Geometric-Graphic Student Olympiad in St. Petersburg

Abstract

Two geometric-graphic Olympiads are held in St. Petersburg: the urban Olympiad in descriptive geometry, initiated by BSTU “VOENMECH” since 1979, and the Olympiad called “Engineering Computer Graphics”, conducted by LETI and ITMO. The peculiarity of the Olympiad in descriptive geometry is its democracy. Its content and organization features are supervised by the professional community, which is united by the section “Geometry, Graphics, Design” of the House of Scientists named after M. Gorky. Competition tasks are developed not only by the organizers. Accepted and suggestions of participants. The content of the Olympiad eventually changes, contributing to its development. Thus, at the suggestion of a number of participants, a comprehensive task was introduced to know the main sections of the course, the task of composition of the task. Despite the withdrawal of the course of descriptive geometry from a number of standards, the fundamentals of this discipline are kept up to date with engineering graphics, which ensures participation in the Olympiad of 7–10 leading technical universities of the city. Olympiad in engineering computer graphics can be attributed to the problem: the level of tasks, focused exclusively on the bachelor degree; on the principles of organization (problem bank of tasks, features of the appeals process); authoritarian chairman of the jury. As a result, it was boycotted by universities, which, unlike the winners, show decent results at All-Russian Olympiads. Among the All-Russian Olympiads, the Olympiad held by MIT stands out. The organizers managed to create a complex competition, which included the ability to solve interesting applied problems on an orthogonal drawing, possession of tools for creating three-dimensional models and drawings of technical products. Given the experience of MIT, the need to create in St. Petersburg an alternative computer graphics competition that is not purely instrumental in nature, the GUT organized an Olympiad called “Total Drawing”. This competition, held under the direction of the chairman of the jury of Professor D.Voloshinov, is gaining popularity. The article discusses and analyzes the principles of organization and the content of these competitions, offers for their modernization and development.