Professional Documents
Culture Documents
00
Printed in Great Britain. # 1998 TEMPUS Publications.
276
Teaching and Learning CAD 277
Advanced A-Level qualifications for University from the teacher's PC. Each student would then
entry. The O-level has now been replaced by the duplicate the procedure on his or her own compu-
General Certificate of Secondary Education with a ter. This method of learning was effective but
National Curriculum. The A levels remain, with a inefficient; the class had to progress at the pace
variety of examination boards and curricula.) of the slowest participant and several teachers were
The fundamental changes in emphasis in second- required to dash to assist students who were in
ary curricula, internationally and in recent years, difficulty. The level of concentration of individuals
have had a great impact on higher engineering would, on occasion, vary and consequently much
education that few teachers will have not recog- time was lost in picking up on student's mistakes.
nised. (The emphasis in Secondary Education in However, by the end of the second term of CAD
the United Kingdom is thought by the author to learning, the students were competent in 2-D
have shifted from preparation of a work force drawing, which had been the aim of the course.
for an industrial production economy to one of At the end of the first year, however, the CAD
preparation for service industry. Students conse- teaching team decided that a more flexible learning
quently enter engineering degrees with a much mode was needed. An extensive investigation was
lower level of technical and scientific knowledge carried out of existing CAD instruction books and
and awareness than they would have had in the books on how to prepare self-learning texts.
past. This puts engineering Higher Education There are a good many existing books on CAD
under great pressure to adapt teaching strategies.) programs, particularly for AutoCAD. Some have
The student body at Shrivenham is truly multi- had very wide recognition and solid sales. Prob-
national. It has been observed that students from ably one of the most successful series of books is
some non-Western cultures have more difficulty exemplified by Boersma et al. [1]. This book is one
with 3-D work with others. This has been particu- of a series of books developed by the publishers as
larly so with students from the Middle East where the AutoCAD market grew. In the UK market,
there is a strong 2-D theme in visual artwork. Yarwood has published several excellent works on
Some students from that culture find great diffi- CAD programs, starting with AutoCAD and,
culty in interpreting and creating orthographic more recently on the MicroStation 95 program
projections. When the decision is taken to start from Bentley Systems [2, 3].
out in 3-D, it is anticipated that teaching strate- The team of teachers involved in CAD learning
gies will need to make allowance for group or at RMCS jointly decided that we would use
individual perception problems. MicroStation from early 1995. The decision was
based on a number of criteria; cost was not the
least significant. Yarwood's books on Micro-
TEACHING AND LEARNING CAD Station are a valuable reference asset and a
dozen copies of each are kept in our Design
For the first year of full CAD teaching, the Centre.
students were required to watch demonstrations These types of books are very good for
of the drawing construction on a screen projected experienced engineering drawing operators but
278 C. N. Reffold
their emphasis is on mastering the program rather At the end of each completed engineering draw-
than the construction of drawings. The author felt ing exercise, the students are given similar tasks,
that what was needed was a self-learning program without detailed instruction. For example, Fig. 3
on engineering drawing using the selected soft- shows one of the exercises given on completion of
ware. This would be based on past teaching the drawing in Fig. 2.
exercises that had been done `manually'. Further- These tasks are for completion, individually, in
more, it was felt that actually producing engineer- unsupervised time and they enable rehearsal of the
ing drawings was important to the student. The key concepts of skills to reinforce memory. The
learning of the software should be of secondary individual efforts are used as a basis for continual
importance and comes with time. These ideas have assessment course work.
proved to be successful with students at the The exercises become progressively more
RMCS. involved and realistic as the student learns more
Petit [4] and Davis [5] were particularly useful about the program and more about engineering
guides on the development of training material. drawing.
With their help, a book was produced which A particular problem in the real world of the
takes the student through a series of increasingly `surviving' student (as opposed to those seeking
demanding drawing exercises. The book is given to `metacognition') is copying. The copying of each
the student at the start of the course and they are other's work enables students to submit solutions
told that they will be teaching themselves and each with a minimum of effort. For example, many will
other. The first exercise in the book is shown at copy a file, change the filename and substitute their
Fig. 2. It is a simple 2-D exercise (on an A4 page own name initials into a title frame. This is easily
size), and is completed during the first three hours detected since CAD files which are identical are
contact session of the academic year. Note that this either perfect or are copied complete with identical
is before the student has even mastered the concept errors. The latter is very much more frequently
of projection. encountered than the former! A strategy has to be
The students work in pairs, selected by the class found to counsel and persuade the student away
manager at the start of the year, to mix experience. from such practice. It is not often possible to cajole
They take turns in reading instructions and students into admitting who copied the work of
monitoring the actions of the operator. This has whom.
