Teaching Engineers to Draw

The UCL Drawing Gym is an exercise programme to help engineers improve their sketching and visualisation skills.

Starting with simple sketches to develop spatial literacy, the exercises will boost your ability to draw ideas.

Why do Engineers Need to Draw?

Engineers think, design, and communicate through their sketches. Their directness and simplicity makes them the perfect vehicle for showing the complexities of their design in an easily understood format.

However brilliant your idea is, if your client can’t understand its value, it won’t get very far.

Film 1 Oblique

Film 1: Getting Started – Oblique Drawing

Learn how to use the Drawing Gym, then get drawing. You will first learn in simple stages how to take a flat shape and project it to form a pictorial view.

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Film 2: Isometric Drawing

Follow the stages in the film to make Isometric sketches in freehand and over a grid. It is an easy method that produces accurate projections with correct proportions, showing three faces of your space or object.

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Film 3: Axonometric Drawing

This film shows how to project a plan into 3d, how to draw heights in proportion, and how to apply what you learn to simple tasks.

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Film 4: Perspective Drawing

Shows the principles of 2 point perspective drawing in simple and enjoyable exercises. Draw believable, receding space and add details as your experience and knowledge grows.

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Film 5: Section and Scale Drawing

This film features engineers and an architect discussing specific types of section drawings and their importance as visualisation tools for designers.

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Film 6: Orthographic Drawing

Orthographic projections are among the most commonly used in the engineering industry to represent 3D components, structures and spaces in 2d.

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Film 7: The Templeman Library Project

This film shows how drawing skills and techniques are applied to enable quick conversations between engineers, architects and others in the design of a building (The Templeman Library, University of Kent).