Front end of an engineering design

I have no idea about what they want, either. My (totally non-professional) approach would be to start gathering as much information as possible that is relevant to the project and make notes. Organize whatever you come up with in a manner that makes sense to you. That way, you have a head-start when you finally get confirmation of what the goal is.

 

I have never heard the term used in anything other than software packages , like Russ mentioned. However, after reading what you just wrote, it sounds to me like they just want a report on the overall workings of the machine. Perhaps the "front end" here is referring to the top level of the assembly and how it is interfaced with.

 

A "front end design" is a high-level design of a product; more usually of a system. Depending on the brief, it may show the layout of a processing plant, the key operating mechanisms of a machine, or a packaging layout of a consumer product.

While it may prove such issues as feasibility, scale, dimension, concept, cost etc, it doesn't get involved with the 'nuts and bolts' of the product, any in-depth calculations (other than to prove the basic premise), or detail of individual components/subsystems.

So you might have have a front end design of an overall product, then perhaps system schemes, then assembly drawings, then detailed component drawings.

It must be a British term!