En su ponencia “What makes an Engineer an Engineer”. E.A. Nelson defiende el papel de los ingenieros, junto con su aspecto de matemáticos y científicos, de artistas e inventores creativos. Igualmente expone que los ingenieros son predominantemente pensadores visuales.
Es un hecho expuesto ampliamente en la literatura que el pensamiento visual es básico en ingeniería.
…Ferguson…
Se citan dos casos de la ingeniería aeronáutica, la regla del área y el diseño del perfil supercrítico, en el que el pensamiento visual fue un factor determinante.
El pensamiento visual es básico en ingeniería
Ferguson (1992) expone en su libro "Engineering and the mid´s eye" el pensamiento visual relacionado con la ingeniería
En el entorno de la ingenieria... Maria Yang del MIT ha estudiado el pensamiento
visual en ingenieria mediante le uso de bocetos (thinking drawing)
"Visual thinking is a subject of interest for entrepeneurs and managers. For engineering design practice, Visual Thinking is essential. Design Engineers thinks visually in a great amount, using visual tools to think, communicate and store their ideas. Main visual creative method used for designers and so for design engineers is sketching, considered the principal approach by which them externalize their concepts and where the drawings provide visual clues for refinement and revisión The practice of Visual Thinking and is of high importance for engineering activites, as it allows to ideate and test technical solutions through images and pictures. Visual Thinking is therefore agreed as one of most effective problem solving mental processes [46] [47] and so it is of most importance for engineering [24]. Engineers widely applies visual thinking and visual tools to find, communicate and store their ideas. A great amount of design information is conceived, recorded and communicated by visual language, which helps engineers to analize more widely an engineering problem than using werbal thoughts. From the design perspective, visual thinking is the process and reasoning behind the creation of ideas or form in design [48]. By visual thinking designers can appreciate shape, proportions, and interrelations between items that made an object, which in the case of verbal descriptions they could not appreciate. Visual design lets designers to work with images to mentally use parts of these for creating new designs [49] and soVisual thinking is a key skill for design engineers.
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Casos de aplicación del pensamiento visual en ingeniería aeroespacial
- La regla del área (Ferguson)
- Los perfiles supercríticos (Whitcomb.)
"Once dubbed “the man who could see air,” NASA engineer Richard T. Whitcomb used a combination of visualization and intuition to revolutionize modern aviation — by turning the shape of the airplane wing on its head. " (article: " How a NASA Engineer Created the Modern Airplane Wing” (Richard Whitcomb’s Supercritical Wing Design) " and https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2015/t_2.html)
Referencias
Ferguson, 1992. Engineering and The Mind´s Eye
Nelson, E. A. (2012). What makes an engineer an engineer?. In Structures Congress 2012 (pp. 1152-1159).
" How a NASA Engineer Created the Modern Airplane Wing” (Richard Whitcomb’s Supercritical Wing Design) " and https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2015/t_2.html)