Being an art student who knew long before getting into a school that I'd feel trapped in a "humanities"or "art" bubble as far as my mandatory courses and electives are concerned, I'm making an effort to stay away from my arts quad cave as much as I possibly can over the years (change in environment is nice, and I can't help but find many of the courses offered in the Humanities faculty... Boring to say the least :$) So, after close to a year of stewing, I think I found some interesting courses that would serve as electives in the future, along with some where one of which would be a potential optional compulsory course, while I'll make the other two electives. Now the reason why I'm asking about these courses is because although they appear interesting to me, and I googled some old outlines, I have no clue what they are really like for from the perspective of the students who have/are taking them.

Here are the courses I'm wondering about:
- mech eng 2a03, 2c04, 2d03 (courses that come from a list of courses I must take, but choose only one as the compulsory. If the other ones sound good, I'm up for taking both as electives so I can take all 3)
- autotech 2cd3 (sounds like fun to learn... for the most part)
- mmedia 2e03 (also sounds fun for the most part, but unsure of it's availability)
- human 3w03, 4w03

These are the ones for now I'd like to hear about. All help and advice is greatly appreciated!

I haven't taken autotech 2cd3 but took something similar (eng 1c03). Looking at the course outline, it doesn't involve hard math (no calculus or anything). It's just simple math (you need to add dimensions, and i am pretty sure they wouldn't mind you having a calculator when doing the tests/labs). I noticed that they do 3D modelling, so you have to get used to seeing things in 3D. Some people don't have a problem seeing objects in 3D, but others do and struggle a lot trying to understand the material (that would be me ).

Any course that involves computers (like AutoCAD and programming) needs lots of practice. So if you want to do good in it, you need to do a lot of practice in your free time.

Hence why I am jealous of you engineers. That course I would have loved to take (along with a few others *cough*). And I love perspective and 3D, especially if they're structures and stuff! We kinda have to think that way in art anyways except we don't use computers. As far as "free" time goes, I'm willing to cram what I can in 24 hours, even if it means that I'll have to get my butt out of the studio for a "break" to invest more time in this. And if it's as fun as it sounds, no problem thanks!

sidenote: thank god on the math... I hate math, even though I'm willing to force myself into doing it. It's been a solid 2 years since my last math course. however, I still plan on getting around to learning some of that calculus and stuff... and physics. Soon.

Originally Posted by XNtrikster

Hence why I am jealous of you engineers. That course I would have loved to take (along with a few others *cough*). And I love perspective and 3D, especially if they're structures and stuff! We kinda have to think that way in art anyways except we don't use computers. As far as "free" time goes, I'm willing to cram what I can in 24 hours, even if it means that I'll have to get my butt out of the studio for a "break" to invest more time in this. And if it's as fun as it sounds, no problem thanks!

sidenote: thank god on the math... I hate math, even though I'm willing to force myself into doing it. It's been a solid 2 years since my last math course. however, I still plan on getting around to learning some of that calculus and stuff... and physics. Soon.

Yea, if you can visualize things in 3D you're good to go! AutoCAD is fun to work with, it gets a bit complicated as you advance in it, but that's for like 3rd/4th year The math in that course is not hard, you just need to add/subtract numbers. There's also some basic algebra.
Ex: if you have a line with 3 points, A,B & C, and they tell you that the distance from A to C is 10m, & from A to B it's 3m..what's the distance from point B to C?

They are not gonna explicitly ask you that...but you are gonna run into that when trying to figure out some dimensions for a specific object, since they don't always give you all the dimensions.
Always remember to check if the object is in meters or inches before you start

By the way, if you want good math review, take a lot at this:
http://www.math.mcmaster.ca/lovric/rm.html

The last chapter is an intro to calculus...if you need more calculus practice after you finish, you can always go on YouTube and find some videos. Patrick JMT is pretty good and has some videos that you might find useful:
http://www.youtube.com/user/patrickJMT
http://patrickjmt.com/

YES. Now you've made me really excited to take this course! Shame it's the only AutoCAD course I can take, so going any further in it won't be happening. Addition? Subtraction? Basic Algebra? Okay, that kind of math I can deal with hehe I don't like math as a whole, but most arithmetic, not hardcore algebra, geometry/trigonometry, and finance are fine with me.

Duly noted, thanks for the added advice sounds like the difference between metric and imperial units must have been a a bit nippy at times

Thank you so much for all your help! I'm definitely going to be looking through those. If this can resurface material I haven't used in a good 3 years (the last math course I took 2 years ago did not involve functions and such), I will be pleased

... Yeah, this is actually the kind of stuff I need! It pretty much contains everything I know that's been partially or fully wiped from my mental hard drive. Well, looks like I've got math to get cracking on soon >

Originally Posted by XNtrikster

sounds like the difference between metric and imperial units must have been a a bit nippy at times

Yea, it makes a lot of difference if you use one over the other. I feel like accuracy is very important in engineering, they want to teach you how to be accurate, because some mistakes can be very costly :/

Good luck with everything

EDIT: yes, the mcmaster link is very useful. Take a look at it and try some of the practice problems.

That's something I never really thought of before, but you're right. It's essentially the same deal with art depending on what you're doing, and I like accuracy in my work. And I know what it's like to have something designed and built for a purpose and in theory should work, but minute inaccuracies made its operation impossible -.-

And thank you once again

EDIT: definitely will do, awesome stuff you posted!

Would anyone who's taken any of the other courses mind telling me a bit about them? I'm still open to listening

I'd recommend taking a computer science course if you're also into CAD and stuff like that. Artist's with programming skills would surely be in demand for so many different applications. Can i design a main character for a game? Hell no, and I'm sure most people in CS and SE couldn't either.

Well now there's a thought to consider. I'll look into that, thanks!