Abstract
The ability of an engineer to visualize and reason about geometric aspects of physical objects and processes is crucial in the success of engineering activities. The paper presents the development of a prototype visual reasoning system which aims at increasing engineering students’ visual reasoning capabilities. Specifically we take the missing view problem which requires students to construct any valid solid and a corresponding missing orthographic view when they are given two orthographic views. Sweeping operations, which are the reverse procedure of orthographic projection, are used to solve missing view problems by forming the boundary faces of a solid from the loops of orthographic views. This geometric operation forms a primary user interface of the system in visually reasoning about the construction of 3-D solid given the constraints by two orthographic views.
