Spatial Visualization By Orthogonal Rotations

Spatial visualization skills are important in engineering graphics and computer-aided design courses, especially in three-dimensional solid modeling that has been widely adopted in college curricula and applied in industries. Researchers have developed various types of tests to assess students’ spatial visualization abilities. Orthogonal rotation about the axes of the Cartesian coordinate system is one of the most commonly used testing methods for spatial visualization. In this paper, the author first presents the maximum possible number of orthogonal rotational views of an object. Analyses are presented for two spatial visualization tests by their representations of the possible orthogonal rotations and the difficulty of visualization. Finally, the author makes some suggestions on the improvements of spatial visualization tests based on the possible orthogonal rotations.