EPLAN Education – Skills for Electrical Engineering
Hard at Work: Benefits for Students and Industry
Professor Manfred Lichtenwagner is very intuitive in instructing his students and teaches them the practical application of electrical engineering knowledge with support from the EPLAN Education software package.
What is it that particularly intrigues a company when a recent electrical engineering graduate applies for a job? Without question it is the applicant’s practical experience, maybe even with a certification, that gives them an edge during the recruitment process. Students at HTL Wels, a technical vocational college in northern Austria, are told what future employers expect starting from their third year in electrical engineering at the latest. But none of them have any worries about not being able to meet these criteria. That’s because Professor Manfred Lichtenwagner is teaching them the necessary electrical engineering skills in a practice-oriented way using the education software provided by EPLAN. Equipped with this electrotechnical know-how and with the highly regarded EPLAN Certified Student (ECS) certification, the lucky students are well prepared to succeed in the job market.
By Luzia Haunschmidt, freelance journalist
Modern energy technology, automation, information technology, e-mobility and industrial electronics are just a few of the topics that graduates of the HTL Wels electrical engineering programme will be dealing with in their future careers. To become experts in one of these fields, students need a solid foundation that prepares them for specialisation, with a strong combination of theory and practice in laboratories and workshops. With this kind of experience, students can look forward to working in an exciting professional environment, but also have the opportunity to begin a higher degree programme at a university or technical college.
The entrance to HTL Wels – which along with electrical engineering also teaches information technology, mechanical engineering, mechatronics and chemistry – makes a grand first impression with its modern architecture and spaciousness. The reception area with adjoining terrace has a cozy atmosphere, with its communication islands and greenery, and also provides a quick overview of the workshops, laboratories and classrooms of the respective departments. However, the most lasting impression from a walk through the college is that theoretical knowledge is imparted in combination with serious practical exercises. To help achieve this, the workshops at HTL Wels are home to a large number of processing machines from prestigious companies, enabling the students to learn by doing.
EPLAN provides particular support to the HTL students in their practical exercises in the fields of electrical engineering and mechatronics with free access to the EPLAN Education software package. Those who wish to can also obtain the EPLAN Certified Student (ECS) certification, which is widely recognised in the industry.
Project-Oriented Learning is the Credo
“By the way, HTL Wels is the only school in Austria that regularly offers ECS training in the fields of electrical engineering and mechatronics,” says Helmut Radinger, customer account manager at EPLAN, emphasising the lively mix of theory and practice at the college. He adds: “Even during the coronavirus pandemic, Professor Lichtenwagner managed to motivate his students to obtain the ECS certification.”
“Well, I really cannot take credit for that,” says Professor Manfred Lichtenwagner, who teaches applied electrical engineering at HTL Wels. “During the corona time, it was the students themselves who came to me with the desire to complete the ECS training programme. They were motivated by their holiday intern experiences, during which they discovered that EPLAN is used quite extensively in the industry. For the students, this led to the logical conclusion about the benefits of getting the ECS certification. After all, it gives them a decisive advantage over other job applicants once they’ve finished their studies.”
Engineer Helmut Radinger, customer account manager at EPLAN, supports the teaching staff at HTL Wels in the electrical engineering department with assistance and advice, also enabling them to take part in EPLAN training courses themselves.
EPLAN Training Methods
But first things first. How exactly does one use EPLAN for practice-oriented teaching on the topic of electrical engineering design and what learning opportunities does EPLAN offer for this? And what does the much-vaunted ECS certification actually signify?
First off, all of EPLAN’s software offerings focus on making it easy to learn electrical engineering designs. The aim is to enable not just newcomers to the industry, but also students of technical fields to be able to efficiently use the EPLAN software portfolio. EPLAN therefore makes a variety of educational methods available to teachers and students. These range from free software access for working on practice examples in the classroom and at home to e-learning materials (training with the aid of videos). EPLAN also provides online tutorials on the latest software releases, which offer students support that can be called up at any time, for instance when completing homework.
“In addition to free e-learning courses for the general public and e-learning updates, there are also the extended e-learning EPLAN Education offerings, for both students and instructors,” Radinger says. “EPLAN has included almost everything used in engineering in its e-learning courses to make it possible for students to be able to work through a complete project planning task. This starts with the necessary components, such as terminals, cables or contactors, and extends to analyses and test runs.”
