Lesson video

Hi, I'm Mr. Bond.

And in this lesson, we're going to learn how to draw plan views and elevations of 3D shapes.

We'll start this lesson by thinking about a shape that we know very well.

A cuboid.

This cuboid has a front elevation, the view as if I were stood looking at it from the front, a side elevation, the view as if I were stood looking at it directly from the side, and a plan view, as if I were looking at it from directly above.

We can draw each of these elevations and the plan as a two-dimensional shape using squared paper.

Each square on this squared paper is one centimetre by one centimetre.

So what would I see, looking directly, at the front elevation of this cuboid? Well, I would see a shape that's five centimetres long, and three centimetres tall.

And what shape would it be? We know that each face of a cuboid is a rectangle.

So now we just need to complete this rectangle.

This is called the front elevation.

What about if I were to look at this shape from the side and draw the side elevation? Pause the video and see if you can draw the side elevation.

Let's have a think what this would look like.

We would see a shape that is two centimetres wide, and three centimetres tall.

And what shape would this be? Well, again, it would be a rectangle.

So we just need to complete the rectangle.

This is the side elevation.

What about the plan view? What if we looked at this shape directly from above? Pause the video to see if you can draw the plan view.

What would we see when looking from directly above? We would see a shape five centimetres long and two centimetres wide.

And again, we know that this would be a rectangle because all of the faces of a cuboid are a rectangle.

So we need to complete this rectangle, and this is the plan view.

Let's look at all of those together now.

We had the front elevation, a rectangle five centimetres by three centimetres, the side elevation, another rectangle, two centimetres by three centimetres, and finally, the plan view, a final rectangle five centimetres by two centimetres.

These three elevations and plans together, describe the three-dimensional object.

Here's a question for you to try.

Pause the video to complete the task and resume the video when you've finished.

Here are the answers.

This one was very similar to our first example.

So you should have drawn three rectangles, one, four by two centimetres, one, four by one centimetre, and one, two by one centimetre.

Here's a hexagonal prism.

What would the shape of the plan be for this three-dimensional shape? Pause the video to have a think, and resume the video when you've finished.

Hopefully you realise, that if you looked at this three-dimensional shape directly from above, you would just see a rectangle.

But it would be very difficult to see that this was made up of two different rectangular faces.

Let's take a closer look at this shape.

Again, we're going to think about the front elevation, the side elevation, and the plan view.

We're going to draw all three again.

First, let's think about the front elevation.

What would we see? Well, if I start in the top left-hand corner when I'm looking at it from the front, I would see a horizontal line, two centimetres long.

And then, I'd see a vertical line, one centimetre going down.

And then, from the end of that line segment, another line segment going four centimetres across to the right.

Then, a two centimetre line segment, going down, a six centimetre line segment going across, and I'd know this, because I can see that the two line segments that are parallel and above this line segment would be four centimetres and two centimetres.

And then finally, a line segment's going from where I'm up to back to where I started from, three centimetres long.

This is the front elevation.

Now, what about the side elevation? If I was stood at the side of this shape looking directly at its side, what would I see? Pause the video and see if you can draw the side elevation.

Well, let's have a think about what we'd see.

At the very bottom of the shape, I would see a line two centimetres long.

Then, over the left-hand side of the shape, I would just see a single line, three centimetres long.

That's made up of the two centimetre line and the one centimetre line that I'd see above it.

As far as I would be concerned, looking at the side, I'd just see a rectangle.

So I'd see a two by three rectangle.

But you might also be able to make out that this isn't just made up of one rectangular face.

It's actually made up of two rectangular faces.

And we need to show this.

We can see looking at the diagram, that the face at the bottom of the shape is square, two centimetres by two centimetres.

So I'm going to draw another horizontal line to show the side elevation.

Finally, let's think again about the plan.

We thought about this earlier, that might help you a little bit.

Pause the video and see if you can draw the plan view.

Let's think about what we'd see.

Well, we discussed earlier, that looking from directly above, we'd see a rectangle.

We'd see a rectangle six centimetres long and two centimetres wide.

Let's complete that rectangle.

But we know, looking at our diagram, that this isn't just made up of one rectangular face.

It's two separate rectangular faces.

So I'm going to include a vertical line on this plan.

But where should I put it? Well, we can see that if we looked at the plan from right above, on the left-hand side, that rectangular face would be two centimetres by two centimetres.

And in fact would also be square.

So this is where I put my line.

And this is the plan.

Now let's look at those together again.

We have, the front elevation, the side elevation, and the plan.

And together, these three two-dimensional sketches describe our three-dimensional shape.

Here's another question for you to have a go at.

Pause the video to complete your task, and resume the video when you've finished.

Here are the answers.

This one's very similar to our second example, but we still have to be careful.

The main thing that I would have wanted you to remember here, is to put the extra line segments in where the elevation, or the plan, isn't made up of one rectangular face.

So, for the side elevation and the plan, I would have expected to see those extra line segments to show that there are two faces making up the elevation and plan.

That's all for this lesson.

Thanks for watching.