In the Fall of 1991 the AOE Dept. was able to obtain space for use as an undergraduate design lab. The lab contains traditional drawing tables and drafting machines, as well as space for students to meet and work, and a series of computers. The lab is continually being upgraded. This is possible only through the support of the NASA ADP. Without this support the facilities would not exist. We also have a large HP plotter and an X-terminal for access to an IBM RISC 6000 workstation. Currently we have four IBM PCs and four Apple Macintoshes. The computers are networked, and we have a laser printer for the IBMs and a laser printer for the Macs.
Software is more important than the hardware. We have a reasonably good compliment of software. A paper is available describing our experience (Mason, 1995). One major problem has been the inability of the AIAA to tell us what would be required to obtain site licenses for their software to use in our lab. This is a truly amazing situation.
Again, several lessons have been learned. We found it impossible to control the software on PCs operating in an open environment. The hard disk space would evaporate as students placed multiple versions of word processors and especially CAD programs on the machines. One special difficulty arose with respect to CAD programs. We kept the most current version of CADKey and AutoCAD on the design lab computers. At Virginia Tech, students purchase a computer and a software set as freshmen. This meant that as seniors, the students have a version four years behind the current release. This created problems. Although new software versions can almost always read files from previous software versions, the reverse is not true. So a problem arose when a student used the current version of an application (typically CAD) in the design lab and then tried to take a disk home and work on his own computer. In some cases we had to keep multiple versions of a software package on the design lab computers (although students can upgrade their software for an amazingly small fee, few do). Another especially troublesome problem on the lab computers was the possibility that students would change the configuration files. Typically this meant that the plotter would not work. Finally, viruses caused continuing problems. Generally, the Macintoshes suffered less from these problems. However, software control was also a problem on the Macs, and software purchased to solve the problem seemed to work well initially, but eventually several of the hard drives locked up, and the problem went away when we removed the protection software.
In all cases, the hard use of the system, together with a poor environment (air conditioning was installed in the Fall of 1994) led to fairly frequent hardware problems. Considerable time was required to reestablish the software on the various computers (note that students, even though they had been using computers for four years by the time they were seniors, invariably claimed to have lost enormous amount of work because they had failed to backup their files!).
To solve the system configuration problems we moved to a network solution. We installed another Mac and IBM PC in the department system administrator's area to use as servers, and our core system is their, where we can control access, keeping the applications secure, while allowing users on the other Macs and IBMs to access and run them. This has worked well, although the initial startup is often slow. Perhaps our biggest surprise came when we installed our own programs. We found that many of the design codes needed to establish local scratch and output files. Initially they would try to write these files to the original, write protected directory on the server. Fortunately, the compiler we were using for FORTRAN-based applications had a special I/O command to allow us to let users move this file I/O activity to their own directory. This is the problem a "network version" of an application solves.
For design, our experience demonstrates that a workstation environment would be much more effective than the PC environment developed in the early 80s as a solution to the computer problem. Some sort of hybrid system is probably required. An associated problem is the need to teach students UNIX when we do give them access to our X-station for workstation use.
Finally, each computer has a complete set of newsreaders, web browsers, gopher and fetch software. Although the students now have complete access to the internet, the usage is low. Only a very small number of students take advantage of the wealth of information available on the internet.* Since incoming freshmen now get all this software, I expect this to change in the future.
The main lesson in the use of the computers in design is that there are continuing problems in establishing a system for student use. The instruction of students in how to use codes, how to use the computing system, repairing problem and working with a graduate student and systems administrator to maintain an operational lab requires an enormous amount of the design instructor's time. Academic administrators generally don't appreciate this aspect of the use of computer tools in a campus lab.
*This fall I have established a newsgroup for the design class, and each student is required to post something twice by the end of September.