PAU Technical Drawing Applied to Plastic Arts (Cantabria)

Expect a mix of multiple-choice or short conceptual questions and practical drawing exercises solved with ruler, set square, compass and pencil. The exact balance, optionality and choice between questions are fixed by the official call, so confirm the current structure on the administering body's website before your sitting.

Timing and the minimum mark are published each year by the official body responsible for the PAU in Cantabria; they are not fixed values you should memorise from older material. Check the current call and the scoring criteria document on the official site, and plan your practice sessions around the published duration.

Retake rules, the number of allowed attempts and how marks are combined with your other grades are set by the official regulations for the PAU. Look at the current call and your school's guidance office rather than relying on second-hand information, because conditions can change between years.

The concepts are standard, but the difficulty comes from precision under time pressure: constructions must be clean, correctly labelled and finished. Candidates who lose marks usually do so through construction errors, missing labels or unfinished perspective drawings rather than through not knowing the theory.

Start with plane geometry constructions and the vocabulary of tangencies and loci, then move to dihedral projection and multiview reading, then to axonometric and conical perspective, and finally normalisation, dimensioning and scales. Composition and applied design work sits well at the end, once the drawing conventions are secure.

Faint or doubled construction lines, missing auxiliary lines that show how a point was found, incorrect scale conversion, mislabelled views in multiview drawings, and vanishing points placed carelessly in perspective. Practising complete exercises from a blank sheet, with a time limit, exposes these habits quickly.

Yes: a sharp pencil, quality ruler and set squares, a compass, an eraser and, for perspective, a long enough straightedge. Check the official instructions for any permitted or prohibited materials, since rules on calculators and printed aids are set by the administering body.

No. It is a technical drawing paper assessing geometric and representational competence, not a creative portfolio assessment. Some degree programmes ask for additional materials, so verify the specific admission requirements of the faculties you are applying to.