The graphics assignments are now underway and the deadline for submissions is close of school on Friday 1st April 2016. However I will accept these in before that date. Please consider making life easier for yourselves and submit it before the deadline. This will reduce the workload on yourself at the end of term and also give you the opportunity to make improvements to your assignment.

The assignment is to be completed independently. As it is worth half of the marks awarded to your final grade, each point is valuable. Here are some guides to help you progress through the tasks smoothly:

• Make all research relevant to the task, don’t do stuff just for the sake of it. All research should be linked to another piece of work.
  Remember that this is not a design exercise: you can use a piece of existing equipment for your model, but you must declare that it is not yours and include a picture of the item. In the early stages of preliminary graphics, notes should be used to show what is not clear from the sketches, don’t simply state the obvious as this makes notes pointless.
• Your final design should include both 2D and 3D sketches. Use the 3D sketches to display rendering skills. The 2D orthographic views should be mainly used for displaying sizes, enough to make the item on the computer.
• Your main model isn’t worth marks by itself: make sure that you lay it out properly in the way required by the SQA.
• The recommended layout is: A complete orthographic drawing with some sizes of the overall item and how things fit together. A separate sheet with all of the parts of your model, shown individually and each part must be fully dimensioned. The pictorial view should be exploded and include a key, this key should give the name of each piece and the CAD command that was used to create it.
• Show the development of your DTP item by taking regular screenshots, treat it like a diary of your work, put the pictures on one page and include notes detailing the changes made.
• Higher only: you need to put together a background, but the parts don’t have to be created by yourself, you may download 3D models from online sources as long as you declare that these aren’t your own work and state the source. The main marks will be given for appropriate background and setting, good proportion and effective rendering. Make sure that all textures are appropriate scaled. Your DTP piece must be included in the background.
• National 5 only: You will need to complete an evaluation of the item produced, this should be directly related back to the analysis. It shouldn’t simply be a few lines of waffle, rather consider how effectively your model fits with the initial brief that you have been given.