Enhancing spatial visualization skills in engineering drawing course

Abstract

Strong spatial visualization skills are important to an engineer's ability to create and interpret technical drawings, which is critical in thinking, modeling, and problem solving processes. The ability to visualize in three dimensions is a cognitive skill that is linked to success in engineering. Spatial visualization skill and its correlation with students' success has received much attention in technical education. The ability to understand important topics in engineering drawing such as orthographic projection, isometric drawing, hidden views, and sectional views is very critical as it represents the fundamentals of engineering drawing education. However, research shows that some learners with poor spatial ability had trouble understanding basic fundamental concepts of engineering drawing. This study investigates the correlation between spatial visualization ability and academic success in a Technical Drawing course which has three sections (i) hand drafting, (ii) two dimensional (2D) CAD drawing, and (iii) three dimensional (3D) CAD drawing. Students were pre- and post-tested using a standard mental rotation test to gauge spatial visualization ability and results are discussed for three sections of this course.