Designing a Technical Review Presentation

1. The Purpose and Process of a Design Review

A design review is more than just a project update; it's a formal, systematic evaluation of your design against its requirements. Its main purpose is to facilitate communication, identify risks, and get expert feedback to optimize the design before committing to expensive manufacturing or prototyping.

To understand the formal context of design reviews in industry, let's start with a foundational document.

As you read, you'll see that design reviews are checkpoints.

• A Preliminary Design Review (PDR) typically happens after you've established your concept and can show that it's feasible and meets the high-level requirements.
• A Critical Design Review (CDR) occurs when the detailed design is complete, including all part drawings and analyses, right before you would start manufacturing.

While the level of detail changes, the fundamental structure for presenting your work remains consistent.

2. The Anatomy of a Design Review Presentation

A successful design review tells a clear and logical story. It walks the audience from the problem you're trying to solve to the solution you've developed, providing justification for every major decision along the way.

The document you just reviewed contains an excellent sample agenda. We can use this to create a template for a standard design review presentation.

Based on that agenda, a typical presentation structure would look like this:

1. Introduction: (5% of time)

   • Title Slide: Project Name, Your Name, Date, Review Type (e.g., PDR).
   • Agenda/Overview: Briefly state the purpose of the review and what you'll cover.

2. Background & Requirements: (10% of time)

   • The Problem: What is the "needs statement"?
   • Project Objectives: What are you trying to achieve?
   • Key Requirements & Constraints: List the critical design specifications (e.g., load capacity, speed, size, cost).

3. Concept Exploration & Selection:

   • Briefly show 2-3 alternative concepts you considered.
   • Provide a clear rationale for your selected design approach (e.g., using a decision matrix).

4. Detailed Design & Analysis: (60% of time)

   • System Overview: Show the full assembly using CAD models (isometric, section views). Use a functional block diagram if helpful.
   • Subsystem Deep Dive: Discuss critical components or mechanisms.
   • Justification & Analysis: This is the core of the review. Present the evidence for your design choices:
     • Material Selection: Why did you choose specific materials? (Referencing trade-off analyses you learned about).
     • Hand Calculations: Show key calculations for stress, deflection, or sizing (like for the lead screw in our upcoming project).
     • FEA Results: Present stress, displacement, and factor of safety plots for critical parts.
     • Fastener Selection: Justify your choice of fastener type, grade, and size for critical joints.

5. Project Status & Risk: (<10% of time)

   • Briefly mention any major schedule or budget points.
   • Identify key risks and your plans to mitigate them (your FMEA experience is directly applicable here).

6. Summary & Future Work: (10% of time)

   • Summarize key findings and decisions.
   • State whether the design is ready to proceed.
   • Outline the next steps.

To see what this looks like in practice, browse through this example of a Preliminary Design Review from a university aerospace project. You don't need to understand every detail, but observe how the presentation flows through the sections we just outlined.

3. Creating Compelling Technical Content

Knowing the structure is half the battle. The other half is filling it with clear, convincing content and visuals. Your presentation is not a report to be read; it's a visual aid to support what you're saying.

Tell a Story: What, How, and Results

For every piece of technical work you present, frame it as a short story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. A great framework for this is "What, How, and Results."

Let's apply this to a technical example. Imagine presenting an FEA of a bracket:

• What: "I performed a stress analysis on the main support bracket to ensure it could withstand the 500N operating load."
• How: "I used Onshape's FEA tool. I fixed the mounting holes, applied the load to the bearing surface, and assigned 6061-T6 Aluminum as the material."
• Results: "The analysis shows a maximum stress of 150 MPa, which gives us a factor of safety of 1.8 against yielding. The maximum deflection was 0.2 mm, which is within our system's tolerance."

This structure is clear, concise, and answers all the key questions your audience will have.

The "Do's and Don'ts" of Visuals

Effective visuals are the key to a great design review. Your audience should be able to understand the main point of a slide in seconds.

Here are some rules for creating your slides.

Key principles for your design review slides:

• Use high-quality images: Use screenshots from Onshape, clear FEA plots, and simple diagrams.
• Minimal text: Use keywords and short phrases, not paragraphs. The details should come from you, the presenter.
• One idea per slide: Don't cram too much information onto a single slide. Let each key finding have its own moment.

Conclusion

You now have a complete framework for structuring and delivering a professional engineering design review. This process transforms your collection of design artifacts—CAD models, calculations, and material lists—into a persuasive narrative that justifies your engineering work.

Key Takeaways:

• A design review is a formal checkpoint to communicate your design, get feedback, and gain approval to proceed.
• Structure your presentation like a story: start with the problem (requirements), explain your solution (design), and provide the evidence (analysis).
• For each technical element, use the "What, How, Results" framework to explain your work clearly and concisely.
• Your slides are visual aids, not a script. Use high-quality images and minimal text to support your verbal explanation.

This lesson concludes the "Engineering Workflow and System Design" module. You've now covered all the foundational elements of a professional design process. In our next lesson, we will begin Project 1: Linear Motion System Design. Your very first task will be to define the requirements for a linear actuator system, which will form the first section of the PDR you will eventually create for that project.