Innovative approaches to teaching engineering drawing at tertiary institutions

This paper arises from our concern for the level of teaching of engineering drawing at tertiary institutions in Australia. Little attention is paid to teaching hand drawing and tolerancing. Teaching of engineering drawing is usually limited to Computer-Aided Design (CAD) using AutoCAD or one of the solid modelling packages. As a result, many engineering graduates have difficulties in understanding how views are produced in different projection angles, are unable to produce engineering drawings of professional quality or read engineering drawings and unable to select fits and limits or surface roughness. In the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering (BEE) at QUT new approaches to teaching engineering drawing have been introduced. In this paper results of these innovative approaches are examined through surveys and other research methods.