C C C C N E W S L E T T E R
CENTRAL COAST COMPUTER CLUB
Santa Maria, California
VOLUME XXII: NUMBER 10 OCTOBER, 2007
Meetings are held on the third Tuesday of every month at the Knollwood
Village Clubhouse 4012 S. Bradley Dr., Santa Maria.
General meeting at 7:00PM. System Special Interest Group session is at
5:45PM. Guests are welcome.
Check out our web site: http://member.apcug.org/fourseas for the latest
program schedule information.
Membership is $15 for twelve months for individuals, $20 for families.
For this you receive: Monthly newsletters, EXTRA4C E-mail Messages,
Help-line support, Monthly presentations, Valuable door prizes, Question
and answer sessions.
NEXT MEETING: October 16, 2007 KNOLLWOOD VILLAGE 4012 S. BRADLEY
PRESENTATION: For October: Al Montabando will demonstrate a Computer Aided
Design (CAD) program.
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****** OCTOBER COOKIE PROVIDER IS BERNIE BENNINGER ********
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| CONTENTS |
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(1) OFFICERS, HELPLINES, S.I.G.S
(2) PRESIDENT'S CORNER Vic McLaughlin
(3) EDITOR'S COMMENTS Dick Trissel
(4) BEGINNERS? - NON-NERDS? Spence Stimler
(5) WEB WANDERINGS
(6) SYSTEMS S.I.G. Dick Trissel
(7) VISTA READYBOOST Ray Isenson
(8) NTI Ripper 2.0 Review Charles Dorsten
(9) ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 11 Gene Barlow
(10) LIVING WITH(WITHOUT)MS OFFICE 2007 Ray Isenson
(11) INTRODUCTION TO CAD Al Montabando
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OFFICERS HELPLINES
President Juno
Vic McLaughlin 937-8326 Dick Trissel 937-7572
vnmclaughlin2448@msn.com rtrissel@juno.com
Secretary Hardware, Windows XP, Vista
John McCurdy 925-1825 Ray Isenson 937-6938
jmccurdy.1@verizon.net risenson@juno.com
Treasurer Custom Computer Design and Assembly
Gerry Miller 934-1396 Digital Imagery and Video
2741 Banyan Way Command Line Operations and Batch Files
Santa Maria CA 93455 Jim Tonge 937-0187
gandamiller@verizon.net jtonge1@msn.com
Publicity Help With Any Problem
Bill Corning 934-0775 Ray Isenson 937-6938
foster95@impulse.net risenson@juno.com
Newsletter Editor Visual Basic and Genealogy
Dick Trissel 937-7572 Gerald Miller 934-1396
rtrissel@juno.com gandamiller@verizon.net
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP (S.I.G.) Windows 95/98/ME/XP & VoiceControl
Beginners (6:00pm) Amy Malicki 925-5780
Spence Stimler msamym5@verizon.net
SPENCE932@msn.com
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP (S.I.G.) AOL
Systems (5:45pm) Frank Maciel 922-2318
Dick Trissel frm8198@aol.com
rtrissel@juno.com
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CCCC Page 2 October 2007
PRESIDENT'S CORNER by Vic McLaughlin
Our September meeting was attended by 30 members.
The special interest group was conducted by Dick Trissel and it was well
received by all who participated.
The new special interest group for beginners was conducted by Spence
Stimler. Five people attended and were pleased to have the opportunity to
discuss their problems and share their solutions.
Our speaker on the subject of printers for the main meeting did not show.
Dick Trissel conducted a question and answer session on printers. Several
problems were raised by members and answers were offered by other members
who had similar problems.
As I have inherited the job of President, Bill Corning took over the job of
selling the 50-50 tickets. I wish to thank him for doing a good job. I
shall ask for a volunteer to take over the job of ticket seller for future
meetings.
Remember, at the October meeting we will nominate officers for the coming
year. The nominating committee members are: Dick Trissel, Ray Isensen, and
Bill Corning. The officers to be elected are: President, Vice President,
Secretary, and Treasurer. Other staff jobs are made by appointment. These
are not difficult jobs, and all members are eligible to serve.
