This paper discusses the importance of spatial imagination skills development in engineering core education. Historical background of recent changes in engineering curricula with respect to IT advancements and engineering graphics are explained. Recent innovations made in the course of “Descriptive Geometry and Engineering Graphics” at the Riga Technical University will be discussed. To provide early exposure of students to IT solutions in mechanical engineering core studies SolidWorks software was chosen. The software was used to make the classic descriptive geometry studies more attractive and to acquaint the students with feature based parametric modeling approach. Two types of cognitive skills acquired by the students in engineering graphics course are being developed: how to represent a spatial object in multiview drawings or make a three dimensional CAD model 1); and a reverse task – how to visualize or represent a spatial object in engineering language from multiview engineering drawings 2). The main conclusion is that the allotted time for the course is too short for this complex task. The best performance showed those students which have had engineering graphics courses during their pre-university studies.