It takes a lot. First off, you have to fundamentally understand everything at play. That means the materials, surfaces, the physical principles of every aspect of what you are building, and you need to understand how it will be produced, how the parts will be produced, how it will be put together, how it will be repaired, used, disposed of, etc.

This means extreme study in school, not just doing problems but reading textbooks through and really, really giving it time and effort to comprehend every aspect of engineering science. This is a task so mammoth you will have to take at least a few graduate-level classes and your grades may suffer from it.

A good mechanical engineer should have the basic ideas in the following subjects (with some practical exposure):

  • Applied thermodynamics,
  • Automation,
  • CAD/CAM,
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics,
  • Control engineering,
  • Design of machine components,
  • Dynamics of machines,
  • Engineering drawing,
  • Engineering materials,
  • Engineering mechanics,
  • Financial management,
  • Finite elements method,
  • Fluid mechanics,
  • Foundry technology,
  • Fracture mechanics,
  • Green technology,
  • Heat and mass transfer,
  • Industrial engineering,
  • Kinematics of machines,
  • Lean Manufacturing,
  • Limits and tolerances,
  • Machine drawing,
  • Machine tools,
  • Manufacturing methods,
  • Materials science,
  • Mechatronics,
  • Nanotechnology,
  • Operations management,
  • Operations research,
  • Photolithographic process,
  • Project management,
  • Quality assurance,
  • Rapid prototype manufacturing,
  • Reliability engineering,
  • Solid mechanics,
  • Solid waste management,
  • Sputtering technique,
  • Strength of materials,
  • Supply chain management,
  • Theory of machines,
  • Theory of elasticity,
  • Theory of plasticity,
  • Thermodynamics,
  • Total quality management,
  • Turbomachines, etc.

That apart, he/she can even choose a handful of them to master the concept.

In mechanical engineering, there are four major groups/areas like:

i) Manufacturing engineering,

ii) Thermal engineering,

iii) Design engineering,

iv) Management/Industrial engineering.

He/she should decide in which area of mechanical engineering he/she wants to concentrate and work. And accordingly, needs to learn a lot in that area.

The focus should be on becoming a performer (to become a performer the individual needs to be meticulous in her/his task) with some latest software technologies available.