Sarah PavisInterview
Mechanical engineer
Adapted from Sarah Pavis's interview on Uses This, published 28 March 2019. The kit is drawn from their answers and each reason is an excerpt, lightly edited. Shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full interview ↗
Is this you? Claim this kit →Hardware
I have a 2015 Macbook Pro which has been a workhorse for me.
I also have a 2017 ASUS ROG laptop which I bricked last year and somehow totally corrupted my M2 SSD.
First the Nexus series, now I have a Pixel 2 XL.
A pry knife is a dull blade used for separating pieces.
An awl is a pointed metal tool, like an ice pick - it's good for all the things most people use a flat head screwdriver for (mainly stabbing things).
iFixit came out with the Essential Electronics Toolkit which is a really good value at $20 because it comes with all the basic tools you need including spudgers and a pry knife.
Since I work as a consultant I need to have more personal tools so I have the iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit.
So I bought a self-adjusting wire stripper.
I have a Prusa I3 MK3 FDM 3D printer at home which I built from a kit.
Productivity
For tracking billable hours I use Timesheet for Android.
Notes
Outside of engineering specific software I like to use ColorNote for to-do lists or other random notetaking.
Design
I use Solidworks, which is a very powerful and very expensive computer aided design program for creating 3D models and 2D drawings.
A few years ago I tried Onshape, which is a much cheaper cloud CAD program made by some people who left Solidworks but back then when I tried it, it was still lacking a lot of features compared to Solidworks.
If you're a hobbyist looking to get started then I recommend Tinkercad, which is really popular and easy to use.
I use Cura to connect to my 3D printer.
Media
Storage
I backup my CAD files to Google Drive.
Other
For corporate jobs I've used fancier PLM/PDM document management tools like Teamcenter or Solidworks Vault, but for my own personal work and small client work, it's not worth the overhead.