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:
- Orthographic Projection: a planar technical drawing method that is useful for working drawings and represents two-dimensional views of an object;
- Isometric Drawing: including converting from orthographic;
- Planometric Drawing: inclined at 45/45;
- Exploded Drawing: including assembly drawings;
- Sectional Views: including an understanding of how to hatch cut surfaces, nut and bolt conventions, and cutting planes;
- Part Drawings: This can include drawings that include just part of an object, with break symbols (showing parts cut off), or parts lists.
- Geometric construction: including bisecting angles, finding centre lines, and using a compass to construct triangles, hexagons, octagons, and n-sided figures.
- Developments/Nets: including representation of glue tabs and joining methods required to form prisms, cones, cylinders, and pyramids;
- Perspective Drawing: including estimated one and two point perspective;
- Freehand Sketching Techniques: including ‘crating’ and other rapid rending methods;
- Rendering Techniques: including 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.
A collection of articles covering these topics is found below.
