Our next meeting will be held on Thursday, July 17, 2008.

For more information (such as meeting topics or directions) please click the Calendar link above.

Meeting Minutes

Past meeting minutes for 1999:

December 19th, 1999 meeting minutes:

Topic: Paper Space, R14 and 2000. User group chair, Paul Burgener, quickly ran through a Paper Space tutorial for R14, for the sake of the few AutoCAD beginners in attendance. Paul developed floating viewports, established 3D views of an object with equal scales, and placed a title bock drawing in Paper Space.

After some discussion and questions, Paul opened AutoCAD 2000 and demonstrated the new "layout" feature. Along with opening multiple layouts, Paul demonstrated AutoCAD 2000's capability to convert odd-shaped closed polygons and regions into viewports. Again, discussion and questions followed. PSLTSCALE and DIMSCALE = zero were discussed and demonstrated briefly.

No door prize was given out, only because the chair forgot to bring one. Several experts attended the group for the first time, and contributed to conversation.

November 18, 1999 meeting minutes:

Topic: AutoLISP, what it can do. The guest speaker for the meeting was David Stein, of Newport News Shipbuilding. Dave demonstrated his add-on "AutoPipeFitter", written in Visual LISP and Visual Basic for Applications. During the last 15 to 20 years, the shipyard has made tremendous advances in CAD, sometimes too fast to keep control of drawing standards. Even within the Carrier Project, electrical, piping, ventilation, and hull drawings would all use different colors, text heights, fonts, tolerances, and in some cases, even title blocks. At first glance you'd think each department was a separate company.

Dave's AutoPipeFitter standardizes all these variables. To name just a few of it's features, drafters in the piping department, for example, are restricted to placing standard notes and symbols for piping. Valves and fittings are quickly "snapped" into the system. Text styles, layers, and spacing are predetermined for the bill of materials. Drawing "zones" are updated as additional sheets are added.

Newport News Shipbuilding has already sold Dave's AutoCAD add-on to other companies. Training takes 8 hours for just the basics. The program altogether consists of 250,000 lines of code, and 80 MB of hard disk space.

This month's door prize was an AutoCAD 2000 LT.

URLs for Free magazines and email newsletters, and for a free AutoCAD 2000 30-day evaluation CD, are added in the new "Resouces" page.

October 22, 1999 meeting minutes:

Topic: Mechanical Desktop (MDT) for AutoCAD 2000. Martha Donoghue, of Republic Research Training Centers (RRTC http://www.rrtc.com) demonstrated several of MDT's features, such as it's ability to straighten geometry using tolerances for horizontal and vertical. After extruding a simple profile into a 3D solid block object, she selected parameters from a dialog box, and added parametric counterbored holes, and a shaft with a chamfered end. Later, Martha shelled out one side, as if modeling a molded plastic piece, ran a small profile around the block's edge, and altered the contour of a slot, showing how easy editing solids can be with MDT.

One attendee asked about forming an interfacing component. Martha used the existing solid to "mold" another mating part. With constraining "bungie cords", she showed how the mating parts always know how to join together, regardless how each is rotated.

Taking advantage of the multiple layouts (paper spaces) of AutoCAD 2000, Martha showed how MDT can develop orthographic and exploded views, such as seen in repair manuals. Martha quickly moved dimensions among views, and even offset the "trace" lines that show assemble paths of joining parts.

This month's door prize was a dark blue polo shirt, with an RRTC logo.

September 23, 1999 meeting minutes:

Topic: AutoCAD 2000 New Features. The September meeting was delayed one week due to Hurricane Floyd that passed through Tidewater on or near the original scheduled evening, September 16th. Paul Burgener (with help from RRTC Martha Donoghue) demonstrated many new features in AutoCAD 2000, such as 3DOrbit, Object Snap tracking, Polar tracking, Polar Snap, Multiple Drawings, Layouts, non-rectanglular Viewports, Right Click convenience, Solids Editing, Design Center, and Lineweights. Several attendees were already knowledgable on these features and contributed to the converation.

Although copies of the recent Autodesk Resource Guide were passed out to all attendees, no door prize was given.

August 19, 1999 meeting minutes:

Topic: Script files. Paul Burgener demonstrated several uses of script files, beginning with simple repetitive drawings, and leading to toolbar control, slide shows, plotting drawings, and system variable control. Although the presentation was demonstrated with R14, Paul explained some concerns for script files with AutoCAD 2000. He also demonstrated a startup switch to run a script file whenever AutoCAD is opened.

The door prize was a copy of AutoCAD R14.