Skip to main content

Engineering Project Documentation: Introduction

OWL logo

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.



Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.


Throughout the lifecycle of an engineering project, engineers can find themselves overwhelmed with the wide variety of documentation that they must write. From the early stages of developing an engineering design to the final testing of the product, well-written and comprehensive documentation is required to accurately communicate information about the design to each department that has a role in the project. It can be difficult for engineers to decide the scope of each document and effectively communicate design concepts, data, and figures.  

The goal of this guide is to walk an engineer through the engineering design process and explain the documentation associated with each stage of an engineering project. The guide will approach this problem from the perspective of an aerospace engineering project. However, the concepts it lays out can be implemented by engineers from any industry.

Below, find links to our guides for each stage of the project.

Stage 1: Conceptual Design

Stage 2: Preliminary Design

Stage 3: Detailed Design

Stage 4: Manufacturing