Capstone Project Wiki

A number of software packages are available to help you complete the engineering work on your project. These include:

• CAD Software: A number of CAD programs are available, including ProEngineer, CATIA, PTC Creo, Siemens NX, Solidworks, AutoCAD, Revit, and Autodesk Inventor.

• FEA Software: FEA Software includes Abaqus, ANSYS, Adams, COMSOL, HyperWorks, STAR-CCM+, as well as integrated FEA with most of the CAD programs.

• Calculation Software: Software used to support engineering calculations includes JMP (for statistics); MathCAD, Mathematica, and Maple (for symbolic and numerical calculations); and Matlab (for numerical calculations).

• Circuit Simulation Software: Circuit simulation software includes Cadence Allegro PSpice Simulator and LTspice.

• Circuit Board Design Software: Board design software available on CAEDM includes Eagle (both Free and Professional versions) and Cadence OrCAD Capture. A limited number of Altium licenses are available to be shared among all the students in the College. To get access to these licenses, please contact the CSR for the ECE Department (https://eceticket.byu.edu/). When using these shared licenses, be sure to log out when you are not actively working to make the license available for others.

• Graphic Software: Graphic software comes in two forms: Bitmap and Vector. For anything other than editing an existing bitmap image, you should use vector programs. Bitmap graphics programs include Adobe Photoshop and Paint. Vector graphics programs include Adobe Illustrator, PowerPoint, and Visio. There is an open-source vector graphics program called Inkscape that is freely available to download and install for all users of Linux, OSX, and Windows.

• Project Management Software: There are a number of online software packages. Check with your sponsor and coach to see what they prefer.

• BYU Cloud Apps: BYU provides students free access to many commercial programs by means of the BYU Cloud App platform. This includes the Microsoft Office Suite and Adobe Acrobat Professional. Get connected to BYU Cloud Apps at https://cloudapps.byu.edu

• Amazon Web Services: Amazon Web Services provides cloud-based servers for performing distributed calculations. If you wish to use AWS for your project, you should be aware that BYU has a prepaid contract with AWS that provides a 15% to 40% discount compared to the price you would pay if you signed up with AWS. To request a BYU AWS account, visit https://cloud.byu.edu .

• General Office Software: General office software includes word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software. The de facto standard in office software is Microsoft Office. LibreOffice and OpenOffice are free software packages that are compatible on the file level with Microsoft Office. Please check with your sponsor concerning file formats that they commonly use. If possible, create your work in formats that the sponsor can use. You may also use LaTeX for creating text documents if you prefer. Microsoft Office is available on all CAEDM computers as well as on BYU Cloud Apps.

• Box: When opening Office documents on Box from the web interface, you have the option of using Office Online or Office on your desktop. Office Online allows multiple users to work on the document simultaneously, which is helpful for collaborative work. Office on the desktop allows much more control of advanced formatting. We recommend that you create and finalize your Office documents on the desktop, and use Office Online to handle collaboration if you desire. BYU Cloud Apps can be configured to use Box as its default storage space.