Leaving Certificate Technical Drawing - Paper 2: Yesterday's "well-structured" technical drawing paper was applauded by teachers and students, who welcomed the useful imagery and variety of interesting structures featured.

The structures students were required to work with were easy to visualise thanks to the way they were mapped, said one commentator.

"Question One gave students an opportunity to display their knowledge and understanding of perspective," said ASTI subject convenor John O'Sullivan.

"Question Two progressed very smoothly from basic to more complex concepts." Question Four, on mining geometry, had a twist at the end, but nothing that students couldn't handle, he added. "It required students to apply their understanding of the 'strike of the plane' in reverse. It has never been examined in this way before."

Students of the subject have a choice of two papers - one focusing on engineering application and the other on building application. The great majority of students choose the second.

Ordinary-level students enjoyed a question featuring an image based on the Lewis Gluckman Gallery at UCC - the RIAI's best public building of 2005. The building has also been shortlisted for the international Sterling Award for architecture.

"Overall, today's papers were fair and struck a nice balance in relating technical drawing to objects and structures that students could relate to," said Mr O'Sullivan, a teacher in CBS New Ross. "Both papers, and especially the ordinary-level paper, had positive pedagogical implications for the subject."

Some 5,431 students took technical drawing in this year's Leaving Cert; almost 2,000 took it at ordinary level. About one in 10 technical drawing students is female.