Columbia University

Civil Engineering

Reproduced with permission from NeXT Computer, Inc.
A Reference Guide to NeXT in Higher Education, Fall 1992
ª 1992 NeXT Computer, Inc

NeXTSTEP and Mathematica: A boon for teaching and learning civil engineering

Although Gautam Dasgupta, associate professor of civil engineering at Columbia University, has been teaching Computer-aided Engineering Graphics and Computational Methods in Structural Analysis to undergraduate and graduate students for nearly 15 years, he says students have never been as excited about the courses as this year-when he incorporated NeXT technology into the required class assignments.

"Students find the NeXT setup to be more effective than the Sun environment we'd been using before," he says. "Specifically, NeXT machines are very fast and easy to use. Plus, all the software students need to complete assignments comes bundled with the machines. And it's easy for students to combine the outputs of several different applications in NeXT's multitasking environment."

Students now use Mathematica in the engineering graphics course, which emphasizes the mathematical aspects behind computer graphics applications, including two- and three-dimensional geometric transformations, shading and rendering, hidden-line and surface elimination, and clipping algorithms. For their term project this semester, students are working on displaying three-dimensional surfaces from the measured data of human skulls. The purpose of the project is to use graphical considerations to identify abnormal growth.

"There is no computer-mathematics environment that even comes close to the power of Mathematica combined with NeXT's ease of use and UNIX utilities," says Dasgupta. "This year, using the Notebook front end with the NeXT, we've been able to do 10 to 12 times more examples than ever before. It's so easy for students to work them out with Mathematica. Problems I had spent a lot of class time on in previous years, I don't even review in class now. Students work them out on the computer as hands-on class work. One project that involves 3D biological modeling using computer graphics used to be a term project. Now it's a homework assignment."

In the computational methods course, Dasgupta covers flexibility formulations, stiffness generation, coding for axial and bending members, Poisson's equations, and truss and frame analyses and solutions. Students perform matrix algebra applications and solve differential equations. For their term project, they use Fortran to develop individual programs to mix finite- and boundary-element concepts.

"Most of the students learned Fortran a couple of years ago," Dasgupta says, "but they learned on the IBMs or Macintoshes, which don't have particularly attractive operating systems. In this course, we do serious structural analysis and, consequently, students need to use a UNIX system. NeXT presents a good introduction into the sophisticated world of UNIX. Students are able to work in a UNIX operating system without knowing too many details about UNIX at first. All the software and utilities that come with the NeXT are very helpful for getting the students off the ground in a UNIX environment. They don't have to learn a lot of complicated commands."

Dasgupta also uses TEX and Mathematica to prepare his research papers. "TEX," he says, "provides an efficient way to generate research documents that contain text, equations, graphics, and even sound."

Dasgupta says that since being exposed to NeXT machines, his students have started to use the platform to complete assignments in other engineering courses. "They've even spread the word about NeXT to their friends at other schools," he says. "They've brought their friends to our NeXT lab because some schools don't have as attractive a setup. In fact, I've been advising engineering and mathematics departments in other universities to develop NeXT labs like ours. As a developer of Mathematica applications, I know that I intend to carry out all of my future developments on the NeXT. Nothing comes close to the NeXT environment for Mathematica to prepare engineering research papers."

For more information, please contact:

Gautam Dasgupta
Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
620 SEELEY W. MUDD BUILDING
NEW YORK, NY 10027
(212) 854-3102
dasgupta@cucevx.civil.columbia.edu