Face-based constructive approach in 3D environmment to facilitate the interpretation of multiview orthographic projection to future engineers

Abstract

One of the main objectives of Engineering Graphics’ syllabus is to improve the capacity of spatial vision of students, as well as providing essential teaching of graphic representation techniques. In this course, students should create and interpret engineering drawings. However, a significant number of them have problems interpreting and understanding multiview orthographic projections. The course is commonly studied at first year of several engineering Bachelor’s Degrees. In this course, the capacity of spatial vision is critical, as students have to interpret a real object from different projection methods. Nevertheless, this is not an obvious task for most students, since either they have no prior training or traditionally this training has no effect on student’s capability of reflexion and interpretation. We consider that facilitating the object interpretation may involve a significant educational improvement. For this reason, in this work we present the approach and development of a specific method to interpret an object. It is focused on harnessing the three dimensional (3D) environment of AutoCAD ® software which is used in the course, for the face-based construction of objects.