This research focused on first-year university students’ visuospatial cognition in terms of producing three-dimensional (3D) representations of objects from two-dimensional (2D) views. The research was important since students often had difficulty with 2D to 3D transition activities. A synthesis from the literature established a 2D to 3D conceptual framework for an effective 2D to 3D transition. In essence, the 2D to 3D conceptual framework encompassed encode, integrate and construct as the principle facets in 2D to 3D visuospatial cognition. Students in this study were pre-service teachers enrolled for an engineering graphics module at a university in KwaZulu–Natal province of South Africa. The study was grounded on the generally accepted understanding that the ability to produce 3D images of an object from its 2D views is related to visuospatial skills. In the context of this study, visuospatial skills were viewed from the perspective of mentally visualising 3D objects from their underlying 2D views. The study followed a qualitative design via think-aloud protocol tasks and document analysis. A sample of five students was purposively selected from a population of 100 engineering graphics students. Findings revealed that students with superior spatial imagery ability achieved better success than those who relied on an object imagery process. Furthermore, findings disclosed that students who did well in 2D to 3D activities did not necessarily have greater procedural knowledge and understanding than their counterparts. These findings support the necessity of the inclusion of visuospatial-type activities in engineering graphics instructional material over and above the largely procedural nature of activities that permeates this field.

这项研究侧重于一年级大学生的视觉空间认知，即从二维（2D）视角生成对象的三维（3D）表示。这项研究非常重要，因为学生通常很难进行2D到3D转换活动。来自文献的综合建立了有效的2D到3D过渡的2D到3D概念框架。本质上，2D到3D概念框架包括编码，集成和构建为2D到3D视觉空间认知的主要方面。这项研究的学生是在南非夸祖鲁–纳塔尔省的一所大学就读工程图形模块的岗前教师。该研究基于公认的理解，即从对象的2D视图生成对象的3D图像的能力与视觉空间技能有关。在本研究的背景下，从心理视觉上从其潜在的2D视图中可视化3D对象的角度来查看视觉空间技能。该研究通过思考协议任务和文档分析进行了定性设计。目的是从100名工程制图学生中选出5名学生。研究结果表明，具有较高空间成像能力的学生比那些依赖物体成像过程的学生取得了更好的成功。此外，研究结果表明，在2D到3D活动中表现出色的学生不一定比同伴具有更多的程序知识和理解力。