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CCCC Page 3 October 2007
EDITOR'S COMMENTS by Dick Trissel
According to Webster:
"nerd n (origin unknown) slang (1965): an unpleasant, unattractive, or
insignificant person."
The term "geek" is even worse:
"geek n [prob. fr. E dial. geek, geck fool, fr MLG] (ca. 1942): a carnival
performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the
head off a live chicken or snake.
How do you suppose those terms ever got applied to technical types???
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CCCC Page 4 October 2007
BEGINNERS? - NON-NERDS? by Spence Stimler and Gerry Miller
Our first SIG (nerd for special interest group) for so-called computer
beginners was successfully held at our September meeting. Although the
group was small, the participation was energetic as we explored the use of
Google's free photo editing program, Picasa2. We will continue on with the
subject in the October 16th meeting. Our SIG begins at 6:00pm and is held
in the pool room (the room housing the pool tables).
The session is lead by Spence Stimler and Gerry Miller. The former is
definitely a non-nerd and the latter is a kind and understanding sort of
nerd. Which means he is a lot smarter, but knows how to talk in non-nerd
language. Being a computer nerd is not bad but some people have a hard time
understanding all the geek language. Hence, the reason for a second SIG.
Right now we are talking about photos, managing files for your photos, and
the nuances of using a neat program called Picasa2. This doesn't have to be
the only subject. We are willing to tackle any topic, even how to turn on
your computer. We might not have answers to your questions so help us
struggle through them together to find a solution. We are using the club's
lap-top and projector as tools.
Come and join us. If you know of anybody who would like to sit in our
session, invite them as a guest. After the SIG, coffee and cookies are
served, followed by a short business meeting, which in turn is followed by a
presentation of interest to all computer users. Stay for the entire program
and we will have you out and on your way home by 8:15pm.
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CCCC Page 5 October 2007
WEB WANDERINGS
DOWNLOAD AN ICON
Do you need a cool, simple graphic for your Web site? Or, something to
spruce up a presentation or file?
In that case, try an icon. That's a stylized graphic. Icons are simple and
clean. And they get your point across.
Creating an icon is more difficult than you might think. So you may not want
to create your own.
You can use Iconfinder to discover and download icons. Enter a search term.
You'll get a list of available icons. You're sure to find a good one.
The icons are in PNG format. They're perfect for the Net or popular graphics
programs. But check the license information before you use an icon.
www.iconfinder.net
WHEN 10 MEGAPIXELS JUST ISN'T ENOUGH
Manufacturers have been improving digital cameras' sensors. Your camera may
have 10 or more megapixels. That's nothing.
There are pictures with billions of pixels. Granted, these gigapixel
pictures are stitched together from many smaller ones. But that doesn't make
them any less impressive.
Want to learn more about gigapixel pictures? Visit Microsoft's HD View site.
You can browse gigapixel panoramas from around the world.
Obviously, all those pixels won't fit onto your computer screen. But you can
see amazing levels of detail. In other words, all the pixels are there. You
just can't see them all at once.
Some of you may want to make gigapixel images. You can learn how to do that,
too!
Note: The panoramas are hosted on various sites. Some of the sites require
Internet Explorer.
www.research.microsoft.com
BRAIN WORKOUT
If you value your health, you eat right and get regular physical exercise.
But, what about your mind?
One of the best ways to stay young is to challenge your mind. Puzzles,
riddles and games will provide the challenges you need to keep your mind
fit.
At today's Cool Site, you'll find a variety of challenging games. There are
word puzzles and logic brain teasers.
There are games, too. You can play most of them on your computer. You'll
need the free Flash Player for that. Others are paper and pencil games;
you'll need to print them out to play.
Have fun keeping your mind fit!
www.aarpmagazine.org
TEST YOUR EYES
The human eye is fascinating. Our eyes greatly affect the way we perceive
the world.
But our eyes can play tricks on us sometimes. We may see things that aren't
there. Or our eyes may skim over things.
