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Visualisers draw a great response from Loughborough University

The Department of Design and Technology at Loughborough University has an international reputation for its teaching and research. With over 500 students studying industrial / product design at Undergraduate, Masters and PhD level it employs the latest technologies in the delivery of challenging and rewarding courses. In addition to the use of the more typical design technologies such as computer aided design, computer aided manufacturing and rapid prototyping, the Department uses a wide range of tools to facilitate effective teaching and learning. It has recently started using the AVermedia SPC300 to support the development of sketching and drawing that is essential for the effective generation of creative design ideas at the start of the design process.

The SPC300 is used in two ways to support the teaching and learning of drawing. Firstly, it enables the viewing of live demonstrations, via a projector, onto a screen. Whilst this had been previously undertaken using a video camera, the set-up time made this option not only time consuming but the presence of the tripod next to the lecturer made it difficult to position themselves so that this did not interfere with the free movement of their arm during the demonstration. Dr Evans said “with the supporting arm of Visualiser well away from the work area, it’s now possible to do sketching and drawing demonstrations completely unhindered”.

In addition to its use for “live” demonstrations, the Visualiser now makes it possible for every student to see a projected image of a product by articulating the camera and selecting the required viewpoint. This makes it possible to have an archive of individual products of varying complexity and present theses to students as sketching and drawing ability develops over the course of the academic year. It removes the necessity to have enough products to give students one each and enables the lecturer to easily change the viewing angle during a class so that the challenge for every student changes.

“In terms of convenience and flexibility, we now wonder how we managed without the Visualiser” said Dr Evans. The only limitation identified is the ability of the Visualiser to register some of the subtle variations in tonal value during rendering demonstrations, particularly when using pastel, however, it is recognised as a feature of the camera and as technology increases, this issue will no longer be the case.

In summing up the contribution of the Visualiser, Dr Evans commented that “Not only has the set-up time for each class been significantly reduced but the way we can select and then interact with products being displayed has been a step-change for both students and staff. We look forward to working with AVermedia and exploring the capabilities of the future generation of Visualisers”.