Practical descriptive geometry

Practical Descriptive Geometry – is a textbook, which was published in 1916 and written by William Griswold Smith, Assistant Professor of Descriptive Geometry and Kinematics, Armour Institute of Technology. Presenting a new textbook on descriptive geometry, the author is fully aware of the superiority of existing treatises and appreciates their contribution to raising the level of technical training. The authors of these treatises, following their course, raised the development of the subject to a high level. The first edition of this book, published in 1912, presented the author's views on the exposition of descriptive geometry in such a way as to arouse students' interest in the subject without sacrificing a thorough study of the principles. The main idea of the first edition - "practicality" - is preserved and supplemented here in the second edition. The most important changes: 1. Division into more chapters. 2. More logical sequence of individual parts of the text. 3. Notation of points and planes. 4. Graphic layouts for exercises. 5. More practical exercises covering more areas of engineering. 6. A number of new solutions, more often using auxiliary planes. 7. Improved perspective drawing system. 8. Chapter on the intersections of flat bodies. Yielding to the request of some teachers to include graphic layouts of exercises, the author still believes that dimensional layouts are of great value, despite the amount of time spent on the layout itself. However, with both, in almost unlimited quantities, the instructor can decide the issue himself. Layouts of both kinds have been made so flexible by data interchange and substitution that the number of variations is almost incalculable. This removes the objection of some teachers to a certain and limited number of exercises, the solutions of which are sometimes saved by student organizations. No such set of decisions will benefit future classes, since the exercises can be done completely different each subsequent year.