All cool design/engineering websites across the web have a section dedicated to "the top ten golden rules in engineering" or "the do's and don'ts in engineering"... i felt that a cool website like mine ;-) should feature one of these geeks stuff too. So, here you have it:

Discover what this issue of good design and good engineering concept is all about in a two steps tutorial

You must know how to play cards and which are the cards you are allowed to pick up depending on the game you are playing. So let's start with the cards pickup drill: you play the italian game called "scopa". The game consists in a number of rules.. just know you're allowed to pick up cards adding up to a card you're holding, or just being the same card you're holding. Same card has a priority over summed up cards. The "7" card is an important one to have because it allows you to form a "primiera" consisting, at its best, of all the 4 "7" cards. And, if you play this game in Tuscany, the land of the Renaissance, the "J" card has a value of 9.

SO:

on the desk, you have these cards	while on your hand, you're holding this one only

Which one(s) are you picking?

correct answer

You need to have astonishing good power of imagination and capability to fill in missing information, even if there it is really a lot missing. You'll never become a good designer and engineer if you need to be told everything. So let's have the drill: somebody is hand-waving at you and speaks frenetically, you're not catching at all what's all the fuss about, you just manage to figure out he's trying to make you understand something by giving you some elements. The elements you manage to grasp are the following:

rails	locomotive

What the hell is he trying to make you understand?

answer

So how did you score?

If you scored 2, you're a very good subject but you're not forged to mistakes. When you'll eventually make one, because you will make one one day, you won't be able to recover from it and it will be a disaster. Get out from the design & engineer business asap.

If you scored 0, you've still got a lot to learn in this business. Keep surfing the web for other similar tutorials

If you scored 1, good the first but no way for the second, you have good chances of understanding algebra and you're all set for your retirement days playing cards at the local club.... but as far as design and engineering is concerned, keep surfing same as above

If you scored 1, no way absolutely the first one, but you eventually managed to get the second one without looking at the solution, you will be pleased to be in VERY good company: Leonardo da Vinci scored your same score in a cult italian movie "Non ci resta che piangere" with Massimo Troisi and Roberto Benigni, which i kindly thanks and credit for the paradigms as i copied them from the movie :-), and i kindly thanks my former boss Renzo Valleggi during my "Scienzia Machinale" days, for synthetizing a troubling issue one day like this "Listen Marco: rails, locomotive.... train"

(the same subject one day told me to hand him the CNN news and i gave him the caliper: it was what he was after)