Making Connections: Spatial Skills and Engineering Drawings

Abstract

Students should study the “geometry of one, two, and three dimensions” and through such study will develop the spatial skills needed in a variety of careers (NCTM 1989, 112). As instructors of geometry, we need to be able to demonstrate to our students the uses of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the kinds of spatial skills needed by engineers for their work and to suggest activities for the geometry classroom that we have used to help build these skills.