This book has been carefully prepared and pedagogically designed to meet the Requirements of first year engineering students who come from varied backgrounds. Every chapter has been structured with a clear objective, a basic introduction necessitating the need for the chapter, its link with the previous chapter(s), detailed discussions of the underlying principles, through varieties of illustrative worked examples with step- by- step procedures, commonly observed engineering applications, and associated problems, and ends with a recapitulation section revisiting the salient discussions in that chapter.
It is hoped that this will give a comprehensive understanding of the chapter learnt and hence the subject as a whole. A special chapter on Visualization Concepts and Freehand Sketching has been included to motivate the students. In this chapter, a 3D object has been considered to be made up of a base unit with many features in the form of cut-outs, slots, holes, blocks with sloping and curved surfaces, etc., added to it, to explain its views. The projections are explained by the sequential additions or deletions of the basic view. This novel idea of visualizing a 3D object as being made up of a base unit with many features built over it, enables the observation of the views of the object in a simpler and faster way. This chapter has been purposely introduced before discussing any projection principles, to help condition the mind to freely observe the features in a natural way. With this in mind, even the practice of these views has been advised in freehand sketching mode, as this is a quicker means of transformation with no gadgets or tools.