Shell Eco-Marathon

Overview | Eco-Design Award | Top 10 Reasons

Eco-Design Award

Future designers and engineers will play a big part in solving 21st century problems with clean technology and sustainable design. In leading the change to integrate sustainability into the learning process, Autodesk is proud to sponsor this year's Shell Eco-marathon Eco-Design Award.

Tips for Successful Entries

Describe your final design and discuss how your design process considers sustainability.
Highlight core sustainable design strategies that you used for fuel efficient innovations like lightweighting or whole systems thinking. (See resources below)
Describe different resources you considered as eco-materials and the trade-off decisions involved in your final selection.
Quantify how your design decisions led to efficiency gains, where possible.
Include sketches, technical drawings, schematics, system maps, images of prototypes, data, or CAD files* to help explain what is unique about your design.

*CAD files accepted from any software program, Autodesk files not required.

More Resources

Whole Systems Design Video
Whole systems design allows you to see the big picture and come up with the most effective design solutions to the most important problems. It can lead to integrative design, where design synergies allow "the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts."

RMI Factor 10 Engineering Principles
A set of 17 time-tested design principles derived from the Rocky Mountain Institutes' 25+ years of design for radical resource efficiency. Prime themes are integrative design and whole systems thinking.

Lightweighting Strategies
Learn basic design principles to optimize your car's geometry and structure — helping to reduce its mass and fuel consumption.

Lightweighting Software Tutorials
These step-by-step tutorials teach you the basics of Autodesk Inventor's built-in simulation and analysis tools to help you put lightweighting principles into practice in your car design.

Download Autodesk Software
Autodesk Inventor is a powerful tool for both design and analysis – and is available for free* with a 3-year student license. Also available are Autodesk® Algor® Simulation software, which can take your engineering analysis to the next level, and AutoCAD® (now available for Mac), which can help with basic design, drafting, and documentation.

2011 Winners
Read judge Adam Menter's blog entry about the 2011 Eco-Design Award winners here.

About the 2011 Eco-Design Award
Presented to the team that creates a design that contributes to the fuel efficiency of the vehicle and incorporates recycled and/or eco-friendly materials into the vehicle and production process.

Prizes
In addition to the trophy and US$1,000 prize money, Autodesk is pleased to offer interested finalists free technical consulting and software support for their entries in 2012.

Deadlines
April 7: Americas
April 15: Europe

*Free products are subject to the terms and conditions of the end-user license agreement that accompanies download of the software. The software is for personal use for education purposes and is not intended for classroom or lab use.