Engineering Design

New River Community College is located in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, just minutes from Virginia Tech as well as Radford University.

The Engineering Design career field is an extremely broad field with career choices in just about every field of industry that you can imagine. Some of those are: Advanced and Additive Manufacturing (3D printing), Prototyping, Product Research and Development, Computer Aided Design and many, many more. Our program is multifaceted and while our primary focus is on Mechanical and Technical Design our students become proficient in areas such as: Reverse Engineering, Prototypical Design, multiple variations of Advanced and Additive Manufacturing), CNC, G-Code, 3D Scanning and point cloud manipulation, (GD&T) Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing, Mechanism, Gear & Assembly design base around ASME and ISO standards. No matter what career field graduates go into, “Attention to Detail” is the underlying foundation and principle on which all courses and projects are based around.

The Engineering Design Technology (EDT) program helps students transition from basic entry level CAD skills to becoming highly competent Engineering Design Technicians with advanced parametric solid modeling and surface modeling designers. Our graduates highly recruited sought after from both local/regional companies to firms across the country. Some of those companies are: VOLVO, Kollmorgen, Inland Motors, Danaher Motion, Motion Control Systems, BAE Systems, Army Corp of Engineers, SAIC, SIS, Northrop Grumman, Alexander Arms, Huntington Ingalls Industries (Newport News Shipyards), MOOG Inc, and Federal Mogul, Corning, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Ametek, Radford Army Ammunition Plant.

Within the two years of program study, students will become proficient in a number of the world's top design software programs: AutoCAD, Inventor, Fusion 360, Revit, Creo, Keyshot, SpaceClaim, Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, Sketchup and more.

New to the EDT program is course and introduction to small Unmanned Systems(Drones) in which they will have the opportunity to earn a UMS pilot’s license. This course includes: rules and laws governing drone/aircraft flight, certification, maintenance, design, reverse engineering along with virtual training, programming, developing flight plans, aeronautical charts and how to fly drones in a safe and responsible manner.

Within the two years of program study, students will become proficient in a number of the world's top design software programs: AutoCAD, Inventor, Fusion 360, Revit, Creo, Keyshot, SpaceClaim, Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, Sketchup and more.