Using Adobe Illustrator for mechanical engineering design

Abstract

Sketching by hand is important in the creative process because it promotes reinterpretation through ambiguity. Adobe Illustrator is a valuable tool for an engineer to make professional-looking presentation drawings. The project conducted as this thesis was to create a website tutorial to teach students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology enrolled in 2.009, the senior capstone product design course, the basics of Illustrator. A study was conducted on two subjects to judge the effectiveness of the website tutorial project at teaching how to use Illustrator. The subjects had no previous experience with the program. Both of these subjects were able to learn the basics of Illustrator and create a simple logo design in under two hours. They reported that the tutorial gave them enough knowledge of the program to then experiment on their own to continue learning Illustrator. While this tutorial is not meant to teach all aspects of the program, it has been shown to be effective at teaching people with no Illustrator background how to create a simple but useful design that could function in the scope of 2.009.