Employing Rapid Prototyping in a First-Year Engineering Graphics Course
Wayne Johnson, Cameron Coates, Patrick Hager, Nyrell Stevens · 2009
Over the past several years, rapid prototyping has played a greater role in engineering graphics education. This is evident by the inclusion of discussions on rapid prototyping technology in most of the recent engineering graphics textbooks, and the use of rapid prototyping in the engineering graphics curricula at various colleges and universities. A major barrier in the adoption of rapid prototyping at smaller educational institutions continues to be the relatively high cost of rapid prototyping machines. This paper presents our efforts to integrate rapid prototyping into our freshman engineering graphics course at Armstrong Atlantic State University. We will discuss our experiences in the acquisition, development, and implementation of the rapid prototyping course materials. We will also present qualitative results of our student's perceptions of the rapid prototyping course modules. This work will be useful to other two-year engineering programs seeking to implement rapid prototyping into their engineering graphics or introduction to engineering courses.