Jumping right in with your form intersections, your work here is largely well done. The intersections themselves demonstrate a strong understanding of the relationships between the forms as they sit in and relate to one another in 3D space. I did have a few small nitpicks, which I noted onto the page here, but these are mainly things to keep in mind.

Looking at your cylinders in boxes, I noticed that you appear to be forgetting two of the line extensions from this exercise. Each ellipse introduces 3 additional line extensions, one for each direction, which along with the 12 line extensions from the box itself comes to 18 extensions in total, 6 for each axis. Down the lengthwise direction of the cylinder, you only have 4 extensions (those from the box itself), and are skipping the minor axis for each ellipse.

Here's some context I had previously shared with you in your 250 cylinder challenge feedback:

Where the box challenge's line extensions helped to develop a stronger sense of how to achieve more consistent convergences in our lines, here we add three more lines for each ellipse: the minor axis, and the two contact point lines. In checking how far off these are from converging towards the box's own vanishing points, we can see how far off we were from having the ellipse represent a circle in 3D space, and in turn how far off we were from having the plane that encloses it from representing a square.

It is extremely important that you include each line extension, as they all work together. Applying two out of the three for each ellipse is like checking 3 out of 4 corners in a dark room for monsters - if you leave somewhere for mistakes to hide, then you're not giving yourself all of the information you require to improve as efficiently as you otherwise might.

Continuing onto your form intersection vehicles, your work here is really well done. This exercise serves a fairly simple purpose, although it's something students often overcomplicate, focusing more on their desire to draw something fully accurate to their reference, rather than focusing on the use of simple, primitive forms - but it's those simple forms that are at the heart of the exercise's purpose.

In the demonstrations for the more detailed vehicle constructions, we deal with so many complex subdivision that it can seem more like a forest of lines that is only stitched together at the very last step. And since it can seem that way, it's easy for students to think that this is the intent, and that we're throwing aside lessons upon lessons worth of consistent application of constructional approaches, which we're not. This exercise reminds us that we're not just building something out of toothpicks - that we're starting from a big simple block of wood, and gradually carving it down to add more complexity.

You have adhered to that nicely, and have kept the focus on this same manner of construction we've applied elsewhere, setting yourself up to take the concepts of subdivision, the use of orthographic plans, and so forth to their greatest extent.

Unfortunately though, it actually seems that though you approached the form intersection vehicles correctly, they did not have the intended impact on your approach for those later constructions. There are two main categories of issues in how you've approached this:

• Your orthographic plans themselves seem not to make as many concrete decisions as they should be, with a lot being left up to estimating during the 3D construction phase.

• You're skipping a lot of steps that would be beneficial in helping you build up towards complexity, and tend to jump straight to that complexity without enough structure to really support it.

Both of these issues are tempered by the fact that you've developed very strong spatial reasoning skills, and so you handle the compensation for those choices - both in estimating where undecided landmarks should fall, and in working without as many intermediary steps - fairly well, resulting in strong outcomes regardless. What you are forgetting however is that this course has never been one concerned with your results. It is all about the process, and the hoops the process has your brain jump through. That's essentially what an exercise is, a process that gets your brain to do certain things to gradually rewire how it handles those kinds of problems instinctually. It's no different from physical exercise - you might lift a heavy weight over your head and set it down again, but if you do it using incorrect form, you're not going to be targeting the specific muscles the exercise was intended to develop.

We want to make sure that you can use these exercises going forward to continue to improve your skills.

Let's take a second to explore the two issues a little more deeply.

As to the first point, Lesson 6 goes pretty heavily into how to approach constructions with a focus on increasing precision, specifically in this section, which is directly referenced from Lesson 7's own section on orthographic plans. A key aspect to the use of these plans is ensuring that key landmarks are identified in terms of subdivisional fractions on the 2D view, so they can be transferred directly to the 3D construction in exactly the same manner employed in two dimensions. This greatly reduces the cognitive load we're dealing with so we can focus only on reproducing those steps in 3D space, instead of having our attention split between many different functions at the same time.

As is also explained in that section (where it talks about a drawer handle), the orthographic plan is a stage where we make decisions - it's not about representing the object as accurately and perfectly as possible (in terms of subdividing down to infinitesimally small fractions), but about making choices as to where to place those landmarks so as to simplify unnecessary and unimportant sources of complexity away. Those decisions should be made on the orthographic plan however, not as you build the structure in 3D space, because making decisions takes focus and attention - both resources which should be focused on the execution of decisions already made. In the case where you may have forgotten a decision (which is entirely normal), you can return to your orthographic plan and make that decision there, then return to your 3D construction to preserve those barriers and ensure you're able to focus all of your cognitive resources on one thing at a time, instead of spreading them out across many tasks simultaneously.

Just to be clear, what I mean by 'landmarks' are the corners in our constructions. As shown here we want to identify the horizontal and vertical position on the plan based on subdivisions/mirroring so we can place them with precision in our 3D construction. Those I highlighted there in red are all undefined based on the subdivisions present on the plan, leaving you to

I strongly suspect that this is the main issue - there's definitely a lot more subdivision going on in your actual constructions, and so rather than just outright skipping that additional subdivision I'm thinking it's more that you're just not making those decisions where you ought to be, and potentially cramming too much into the execution/3D construction phase of things.

As to the second point, the main sort of skipped steps I noticed were those involving curves. This is another concept that was explained in Lesson 6 (specifically in this section). I'll leave you to read through that yourself, as I don't feel it needs further elaboration.

Ultimately though it comes back to the fact that every single constructional drawing is an exercise - it's not about creating a pretty end result, it's about applying a methodology that helps develop our brains in certain directions. And so, when you sit down to study, try to set aside any concern for the end result beyond going through the prescribed steps and applying the prescribed priorities (like taking your time to execute each mark, applying the ghosting method to any freehanded marks, etc etc etc) to the best of your current abilities. Don't worry about how it'll impact the result, or how long it'll take.

Now, I am still going to mark this lesson as complete. I imagine it's a little anticlimactic for you, which is unfortunate, as you have indeed worked very hard throughout this course and earned its completion (congratulations!). You have also clearly developed your spatial reasoning skills very far, which is the primary goal of the course. I have also seen from your Lesson 6 work that you are capable of leveraging very complex subdivision and working with high precision (although perhaps the orthographic plans were similarly lacking as they are here - regardless, I expect my explanation here is sufficient for you to understand where you were falling short, though if you have questions about that you can feel free to ask).

So, going forward when you apply these kinds of exercises in the future, remember:

• For your cylinders in boxes, make sure you are identifying the minor axis line and two contact point lines for each ellipse, and extend them all the way back to be compared to the boxes' line extensions. You may wish to review my feedback on your cylinder challenge for this, as I go into more depth as to the purpose those extensions serve.

• When doing your orthographic plans, use them as a tool to make all of your decisions - don't leave decisions to be made during the 3D construction, so that you can focus entirely on executing the decisions you already made.