We suggest the following stages of the engineering process:
- Problem definition (establishing design requirements);
- Reverse Engineering
- Conceptual design,
- Feasibility assessment,
- Preliminary design,
- Detailed design,
Establishing design requirements, sometimes termed problem definition, is one of the most important elements in the design process, HYPERLINK “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_design_process” \l “cite_note-5”  and this task is often performed at the same time as a feasibility analysis. The design requirements control the design of the project throughout the engineering design process. These include basic things like the functions, attributes, and specifications – determined after assessing user needs. Some design requirements include hardware and software parameters, maintainability, availability, and testability.
Sources of Information
Various stages of the design process can involve a significant amount of time spent on locating information. It should be noted that significant information required to design stated above objects was being collected for some years. Consideration is given to the existing applicable literature, problems and successes associated with existing solutions. The sources of information applied for design are relevant, including existing solutions.
Other sources of information include the Internet publications, local libraries, available government documents, personal organizations, trade journals, vendor catalogs and available reports of individual experts.
We widely apply reverse engineering that is an effective technique if other methods are not available for an analysis.
A conceptual design (conceptualization, conceptual engineering) is a phase of design that includes producing of ideas and their evaluation taking into account the pros and cons that can be obtained in results of implementing those ideas. All suggested ideas must undergo a concept evaluation step. During the evaluation, a various tools are utilized to compare and contrast the relative strengths and weakness of possible alternatives.
This conceptual stage of a project is performed to minimize the likelihood of error, manage costs, assess risks, and evaluate the potential success of the intended project.
The feasibility study is an analysis and evaluation of the potential of a proposed project to support the process of decision making. It describes and analyses alternative solutions and methods of achieving the desired outcome. The feasibility study helps to narrow the scope of the project to identify the best scenario. A feasibility report is generated following which Post Feasibility Review is performed.
The purpose of a feasibility assessment is to determine reasonability of the design proceeding in further . This is based on two criteria: the project needs to be based on an achievable idea, and it needs to be within cost constraints. It is important to have engineers with experience and good judgment to be involved in this portion of the feasibility study.
The preliminary design, or high-level design is the bridge between design conception and detailed design, particularly in cases when the level of conceptual design is not sufficient for full evaluation. So in this stage, the overall system configuration is defined, and the schematics, diagrams, and layouts of the project may provide early project configuration and evaluation. During detailed design and optimization, the parameters of some parts can be changed, but the preliminary design focuses on creating the general framework of the project.
Within the bounds of this phase each aspect of the project / product by complete description through solid modeling, drawings as well as specifications are elaborates.
Every stage of the design process is finished by Technical report including the following main parts:
- Task description and/or Initial data;
- Suggested solutions;
- Calculation results;
- The content of the final report is approved by client.