Product Design Engineer or Mechanical Design Engineer?

Where is the cut-off point between Product Design Engineering and Mechanical Design Engineering or are they the same thing?

Is product design the process of designing an empty shell of a product which is aesthetically pleasing and a proposed with a list of innovative design features and functions. If so I where is the ‘Engineering’ aspect.

Does a Mechanical Design Engineer take the design and does everything necessary to make the product work? If so where is the ‘Design’ aspect?

I have looked at Product Design and Mechanical Design courses at a university to understand it better and the Product Design course pre-requisite is an Art A-Level. My Mechanical Engineering Degree required me to have a Maths or Physics A-Level and the course was very analytical.

 

Once I read your last paragraph i saw that you were talking about a degree from a university. With out reading the course descriptions I can't say for sure but I am guessing that Product Design Engineer is really an industrial design degree. If that is the case I take exception to the use of "engineer" in the title although this could be a hybrid type of degree. Here is a link that explains the differences: http://www10.mcadcafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=318078

If you are deciding between the two degrees consider this Industrial Design deals with aesthetics, mechanical design deals with making things work and work safely. Different aesthetics come in and out of style, delivering a product that works and is safe never goes out of style.

 

The two titles describe the same basic discipline with overlapping focus. Since Engineering is in both titles they are not purely ID roles.
A Product Design Engineer may have a focus on medical and consumer product design (enclosures, etc). A Mechanical Design Engineer (title I use) is a bit more broad in that it may include design/engineering activities which involve analysis, mechanism prototyping, etc as well as overall product design. A Product Designer usually refers to heavy focus on ID and less on the actual production design development.

 

Note that there is a difference between Mechanical Engineer and Manufacturing Engineer. Mechanical Engineer develops the mechanics of the product and make things work and work safely, but after that he passes that to Manufacturing Engineer who is going to find out how to manufacture the product (using different cost effective technics such as bending, machining, casting, stamping, injection molding, etc.) Product Designer is responsible for shell, aesthetics, style. so What about Product Engineer? He probably should be able to do everything , from the idea to final product for the customer to buy.

 

A Product Engineer can end up being a sales guy these days! ;-). The title Engineer is abused. Guess it was pretty clean cut when an engineer drove trains.

 

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

 

Product Design Engineering is a subset of Mechanical Design Engineering. Knock off the word "engineering" and product design shades over into Industrial Design which, although it requires some engineering knowledge, is more of an artistic discipline. There is considerable overlap, and sometimes one guy wears both hats.

The work can go both ways. As a mechanical engineer doing product design, I've taken an industrial designer's sketches and fleshed out the mechanical design. I've also designed a product and only later was an industrial designer called in... he subtly changed a few lines so that although functionally the product was the same, it was much more visually appealing.

 

Product design engineer is mainly focus on aesthetics design,styling and make sure the final product is following the original design. Mechanical design engineer is to take actions to achieve the product design engineer's idea and make the product safe to use and good to produce.

 

desing

Desin is the platform were we give wings to our ideas

 

Do not limited by small scale career.do something you are interested in and push on to going.

I am daniel a engineer special in rapid prototyping and tooling in China