PAT Orthographic Projections

Awuah29 said:

Heh guys,

I am stuck with PAT, especially the Orthographic projections sections
(endview, hidden lines, dash lines) I am using the Kaplan blue book and I am getting wrong answers. Is it all about practice, pratice,practice ? I have the Barron's book, which seems to be helpful, but I still don't get it. I don't wanna give up and just guess in this section. On the other, I think Kaplan PAT seems to be much harder. Can anyone help me and give me tips how to tackle this part. 🙁
Thanks guys

Click to expand...

The PAT is not only about practice, practice... you need to understand each of the concepts that you are being tested. You have to use your 3-D imagination, enough information is given to you to eliminate the wrong answers, and pick the right one. Don't rely on the Kaplan book so much on learning the tricks, Barron's should take care of that.

So again... once you understand the method of solving problems - it gets much easier for the rest of that section. Look at the object - and by using the endviews, hidden lines, dash lines... they all add up to one answer, and disagree with the wrong answers.

Some patience will be useful until you get the hang of it.

Thanks MO !

I suggest using kaplan first. Barons is much harder IMO (more like real DAT probably). I"m in the same boat with you man. What really helps me is to pretend i'm in the picture. Like i'm on top of the object. Then i jump in front of it, then i walk to the "right" side of it. Any change in the figure you can't see from that face (top, front, right) will be a hidden line. Its important to remeber that if a hidden line and a visible line overlap you wont know the hidden line is there (this can be an EVIL trick sometimes -- watch out). Also you can use the answers to help you out. i can usually formulate a 3D object, but on the harder ones you have to rely on lines alone (hidden, location, number).

Hope this helps.

Here is something that works for me. Since Top, Front, End has only four possible answer choices, it is faster to work by process of elimination. You don't have to visualize the whole object. You only have to eliminate the 3 wrong answer choices. That is, it isn't your job to visualize the whole object...it only matters that you get more answer choices correct for the amount of time given. So pick out specific parts of the answer choices and see if you can eliminate it.

Awuah29 said:

Heh guys,

I am stuck with PAT, especially the Orthographic projections sections
(endview, hidden lines, dash lines) I am using the Kaplan blue book and I am getting wrong answers. Is it all about practice, pratice,practice ? I have the Barron's book, which seems to be helpful, but I still don't get it. I don't wanna give up and just guess in this section. On the other, I think Kaplan PAT seems to be much harder. Can anyone help me and give me tips how to tackle this part. 🙁
Thanks guys

Click to expand...

I had similar problems with that part of PAT. What I did is I stopped trying to test for "time" and went for trying to understand, then solve each and every question no matter how long it took me. It was arduous for quite some time but after about 40 or so problems I started realizing that I was getting it. The key for me was to learn the techniques that worked for me so that I could start figuring out what I was looking at. Once I started to "see" the picture in 3-D in my head I quickly started speeding up. But I would say that there is absolutly no substitute for PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!
Good luck. 🙂

akathisia said:

I had similar problems with that part of PAT. What I did is I stopped trying to test for "time" and went for trying to understand, then solve each and every question no matter how long it took me. It was arduous for quite some time but after about 40 or so problems I started realizing that I was getting it. The key for me was to learn the techniques that worked for me so that I could start figuring out what I was looking at. Once I started to "see" the picture in 3-D in my head I quickly started speeding up. But I would say that there is absolutly no substitute for PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!
Good luck. 🙂

Click to expand...

akathisia,

Great points about going for understanding, using what works for you, and practice.

If you are having trouble "seeing" what the views should be, I have a suggestion for you. It's going in the reverse order than you do for the PAT, but it will teach you how the items are constructed. For the PAT, you are basically constructing the 3-D image in your head then seeing what the "other" view is. Try finding an engineering drawing book where they give you the 3-D object and you have the draw the 3 views. Once you see how views are constructed a few times, the images just start to come to you....or you can at least deduce them easier.

A few pointers.

1)take careful notice of distance betweens lines,planes, etc. They can just change the distance relationship and make it wrong

2) make note of relative height in various views. For example, a set of steps in a front view ascending from left to right would look like blocks/rectangles in the right side view with the top and bottom being solid lines, but all the others being dotted. This means when going from view to view, make sure things in front is one view are solid in the next and things behind are dotted in the next view.

3) In adjacent views(side to side or up and down..not diagonal) you can draw horizontal or vertical lines between views. The attributes in one view project directly to the adjacent view. You can use this to see if a hole, cutout, or particular part of a image is in the correct spot in adjacent views. Any technical drawing book should show this.

4)practice a bunch....in the beginning drawing them helps a lot!!

the best trick is to compare and count the lines...solid usually mean coming out or going in...

location of the line and how many lines can help you visualize the 3D shape..

just try to understand the fundamentals. Like take a solution to a figure, study that, and look for patterns of the positioning of lines and apply this pattern to other figures...