Engineers and scientist often have to filter through an enormous amount of information to turn a concept into a working design- in other words research. This page provides list of example resources with a focus on the type of resources that are available and relevant to the design process, and most importantly how to access those resources.
Relevant Design Information
Existing designs, vendors, manufacturers, information websites, datasheets, videos, patents, industry standards, books, magazines, journals, research papers, conference proceedings, dissertations, reports, regulatory documents, software, application notes, application briefs, reference designs, articles, and people are some of the places one can find information that might be relevant to a design. All of these possibilities can be slightly overwhelming. One way to cope with the availability of so much information is to break your design research into the following different categories.
Research Categories:
Information Sources
Actual sources of information often cover more than one of the categories listed above, and there is a lot informational overlap between these sources which can make locating the right bit a knowledge challenging. The list below is intended to highlight various types of informational resources that an engineer can call upon in their quest for knowledge. This is accomplished by showing a decent example resources. It is by no means an attempt to be an exhaustive list of resources.
- 'Libraries
- 'Industry Standards, Trade Organizations, and Regulatory
- 'Reference and E-book Collections
- 'Industry Published Information
- 'Informational Websites
- 'University Course Websites
- 'Journals, Articles, Research Papers, Conference Proceedings, Etc.
- 'Magazines
- 'Parts Search Engines
- 'Vendors
- 'Web Forums
- 'Consultants
- 'Industry Trade Shows and Conferences
How to Stay Current with Technology
- RSS
- Mailing Lists
- Industry Magazines
- Etc.
