Visual 3D computer graphic design-simulation in technology education

Ideally, freshman level students entering technology and engineering programs should possess an innate or intuitive understanding of the relationship between interacting physical objects and the mathematical and graphical fundamentals that describe that interaction. Developing and refining an understanding of that relationship is an important foundational preparation for students preparing for occupations in these fields. Historically, the development of that process has been accomplished predominantly through numerical mathematical means that often necessitate presenting important principles to students as numerical or nonvisual abstractions. The objective of this paper is to describe initial efforts to develop highly graphical visual, spatial, audile, motion-based methods which address a vital emerging goal in applied computer graphics instruction; problem solving through 3D computer graphic design-simulation.