Design and Fabrication of a Manipulative System to Aid in the Understanding of the Fundamentals of the Direct Dihedral System

In this work, a manipulative system was designed and fabricated to accompany students of the Graphic Engineering course with the fundamentals of the Direct Dihedral System. This mock-up, which was designed in a computer-aided design (CAD) software program and easily fabricated with an additive manufacturing machine, facilitates the interpretation of the steps involved in solving exercises related to the dihedral system, for instance, changes of plane. It also offers the possibility to interact with some operation that can be controlled by the user. The system allows to manipulate by hand the reference planes and the rotation and folding of the parts to understand and visualize in 3D the steps that are being performed in 2D in direct dihedral system. The purpose is to have autonomous learning. In this sense, since it is an experimental practice, the knowledge is fixed and provides greater ease of understanding. Thus, with the help of this mock-up, students are actively involved in the learning process, making a personal learning itinerary. Furthermore, the mock-up can increase the motivation of students with respect to the course and prevent them from lagging behind due to poor ability to visualize auxiliary views or changes of plane in 3D.