Increase your Productivity

Schedule your weekly tasks, meetings, courses or activities!

Increase your Flexibility

Access your files from any computer, tablet or phone!

Work as a Team

Edit together in real-time with easy sharing, and use comments, suggestions, and action items to keep things moving. Or use @-mentions to pull relevant people, files, and events into your online files for rich collaboration.

Important Links

• Calendar
• Documents(Google’s “Word”)
• Sheets(Google’s “Excel”)
• Slides (Google’s PowerPoint)
• Forms

Why do I need CAD Software?

• Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is the cornerstone of how you design and build things. It allows the user to digitally create, visualise, and simulate 2D or 3D models of real-world products before it is being manufactured.
• CAD models allow users to iterate and optimize designs to meet design intent.
• The use of CAD software facilitates the testing of real-world conditions, loads, and constraints, which increases the quality of the product.
• CAD software helps to explore ideas and visualise the concept.
• Improve the quality, precision of the design, and communication in the design process.
• Analyse real-world scenarios by computer-aided analysis
• Create a database for product development and manufacturing.

Some Practical Applications of CAD Software

Automobile parts can be modelled, visualised, revised, and improved on the screen before being manufactured.

Electrical schematics, control circuit diagrams, PCBs, and integrated circuits (ICs)  can be designed and developed with ECAD software 

With CAD software, architects can visualise and simulate their entire project using real-world parameters, without needing to build any physical structuress or models. 

What CAD software do I need?

Something free

• FreeCAD
•  TinkerCAD
• Fusion 360
• Onshape
• Solid Edge
• Blender
• SketchUp

My design goes with me wherever I go (cloud-based)

• Onshape
• TinkerCAD
• AutoCAD Web
• SelfCAD
• Vectary
• SketchUp

Something more advanced and professional

• AutoCAD
• Autodesk Inventor
• SolidWorks
• Fusion 360
• Solid Edge
• CATIA
• Onshape
• Shapr3D
• Creo

Windows OS

• AutoCAD
• Autodesk Inventor
• Solidworks
• Fusion 360
• CATIA
• Creo
• Solid Edge
• Shapr3D
• Blender

Linux OS

• NX Advanced Designer
• Blender

MacOS

• AutoCAD
• Autodesk Inventor
• Fusion 360
• Shapr3D
• Blender
• NX Advanced Designer

iOS, Android

• AutoCAD
• Autodesk Inventor
• Shapr3D

Where can I learn CAD?

1. Coursera:  https://coursera.org/courses?query=cad
2. Udemy:  https://udemy.com/topic/autocad/
3. MyCADSite:  https://mycadsite.com/
4. Skill Share:    https://skillshare.com/search?query=solidworks
5. CAD-Tutorials.de:  https://cad-tutorials.de/
6. Youtube:  https://youtube.com/watch?v=cAgpDFTHxpY
7. CADTutor:  http://cadtutor.net/
8. PTC Training:  https://ptc.com/en/ptc-university/training-catalogs
9. Autodesk Tinkercad: https://tinkercad.com/

Slides by CPS on Python

Short introduction to Python with some first examples and a coding convention. 

Why should you consider learning Python

• Python is the most popular programming language in the world with a popularity of 28%.
• It is easier to learn than many other programming languages.
• Python is very readable due to its structure. Thus, bugs can usually be found and fixed quickly.
• Python can be both procedural and object-oriented, which makes it very versatile.
• There is a large number of software libraries. On python package index, PyPI, over 400,000 packages can be found. And the most important ones can be downloaded quickly and easily using pip.
• Python and almost all Python software libraries are available for free on the Internet.

What Python can be used for

• Data Science is one of the most popular application areas of Python. Here, not only the complete data analysis but also the visualization will be implemented in Python. Generally, software libraries such as Numpy, Matplotlib and Pandas are used for this purpose.

• Machine learning is another very popular area. Python can be used for supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning. Libraries such as TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch or scikit-learn are used for this purpose.

Furthermore, Python can be used for all kinds of general purpose programs, such as app development, GUI design, web development and in many other areas. In addition, programs with Python interfaces can be automated through a Python program, for example simulation programs.

Practical example of Python in academia

Especially during the time as a student it is good to have a tool with which you can validate your hypotheses or perform the calculations by the computer. Thus, programs can be written with which problems in physics, chemistry or other tasks can be simulated and subsequently the simulation data can be plotted or even videos can be generated.

Important links

• Digital Competences Python Repository
• Overview of current online python courses (fee required)
• Overview of current online python courses (free)
• Visual Studio Code IDE
• Pycharm IDE
• JupytierLite

Important Articles

• Article on ‘What Does Google Do With My Data… and Should I Be Worried?‘.
• An article in Forbes on ‘Why Facebook’s Metaverse is a privacy nightmare’.

Companies like Google collect and process your data

Google collects your data from many different sources. Here are some examples:

• Gmail: Google can read and store information from every email you write and receive, including in the spam, draft, and trash folders.
• Google Maps: Google saves every location you search, in addition to all the places you physically visit with your devices, even if you aren’t logged in. Are you using Waze instead? Google owns that too. The ubiquity of phones and our constant use of them makes them almost like tracking devices we carry around willingly.
• Android devices: Because Android phones and tablets run on an operating system built by Google, the company can track which ads you’re shown while using your phone. Google also knows what time, down to the second, you open each app.
• Google apps: The Google Play store records all your searches and downloads, as well as any rewards cards used. Google also tracks which articles you’ve read through Google News.
• YouTube: Google acquired YouTube back in 2006. When you’re using YouTube, Google tracks your search history, your watch history, how long you spend watching videos, and all your comments and likes or dislikes.
• Google Assistant: Every request you make and every question you pose is recorded — you can even listen to the audio playback.
• G Suite: Your calendar shows where you’ll be and when, and Google Hangouts saves all of your conversations.

If you are interessted in which data Google has collected about you, test Google Takeout.

Recommendations: Browser, Search Engine & Online Docs

In our digital age, we have to be aware of the data collection strategies of all services that we use. However, often, alternatives  developed by the open-source community exist. Here are some recommendations:

• Browser & Search Engine: I personallyfavor Mozilla’s Firefox as browser and  DuckDuckGo as search engine.
• Deactivate Google’s Activity Tracker & Delete your history: Go to https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and delte your history.

• Online Docs:
  • Install your own nextcloud server with onlyoffice.
  • Use other & paid online editing tools, like https://www.zoho.com (not sure about their privacy policy).

Recommendations: Messenger & Repositories

• I personally recommend: Nextcloud’s Talk App.
• Setup your own repo server using, e.g., Gitea or Gitey.

Final remarks: Stay sensitive to what happens to your data. Nothing is for free.