4. Engineering design fundamentals

Computer generated architecture by Filip Dujardin

To design is to imagine and specify things that do not exist, usually with the aim of bringing them into the world. The “things” may be tangible – machines, buildings and bridges; they may be procedures – the plans for a marketing scheme, an organization or a manufacturing process.

Virtually every professional activity has a large component of design, although usually combined with the tasks of bringing the designed things into the real world.

A design is a concept of either an object, a process, or a system that is specific and, in most cases, detailed. Design refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, though it is sometimes used to refer to the nature of something.