All students are required to own or purchase a Microsoft Windows-based laptop computer. Students must bring their laptops to class as course work often requires the use of a computer.
Apple computers are not compatible with all engineering application software that is required for engineering course work.
College and University Computing
The entire campus is linked via a high-speed network and is connected to the internet. The College also provides a virtual desktop that allows students to run engineering software remotely. Information technology support is provided by University Information Technology (UNIT), the University's IT group, as well as by the College’s IT group with a walk-in, online and telephone help desk system.
Software and Departmental Computing
The analysis and simulation software MATLAB and Mathcad, spreadsheet package Excel, drawing packages SolidWorks and AutoCAD, and data-acquisition software LabVIEW are available for use. In addition, some departments have their own computers and workstations in classrooms and laboratories. Besides computers for data acquisition and control in the laboratories, special-purpose computer software is installed on computers throughout the College. For example, the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department uses Aspen Plus for simulation of its chemical process systems and makes the software available in computer classrooms. The Civil and Environmental Engineering Department has industry-specific software packages installed on its computers, including STAAD and SimTraffic. Simulink and PSpice are used among many other packages in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. In the Mechanical Engineering Department, students use Ansys and Fluent for finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamic simulations.