An automatic assessment system for CAD education

Computer aided design (CAD) is widely used in mechanical engineering to create models of part geometry. Current CAD education at Aalto University relies heavily on course assistants assessing exercises manually. This paper presents a novel system for automatically assessing mechanical engineering parametric CAD modelling exercises. A review of different possibilities for automatic assessment was conducted and a prototype online automatic assessment system for parametric 3D CAD modelling exercises was developed. The system used an interface found in a commercial CAD tool to compare submitted modelling exercises to correct reference models or known values. The system was tested with 102 students on a course and a user experience survey was conducted. Results of the survey indicate that students generally approve of the possibility to use an online service to submit exercises independent of time and place and to get immediate feedback. Automatic assessment systems also reduce the amount of human work required. Future plans at Aalto University include extending existing e-learning platforms with newly developed automatic assessment tools to create MOOC-style basic CAD courses.