Sketching paraboloids on paper

I have to teach sketching paraboloids on paper by looking at it's equation. Last year when I taught this topic no one was interested in learning this particular thing. They felt the topic difficult and utter waste of time with so much hard work to do. I know that at first it's difficult to visualize this topic and it becomes a pain to sketch them on paper. But I think it really develops an analytic approach towards coordinate geometry and mathematics in general.

How do I motivate students to take it seriously? Which online source can I refer to supplement my knowledge about this particular topic?

I don't want to repeat what happened last year.

• To what end are you teaching them sketching 3 dimensional objects? – Adam Mar 19 '16 at 13:13
• @Adam I have taught them tracing of conicoids now I want to teach them sketching. For example, sketch the sections of the following conicoids by the planes given alongside. 1. $2y^2 + z^2 = 4$ , the plane $x = y$ – Hisenberg Mar 19 '16 at 13:21
• not a duplicate but definitely related and might be helpful matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/7825/… – celeriko Mar 19 '16 at 14:55
• @celeriko relieved to some extent because other profs. also face similar problem while teaching these topics in their clas. – Hisenberg Mar 19 '16 at 18:01
• When I learned calc III, I had a professor who was uniquely charismatic. The one line of his that really stuck with me was that all of the greatest artists "knew" calculus, because they understood space. (In hindsight it's probably safer to say analytic geometry, but that's not as sexy!) I thought it was a pretty cool thing to say. This was specifically in reference to drawing quadric surfaces. – pjs36 Mar 22 '16 at 13:59