Lowell — Perhaps it lacked the “swoosh-swoosh” of the downhill skiing event, or the sweep of curlers, but the CAD Olympics held recently at Lowell High School held plenty of to-the-millisecond suspense.
Students in teacher Chris Phillips’ Engineering 1 class at Lowell High School competed in teams to see whose computer-aided design skills were strongest.
“It’s a fun day to just prepare them for their exam,” said Phillips, who has held what he calls the CAD Olympics for at least a dozen years. “If they can do it in a chaotic, loud situation, they’re pretty much set for the exam.”
CAD skills are utilized for planning, visualization and simulation in engineering as well as in fields including architecture, manufacturing, interior design, animation, fashion and construction.
Those who complete Lowell High’s Engineering 1 class can take Engineering 2, which involves students designing and making their own guitars.
About 20 students this trimester — sophomores, juniors and seniors in the elective class — used skills learned in the class to compete in three CAD Olympic events.
The first, individual challenge was to draw an object Phillips provided. Several didn’t finish, but got close.
“It’s a tough one,” he admitted, as students worked in focused, near-silence.
For the second event and third events, they worked in teams of three to first “repair” an obviously incorrect drawing of another object, and lastly, to draw an object in which designated “informers” instructed, using only words, a designated drawer how to draw an object. (Think reverse CAD charades.) Neither could see what the other was doing on the other side of the computer monitor, and the noise and tension level increased as the seconds counted down to from 12 minutes to 00:00:00.
Sophomore Sam Spaulding thought the exercises helped prepare him for the class exam the following day.
“I forgot about the constraints stuff, but it was important to use (that knowledge) here,” he said, referring to limitations in 2D sketches and 3D models that control geometry. “This refreshed my memory, for sure.”
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