Design of Machine Elements

What is Design of Machine Elements?

The dictionary meaning of design is ‘a mental plan, a scheme of attack, end in view, adaptation of means to end,… preliminary sketch for picture,…..invention’. However, design in reality and practicality means a lot more than just these visual aspects. Design is not something that you can restrict to engineering. The key components of the design process are as follows:

• Means to end: This component implies that when you make a design, it is not for abstract mental exercise. A design has a definite goal that it must achieve, that is, it should result in some action or some physical object.  
• Mental: The word mental means that design is a process involving thinking. While designing, we use and deal mainly with ideas and abstracts rather than with numbers. This is the reason why a machine like a computer cannot do this job for us, though they can help in a few of its steps.  Whatever we design, we need to develop and apply our imagination in order to visualize realistically the future resultant form that your machine, action or artefact will assume, how it will later come into existence and how it will interact with other people, artefacts or actions.
• Plan and scheme: This establishes that design and implementation differ in many aspects. A designer in engineering rarely executes his plan but rather communicates them to others through explaining orally, visually or through reading. There is a lack of the emphasis of numbers in a design.
• Invention:  This simply means that we have to come up with something new and unique. Creativity is an essential part of design.  Your design should not entirely be a copy of an already existing one and should have something innovative in it.

Questions:

• Can design be restricted to engineering only?
• Is the importance of numbers emphasized in a design?