Communication and Presentation Methods: resources to help students excel
High school Design and Technology students are required to demonstrate a range of communication skills as necessary for design and making, demonstrating and understanding of standard conventions and technical, subject-specific vocabulary, communicating ideas with precision and clarity. They should be familiar with a range of different hand-drawn and computer-generated presentation methods, including drawing methods, planning drawings, and enhancement techniques:
- Orthographic Projection: a planar (2D) technical drawing method showing different views of an object. Useful for working drawings.
- Isometric Drawing: a pictorial (3D) drawing method where most lines are either vertical or 30°.
- Planometric Drawing: A pictorial drawing method where the plan view is inclined at 45°/45° and sides projected vertically downwards. Not very realistic, but easy to draw and useful for representing floor plans.
- Exploded Drawing: A drawing method where different parts are drawn as if ‘pulled apart’ along an axis. Can be isometric or orthographic etc. Commonly used for assembly drawings.
- Sectional Views: A type of orthographic drawing that shows how an object has been ‘sliced’ through along a ‘cutting plane’, with cut surfaces hatched. Commonly used for showing the interior of an object, showing how parts might be assembled (can require an understanding of nut and bolt drawing conventions).
- Part Drawings: This can have two meanings. It can mean a drawing of a specific part, such as may appear in a parts list, or a drawing that shows just part of an object, with break symbols showing where materials are ‘cut’ or ‘torn’ away.
- Perspective Drawing: including estimated one and two point perspective. Most realistic drawing method.
- Developments/Nets: including representation of glue tabs and joining methods required to form prisms, cones, cylinders, and pyramids;
- Geometric constructions: including bisecting angles, finding centre lines, and using a compass to construct triangles, hexagons, octagons, and n-sided figures.
- Freehand Sketching Techniques: including ‘crating’ and other rapid rending methods;
- Enhancement and Rendering Techniques: including adding shows, rendering using graphite pencil, coloured pencil, marker pen, watercolour, ink pen, mixed media, and digital rendering;
- Graphic Symbols, Conventions, and Charts: an understanding of common ways of presenting graphical data, including flow charts, Gantt charts, and bar charts, as well as familiarity with recycling symbols. AS/A2 students must also have a familiarity with electronic symbols.
- Computer-Aided Design: using digital tools to develop and communicate design ideas, including virtual reality.
