Graphical Teaching in Engineering – Italy

In this note, the situation of graphical teaching in Italy will be presented briefly. The results of a survey on basic courses of technical industrial drawing are shown, showing that traditional drawing still covers most of the core arguments of graphical teaching. In many universities, some electronic learning/teaching/evaluation tools have been implementing and the ADM (Italian Association of Design Methods and Tools for Industrial Engineering), once they are developed in deep, is committed to disseminating this tools to all Italian universi-ties. Some challenging issues are presented for graphical teaching in the next years, showing weaknesses and opportunities. The evidence that traditional drawing is still a necessary tool to communicate more of the in-formation on an industrial product is indicated. It is presented also how the hand sketch remains a promising tool to teach in order to give to the new generations of engineers a means to exteriorize inventive ideas during the early design phases; indeed it is a good idea to encourage it, also by providing an update on the skills and abilities of teachers, if necessary.