Introduction: This study investigates an innovative pedagogical methodology for teaching AutoCAD where engineering students design board games on road safety and water conservation for children in rural areas. Methodology: Project-Based Learning (PBL) was applied to students in the "Engineering Drawing" course over two different academic periods. The experimental group (2023) designed board games using AutoCAD, while the control group (2022) followed a traditional methodology. Results: Statistical analyses showed that the grades of the experimental group were lower than those of the control group, but the perception and satisfaction of the experimental group students towards the activity were significantly positive. Discussion: Although grades did not improve, the PBL methodology fostered creativity, collaboration, and social responsibility, highlighting the impact of class schedules on performance. Conclusions: Integrating AutoCAD with PBL in engineering education not only teaches technical skills but also promotes values of social responsibility and ecological awareness, better preparing students for their professional and social futures.

More than 90% of the road network of Loja, Ecuador, is unpaved and lacks an official condition metric. Low-cost measures relate to the IRI on pavements, but not demonstrably on unpaved roads. A 15 km Andean corridor was surveyed in one dry season with four visual–manual indices (URCI, MTC, PASER, ICNP), a Class III profilometer, and an uncalibrated smartphone application, over 150 stations harmonized from 60 native index observations, 30 for the MTC. A single profilometer run was moderately reliable (ICC = 0.631, 95% CI 0.559–0.699); four runs averaged 0.872, so repeated runs are a quantified requirement, not a convention. The application erred in level, not in spatial pattern (standardized ICC = 0.900), placing 88.7% of stations within one quartile of the reference: its role is segment-scale screening, not absolute IRI. Under leave-one-block-out spatial validation, the index–IRI equations retain an R² of 0.32–0.40; MTC was the only index whose association depended on the measuring instrument (p = 0.010). Surveying on foot cost 4.45–12.36 USD/km against 23.68 for reference profilometry, whose largest item is the vehicle. A tiered cost–accuracy architecture is proposed, with URCI and ICNP as preliminary candidates for official adoption, subject to validation based on further corridors and in wet condition.