proved a valuable learning model since they At the RMCS we mark duplicated work at face
prevent each other's mistakes and discuss their value but warn that we are aware of copying and
actions to deepen understanding. (An additional that it is not in the student's interest to do so. We
benefit for the author is that the students will ask if also warn of and give a tough CAD progress test in
they are unsure of a particular piece of text. This week 10 that counts for many more marks than the
enables the author to review the text and improve coursework.
or clarify the material. Sometimes, the substitution Figure 4 shows an example of the sort of test the
of shorter, simpler words has been of benefit to a students take after 9 weeks of instruction. This
number of students.) means that they will have done about 15 hours in
Teaching and Learning CAD 279
The key requirements for the CAD rooms were: to the teacher. Also, a potentially distracting
pedestrian route is now behind the students. A
. Students should have an unrestricted view of the false ceiling was also installed which allowed
teacher and the projected display. This means contemporary IT lighting and diffusers to be
that the student's working station should not be installed. This enabled selective darkening to mini-
oriented so that the student's back is to the mise distraction and enhance visibility of the
teacher. Furthermore, where network-wiring projected display. Also, Fig. 5 shows the position
pylons are required, their position should be of the wiring columns and the lines of view which
carefully planned to ensure that they do not have been constructed to ensure that all students
restrict visibility. can see the central display.
. Teachers should quickly be able to go to a An important consideration in all design work is
student to give help. the aesthetic as well as the functional appeal of the
. Teachers and technical staff should have good finished work. We were fortunate to have available
access to the wiring at the back of computers. funds to decorate the new facility with appealing
Students should not! Considerable effort was and harmonised colour schemes (with the aid of
made to keep the focus of student attention specialist consultation). We also were able to hang
away from wiring and equipment. Rigorous some appropriate abstract pictures and to put on
attention to detail of safety rules was of key display engineering components and artefacts.
importance. The comments of students (especially post-
. Groups of computers need to be physically graduates) on entering the facility for the first
contiguously linked to allow wiring links for time is very satisfying. They show appreciation
networking. This is particularly important so for the contemporary feel of the asymmetry of
that each group could share printers and the layout as well as the, obviously, expensive
plotters. decoration. In an age where the students perceive
themselves more and more as customers, it is
Many drawing office layouts tend to be `open important that they should feel that they get
plan'. This encourages people to enter and leave `value for money' with the facilities we provide.
freely. This was the case with the RMCS facility
and the positioning of the main teacher's
display was carefully considered to minimise the CONCLUSION
distracting effect of pedestrian traffic.
As in all engineering design, compromises had to During 1994, Cranfield University at the
be made. Figure 5 shows the final layout of the RMCS, decided to start teaching engineering
facility. drawing on computers using computer-aided
Note that the original focus of the students drawing programs. This involved substantial
(Fig. 1) had been along the long axis to a chalk- expense (including a new academic staff post)
board and screen at the narrow end of the room. and much hard work but has been successfully
This was changed so that all students were closer implemented.
There was much discussion amongst teachers on The design of a CAD teaching facility was more
what it is that we should teach, how we should difficult than would have been the case for an
teach it and what tools to use for the job. industrial facility since we had to ensure that
It was decided to scrap existing drawing boards the room allowed focus on a central position
and use the space for a large CAD facility based on for the teacher. This complicated the issues of
PCs in a networked environment. how to position and lay out the hardware and
A new course of instruction in 2-D engineering wiring pylons.
drawing was designed after consideration of 3-D as The design and implementation of the solution
an introduction to engineering drawing. The course was not an easy task but is now running
is now delivered using an in-house developed self- successfully and is appreciated by students.
learning text (by the author) supported by teachers MicroStation1 is a registered trademark of
in contact hours. The students express their enjoy- Bentley Systems, Inc.
ment of this mode of learning and are achieving AccuDraw1 and SmartLine1 are trademarks of
good standards of work. Bentley Systems, Inc.
The software used is MicroStation 95 from MS-DOS1, Windows1 and Windows NT1 are
Bentley Systems. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
REFERENCES
1. Tom Boersma et al., Inside AutoCAD LT, New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis (1994).
2. A. Yarwood, An Introduction to MicroStation 95, Longman, Harlow (1996).
3. A. Yarwood, An Introduction to 3-D MicroStation 95, Longman, Harlow (1996).
4. Ann Petit, Secrets to Enliven Learning: How to Develop Extraordinary Self-Directed Training
Materials, Pfeiffer, Amsterdam (1994).
5. John Davis, How to Write a Training Manual, Gower, Aldershot (1992).
C. N. Reffold served as a Royal Airforce fighter navigator for 15 years before retiring
through invalidity. Since leaving the RAF, the author taught engineering at Coventry
University, specialising in design, experimental methods, computing and applied
mechanics. He was latterly course tutor of a BEng course in Aerospace Systems
Engineering. Mr Reffold joined Cranfield University at the Royal Military College of
Science in January 1994 as a lecturer in computer-aided engineering. He currently works
in the Engineering Systems Department and is responsible for teaching stress analysis,
engineering design and engineering computing.