Professor Lichtenwagner agrees: “The e-learning materials actually support our students quite well for their homework assignments or if they’ve forgotten something they’ve learned or don’t understand something right away in class. Using the e-learning materials helps them refresh information again very effectively, and they can listen to the explanations as many times as they need to until a procedure is actually mastered.”
The Crowning Glory of an EPLAN Electrical Engineer
The ECS certification is proof of the successful completion of the EPLAN Certified Student examination. This exam is specially designed for EPLAN users attending a vocational college, a university of applied sciences, a higher technical college, a technical university or a vocational academy. The course enables students to plan projects in accordance with standards, diagnose and rectify errors in the project and, if necessary, replace the corresponding devices. It provides students comprehensive expertise in the basics of Eplan project planning and engineering.
Asked about the expectations the industry has for students from these sorts of institutions, Professor Lichtenwagner says; “Basically, companies expect graduates to be able to open a project in EPLAN and work with it. I’m not yet talking about mastery of special software versions such as Eplan Fluid or Eplan Harness. A course grade alone doesn’t say much about the actual level of EPLAN knowledge. But if someone applies for a job and has an ECS certification, their chances of getting it increase considerably. This is because the future employer knows that the applicant already has sound knowledge of electrical engineering using EPLAN. The ECS certification is thus a real benefit for both the job candidate and the prospective employer.”
Practice Makes Perfect – EPLAN Training at HTL Wels
As a rule, general training in electrical engineering using EPLAN software begins in the third year at HTL Wels. In the fourth year, it is then an optional course with the goal of achieving ECS certification. “On average about 75 per cent of the students take the optional course and then complete the certification at the end of the programme,” says Professor Lichtenwagner. “This year, around 25 students are aiming for the ECS certification.” Finally, in the fifth year, the students write their graduate theses with the help of EPLAN.
Professor Lichtenwagner describes the EPLAN lessons overall: “During the first semester of the third year – and with the help of the EPLAN e-learning offerings – we initially start with the EPLAN basics using a joint project. In the second semester, specific smaller projects are assigned to the students to work on independently. Examples of these include a motor control system with a pneumatic component, for which the students use ready-made macros but must also fill in blank project pages on their own. The completed projects are then graded and ultimately form the basis of the overall grade.”
For students of the mechatronics department, the curriculum only includes the use of EPLAN from the fifth year (the A-levels year), but it contains more learning units. The written university qualification examination ultimately includes a project that requires the mastery of a wide range of EPLAN functionalities. Things to be completed include bills of materials, wiring and terminal diagrams, fluid diagrams, inserted data sheets, the creation of a table of contents and much more. This exam work is thus also of a very practice-oriented nature.
“At the end of their training, the students of electrical engineering as well as those of mechatronics can all read and create schematics,” Professor Lichtenwagner explains. “This is the biggest benefit they get from their EPLAN lessons or projects.”
Successful Combination of Learning & Doing
Regardless of the later specialisation, the engineering training starts with Eplan Electric P8, the ECAD standard for engineering, and then continues with Eplan Fluid, the engineering tool for project planning and automated documentation of schematics for fluid-power systems.
“We combine the two engineering disciplines in the project work since many industrial systems are equipped with pneumatic and/or hydraulic drives,” Professor Lichtenwagner says. Explaining the importance of teaching theory and practice in parallel, he continues: “Of course, fluid-power systems aren’t handled as extensively as electrical schematics, but still sufficiently enough for students to be able to design a pneumatic system in EPLAN and combine it with the electrical engineering part. Last but not least, control cabinet designs are planned using Eplan Pro Panel in parallel with the workshop lessons, in which the construction of the distribution board is part of the lesson. This way the students realise how advantageous it can be to design a distribution board in 3D using Eplan Pro Panel and then easily incorporate this design into the practical exercise of control cabinet assembly.”
Enthusiastic About EEPLAN and Their Instructors
The fourth-year electrical engineering students were practically unanimous when asked about their classes: “Professor Lichtenwagner is a fantastic instructor! Using the EPLAN software, which he taught us the basics of before, he shows us step by step how to realise an actual industrial project. Thanks to his many years of professional experience, he knows exactly what is important, even down to the details, for practical project design. He also guides us through more complex tasks with a great deal of intuition – which makes his lessons really interesting. In addition, the e-learning materials and tutorials provided by EPLAN support us when we are poring over our homework. It’s really cool when we can all design schematics independently at the end of a project!”
The fourth-year students in electrical engineering at HTL Wels....
...creating schematics with the help of software tools from the EPLAN Education software package.
