marketing should produce a specification for engineering to work to.
The objective is to make sales.
If the specification is wrong. no matter what engineering do which in fact is to do what they're asked to do, the product won't sell as it should. That is if it has too many features the client won't pay for or too few features the client would pay for.
It would appear that when it comes to hospital beds they are overly complicated but I'd suggest that this is not because they have been over-engineered by the manufacturer but over specified by the client... not Sales and Marketing, because it wouldn't sell, but by the client.
Then we have established a standard.
It will now cost more, in all probability, to make a bed with fewer bells and whistles as a sub-specification, than with all the features.
The probability is that bed manufacturers are quite happy giving the customer what the customer wants.
The product is obviously a success by sales and marketing and by engineering since that is the type of bed that sells all over the world as a "hospital bed".
The usual statement by sales to clients is that they can have anything they like it will just cost more.
More cost, more turnover and more margin. So the manufacturers are hardly going to argue the super-abundance of features.
Now if anyone where to ask what was needed in a hospital bed, or if there ought to be different categories of hospital bed, then that would be another matter. In all probability the costs would dramatically reduce.
Frankly I'd rather some doctor did a study of hospital beds and stop issuing meaningless flawed reports on whether coffee is good for us or not or whether the Single MRI jab is killing kids or not.
In the end all things are judged, in the commercial world by how well they sell. All value judgements must relate to meeting customer needs and budgets.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
Over Engineered - The 400Lb desk I have to hold the 7Lb Monitor.
Over Analysed - this thread.
Rerig
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
Hayes mountain bike disk brake calipers - functional cast parts.
Hope calipers - 5-axis CNC machined, perform the same function.
The latter in my opinion is over engineering (assuming in both cases a large volume of production of course)
Will Walters
Sheffield UK
Designer of machine tools - user of modified screws
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
For structural purposes, your interpretation is the only one I've ever heard, other than the occasional 'Hell for Stout', meaning designed beyond structural requirements.
"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
Over designed would be to incorporate a reduction gear unit into the trap to ease the force needed to load the spring mechanisim.
Over engineered would be to have it made in duplex alloy materials to eliminate corrosion.
Neither of which would improve the function of a basic mouse trap.
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
An over designed erection, now that would be something to see.
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
More or less.
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
Speak for yourselves - maybe its the operator that needs to be trained to properly utilise it!
Cass,
Very succinctly put and exactly the interpretation that I am used to.
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
SRShaw
Permafrost Man
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
When I say it I mean that they made an over complicated part. A part that should be of faily simple design, they engineer it out as if they are building shuttles for NASA.
To me the term just means making something more complicated than it needs to be, too many engineers sitting in a room with too many opinions.
Just my 2 cents
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
Over-engineered would seem to be the selection of multi-part brackets holding my glove box and plastic fascia panels together in my Audi.... I was extracting the blower motor to replace the brushes... one bracket (unnecessarily removed, as it happens) appears to have no function at all since neither part it joined together could be caused to move by even a fraction of a millimetre with or without the bracket..... but it's a German car... I have to assume these parts are all exactly engineered to do meet some purpose of which I have no knowledge....
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
Something that is over designed on the other hand may be untouchable by the cost out police even though it is built HFS. (HFS, see Cass's post).
rmw
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
The term commonly used around here for that is "polishing a turd"
One good example of not over engineering was
"Simplicate and Add Lightness"
— design philosophy of Ed Heinemann, Douglas Aircraft
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
Polishing the turd is trying to take something fundamentally naff, or at least limited in potential, and trying to gold plate it.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
I seen groups of engineers who did (and do ) just that. They going till the budget is used up. Things would have been just as good if they had stopped on the 3rd day.
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
old field guy
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
The SE's can encase it in polished concrete
And the ME's can...well they can launch it...at a fan.. and thats where the trouble reallly starts.
What BJC mentioned is what i have traditionally called over engineered. Engineering is the process of refining a system so if you over do it then you have spent too much time refining it ..or so goes the logic.
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
The structure was basically 3 radial 4 inch pipes that had been bent into an S shape, split, and re-welded around shaped plate. It was beautifully proportioned, and hell for strong on the strong axis. Not so much on the weak axis; it had a structural resonance around 7 Hz, which caused an uncommanded over-response in yaw to what was supposed to be a subtle flutter response. We put a fancy custom notch filter in the servo electronics to suppress the resonant frequency and substitute something that was close, but wouldn't excite the structure.
My marching orders for the next simulator included a specific requirement for no structural resonance under 100Hz in any mode in any direction. If you work the numbers, that gives you a spring rate around a million pounds per inch. The resulting triangular truss, constructed of 5 inch square tube, looked like we had cut off part of a very sturdy bridge. ... but it had no resonances that the 150HP hydraulic power supply could excite.
The Chairman asked me over drinks if it may have been just a little overdesigned. I said that it was actually only about 5 pct overdesigned, but if he allowed customers to believe that it was grossly overdesigned, that was okay with me. I added that if it had been 5 pct underdesigned, everyone would know, and we would be repeating the previous misadventure with the beautiful but insufficient structure.
At the time, there was no such thing as a programmable calculator, and nobody could remember how to run the chunka-chunka-bang Friden mechanical calculator that we had, so I had spent weeks calculating axial deflections and displacements by hand, but I wouldn't characterize the result as over-engineered.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
Over Engineered is used by the engineers..
Over designed is used the laymen..
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
Also, when doing some work at home, my significant other complains that some of my projects are a little over-engineered. I just like making things more powerful!
Designer and compression springs enthusiast ttp://www. coilingtec h.com/comp ression-sp rings.html
h
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
over-designed=spending 3 weeks to calculate how strong your coat hanger must be.
over-dimensioned= buying a 10T hook to use as a coat hanger
NX 7.5
Teamcenter 8
RE: The term 'Over engineered'
over-designed=spending 3 weeks to calculate how strong your coat hanger must be.
over-dimensioned= buying a 10T hook to use as a coat hanger
one could argue that over-engineered is more technical and over-designed is more about aesthetics.
NX 7.5
Teamcenter 8