Brazilian Students’ Experience: University Partnerships with TDG

“A Revolutionary program” -UEM Student

In the fall of 2021, we partnered with Professor Sandro Lautenschlager at the State University of Maringá (Portuguese: Universidade Estadual de Maringá, UEM) in Maringá, Paraná, Brazil. Professor Sandro teaches in the civil engineering department and reached out to Transcend in hopes that we could help with his wastewater treatment plant design class. He has been teaching this wastewater treatment design class at UEM for over 10 years and knew he wanted his students to have experience in putting together full preliminary engineering packages.

Professor Sandro assigns his students to design a wastewater treatment plant in Brazil each year and shared with us “What I observed in over 10 years teaching this course is that the students present a good performance in demonstrating knowledge of the unit process using the norms and reference literature, but the students had difficulties in detailing the unit processes in a CAD tool. The designs delivered to me were more a sketch of the unit processes than a preliminary engineering design.” Professor Sandro wanted to ensure his students were fully equipped with the tools and knowledge of designing wastewater treatment plants, and by incorporating TDG into his classroom he was able to add another tool to their toolboxes, further preparing his students for when they enter the water industry.

Fall semester, UEM 5th year civil engineering students were asked to design a wastewater treatment plant for a city in Brazil, this time using software to automate the preliminary design package. These students were given access to the Design Generator to help complete their project. In utilizing Transcend, they were given the opportunity to run multiple designs, assess and compare different technologies, and make decisions based on multiple options.

One student had shared with us “Transcend’s platform allows a great saving of time for engineers. I would have to use several softwares to be able to get the results that are offered.” Using the Google Maps integration, students were able to mark their exact site boundary and receive 3D site renderings with all the equipment sized, selected, and optimally arranged as outputs from the Design Generator.

Another student recalled the outputs being essential to their understanding of putting together a full preliminary package, “Not to mention that [the outputs] were a complete report with all the information that we need, even in the equipment part. It’s a very good software because it would take a lot of time for us to calculate the floor plans and get to this level of information, so it was essential for our learning.” Students found themselves with more time to evaluate options in order to come up with the right solution for their plant. The extra time that TDG helped to create, allowed for more creativity in designs and more data-driven decisions.

One student even shared “I found the TDG software very useful because it delivers many reliable data and quantitative analysis in a few hours after having submitted the project.”

Using Transcend Design Generator, students were able to provide Professor Sandro with the full preliminary engineering package he was looking for. We wish all of the UEM students the best of luck with the rest of their schooling and beyond as they join the workforce!