Engineering & Architecture

Guidance

How to do each of the four parts, and the drawing conventions you will use for the rest of the year. Come back to this page while you work — it is meant to be used, not read once.

Part 1 · The case study

A case study means analysing things that already exist and working out a way to rate them. You are not designing yet. You are learning what already works, what annoys people, and what a desk organizer actually has to do.

Pick four different organizers. Then invent your own rating criteria — this is the part students skip, and it is the whole exercise. Some starting points:

CriterionAesthetics

Would somebody want this on their desk?

CriterionErgonomics

Can you reach what you need without looking?

CriterionCost

What do you get for the price?

CriterionQuality

Does it feel as good as it looks in the photo?

CriterionPortability

Can you move it without emptying it?

CriterionReliability

Will the drawer still slide in a year?

Go and read the reviews. Product photos are marketing. The one-star and three-star reviews are where you find out that it arrived flimsy, that it is much smaller than pictured, or that the drawers jam. That gap between the photo and the reviews is the most useful thing in this whole exercise — write about it.

Part 2 · Concept sketches

This is the bulk of the project. Minimum three genuinely different ideas, each with its own sketch. Three variations on one box is one idea, not three.

Sketches can be quick. They cannot be careless. The difference is whether someone else can tell what they are looking at.

A sheet of several different desktop organizer concept sketches
Several distinct ideas on one sheet. Quick lines, but each one is readable and labelled.
Annotated concept sketches on grid paper with written notes beside each idea
Annotation is what turns a drawing into a design. Note what each idea holds, what it does well, and what worries you about it.

Your sketches should communicate the character of the product, not just its shape. A chunky organizer with thick rounded corners says something different from a thin angular one. Luxury, sturdy, sleek, playful, industrial — decide which one you are going for and make the drawing say it.

Part 3 · Elevations

An elevation is a flat, straight-on view of one face. No perspective, no foreshortening. Because nothing is distorted, you can measure it — which is exactly why builders work from elevations and not from pretty pictures.

You need three views: top, front and side. Each one goes on its own sheet of paper, with its own title block. You are drawing at 1:1 — full size — so there is no room to fit three views of a real organizer onto one sheet. Three views, three sheets, three title blocks.

Three separate sheets of paper, one for the top view, one for the front view and one for the side view, each with its own title block in the lower right corner containing name, part, view and scale SHEET 1 — TOP width SHEET 2 — FRONT height SHEET 3 — SIDE depth TITLE BLOCK — on every sheet NAME PART VIEW SCALE A. Student · Period 4 Desktop Organizer FRONT 1:1 Three separate drawings, so they cannot line up on the page and check each other. You check them: top width = front width top depth = side depth front height = side height
One view per sheet, each with its own title block. The VIEW line is the only entry that changes from sheet to sheet — it is what tells the reader which drawing they are holding.

The three sheets have to agree. When all three views sit on one page they line up and catch your own mistakes. On separate sheets they cannot, so that check is now your job. Before you hand them in: the width on your top view must match the width on your front view, the depth on your top view must match the depth on your side view, and the height on your front view must match the height on your side view. If two sheets disagree, the model cannot be built.

Every sheet needs

A title block in the corner — your name, the part, which view the sheet shows, and the scale. Dimensions on every feature someone would have to measure. Clean lines drawn with a T square, triangle or straight edge — not freehand. And a scale of 1:1, meaning one inch on the paper is one inch on the model.

A student elevation drawing with dimension lines and a title block
These elevations are missing a title block.

1:1 has a consequence. If one view of your organizer will not fit on a sheet of paper, it will not fit on a desk either. Size it before you draw it.

Part 3b · Two-point perspective

Where an elevation is for building, a perspective drawing is for selling — it shows what the thing will actually look like sitting on a desk. No dimensions needed, no title block. Shade it if you want.

Two-point perspective: a horizon line with a vanishing point at each end, one vertical leading edge nearest the viewer, and every horizontal edge running back to one of the two points HORIZON — your eye level VP1 VP2 leading edge nearest the viewer, and the only edge drawn at true height top face is visible because the object sits below the horizon Every horizontal edge runs back to one vanishing point or the other. Verticals stay vertical.
Set the horizon at the eye level of whoever is looking at the desk. Put the two vanishing points far apart — close together makes the object look bent.
A student two-point perspective drawing of a desktop organizer
A student perspective drawing from a previous year. Name blurred.

Part 4 · The model build

Hobby knives cause most of the injuries in this room. Always cut on a mat, always pull the blade toward you along a straight edge with your fingers behind it, and make several light passes rather than one deep one. A dull blade is more dangerous than a sharp one because it needs force. See shop safety.

Material thickness changes everything

This is the single hardest part of the project and the thing your drawings will not warn you about. On paper a line has no thickness. Foam board is about 3/16 of an inch thick, and every joint either adds that or hides it.

Two ways to join foam board at a corner: butting the side past the end of the base makes the built width one board thickness wider than drawn, while landing the side on top of the base keeps the drawn width Side butted past the base every corner adds one thickness t built width = drawn + t Side landed on the base width stays, height grows instead built width = drawn t = one board thickness, roughly 3/16 in on the foam board in the shop
Neither way is wrong. What is wrong is not deciding — then your model comes out a quarter inch bigger than your drawing and the lid does not fit.

Curves in foam board

Foam board will not bend. It will, however, bend beautifully if you score the back at regular intervals — cut through the back paper and the foam, leaving the front paper intact as a hinge. The closer your cuts, the tighter the curve.

Cut foam board pieces on a mat, some with evenly scored parallel lines
Parts cut and ready. Note the evenly spaced score lines on two of them.
A scored piece of foam board bent into a smooth curve
The same technique, bent. Score spacing controls how tight the curve can go.

Plan your cuts before you make them

Material waste is scored on this project. Before you cut anything, lay your pieces out on the board on paper — largest first, edges shared where you can. Two long pieces cut from opposite ends of a sheet waste the middle. The same two cut side by side leave a usable offcut.

Cut slightly outside your line and trim back. You can always take material off. You cannot put it back.

The presentation

Aim for 2 to 4 minutes. Your deck must show pictures of all four parts — your sketches, your three elevations, your perspective drawing, and your finished model. Missing any of those costs you on the rubric, no matter how good the model is.

Spend most of your time on the design process rather than the description. Things worth answering:

Those are prompts to think with, not a script to answer one by one.