Message from the Editor

Abstract

This is my first edition of the Engineering Design Graphics Journal as the Director of Publications for the next three years. This feels like home to me, since I spent a good part of my corporate life in the publishing business as art director for The Phoenix Gazette, editorial illustrator for The Arizona Republic, and computer graphics production manager for Phoenix Newspapers, Inc. before coming to higher education fulltime.

I thought it would be good to give you a brief overview of our Journal for the new readers. The internationally-acclaimed Engineering Design Graphics Journal  is a refereed academic journal that is published tri-annually and promotes activities in engineering, technology, descriptive geometry, CAD, and any research related to visualization and design throughout the United States and eight other countries. Each issue of the journal is circulated to more than 700 individuals and institutions. The Engineering Design Graphics Division is the oldest division in the American Society for Engineering Educators.

If you are interested in publishing your work in the Engineering Design Graphics Journal, please read the Manuscript Guidelines, which can be found online at http://www.edgd.org. Manuscripts to be considered for the spring issue will be due on February 15. The target deadline for the fall issue is August 15, and for the winter issue, November 15.

This edition of the Journal includes three articles submitted by Engineering Design Graphics Division members. The articles in this volume received a 33% acceptance rate. One of the articles in this issue is the Editor’s Award, which recognizes a previously published outstanding paper of the Journal. The award was presented at the summer ASEE Conference in Chicago to Sheryl A. Sorby, Associate Dean of Engineering at Michigan Technological University. Her research addresses 3D spatial skills. The second refereed article selected for this publication is qualitative research addressing industry perspectives related to product data management technologies. The third article presents findings from experiments on computer-based multiview drawing instruction.

Well-developed 3D spatial skills are particularly important for success in engineering graphics courses. In Sorby’s paper Developing 3D Spatial Skills for K-12 Students materials developed at Michigan Technological University are assessed and tested on middle school students.

Nathan W. Hartman and Craig L. Miller of Purdue University present past and present issues related to product data management (PDM) technologies and their implementation within organizations in their paper Examining Industry Perspectives Related to Legacy Data and Technology Toolset Implementation.

Patrick Connolly of Purdue University, Kathryn Holliday-Darr and Dawn G. Blasko of  Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, approached their research quantitatively in their paper Multiview Drawing Instruction: A Two-location Experiment. In an effort to validate the efficacy of these tools in comparison with more traditional methods of orthographic drawing instruction, an experiment was carried out with engineering and non-engineering students from Purdue University and Penn State Erie.

Thanks to all the reviewers for taking the time to critique the work of their peers, especially to to Nancy Study of Virginia State University, our Associate Editor, who has been coordinating the review process. She is my right arm. Thanks also to Kathryn Holliday-Darr of Penn State Erie, who is our Circulation Manager, Treasurer, and my walking encyclopedia. It is wonderful to work with competent people! :-)

Special gratitude goes to one of the most talented graduate students in design, Magdalena Soto of Arizona State University, who redesigned the new flavor of the Journal. Michael Protocollo and John Hollandoner, Technology Management students at Arizona State University, used their digital printing expertise to print this edition. So you see, this could not be accomplished without an efficient team.