This Site has a plethora of optical illusions. They're a lot of fun, and
you'll appreciate the explanations of the illusions. They're illuminating!
Don't spend too much time on this site at once. It's best enjoyed over a few
days. Otherwise, your eyes might start to hurt.
www.michaelbach.de
HOW'S YOUR HEARING?
MP3 players are among the most popular gadgets to hit shelves in recent
years. Since you can fit so much music on one, you can listen for hours.
Unfortunately, that can damage your hearing, particularly if you listen at a
high volume.
Has your music player damaged your ears? Visit today's Cool Site to take a
quick hearing test. It will let you know if you should see a professional
audiologist.
Even if your ears are fine, you should read some of the articles on the
site. They'll help you prevent hearing loss.
www.asha.org
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CCCC Page 6 October 2007
SYSTEMS S.I.G. by Dick Trissel
One of the first questions to open the S.I.G. was how to remove Google Earth
from a computer after the Add and Remove was used. One suggestion was to
search for the word Google and use Windows Explorer to delete any files and
folders referencing Google. Another suggestion is to use Start / Run /
Regedit and search for Google, and delete any found keys. However, don't
delete any key that has other programs in the same key. And finally, use
Google Search for any reference to the removal problem.
I announced a notice of a repeat of the Electronics Waste Recycling at the
Santa Maria Fairpark on October 20 from 8:00AM to 3:00PM, October 21 from
10:00AM to 3:00PM. Enter at Gate 7 on Thornburg. They will accept almost
any electronic device.
We had a brief discussion about the difference between the Web and the
Internet. The Internet is a world wide network of wires and servers that
provide access to servers with ports for the Web (using a browser like
Internet Explorer), FTP (File Transfer Protocol), newsgroups, and as one
person mentioned, things like Skype and VoIP. It should be noted that if
you are using a broadband access to the Internet, you are open to malware
just by being connected with the computer and modem turned on--you don't
have to be on the Web.
Speaking of malware, be careful of e-mail messages telling you that there is
a greeting card for you by clicking on a link in the message. Clicking on
the link can introduce a worm into your computer. Be sure the sender is
someone you know and trust.
It was mentioned that you can now get thumbdrives (flashdrives) for as
little as $10 per gigabyte up to 8GB. They are extremely useful if you
transfer files from one computer to another. And at that price, they are
practical for backups and storage.
We had a demonstration of the free program Everest that will give you a
complete description of your system. It is my opinion that it is superior
to the Belarc Advisor that is not free. However, there is a utility built
into Windows that may be adequate for most analysis. Go to Start / Run and
type msinfo32 and press OK. You can peruse the information, or do a File /
Save function that will save the analysis to a file with the extension .nfo.
You can save this file to disk and double click it to open the System
Information window later. This information is vital if you need to discuss
a system problem with Microsoft or a program vendor.
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CCCC Page 7 October 2007
VISTA READYBOOST by Ray Isenson
READYBOOST, What is it, Who is it for.
When reading the computer ads in the Sunday supplements and in some magazine
articles about Vista capabilities, you'll run across a new term,
"ReadyBoost"
What is this all about? If you've a new computer running the Vista operating
system or of you've upgraded an older PC to run Vista, ReadyBoost is a new
Microsoft tool that you may be able to exploit to speed up your system. In
the next few paragraphs a more detailed description of ReadyBoost is
presented along with more detailed guidance as to whether it will be of use
to you on your computer. Simply stated, whether it will offer an advantage
depends totally on how you use your computer and the amount of RAM currently
installed.
As we can agree, adding system memory (typically referred to as RAM) is
often the best way to improve a PC's performance; as more memory means more
applications can be ready to run without accessing the hard drive. However,
upgrading memory can be difficult and costly, and some machines have limited
memory expansion capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM.
Windows Vista introduces Windows ReadyBoost, a new concept in adding memory
to a system. You can use non-volatile flash memory, such as that on a
universal serial bus (USB) flash drive, to improve performance without
having to add additional memory "under the hood." The flash memory device
serves as an additional memory cache-that is, memory that the computer can
access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard drive. To do
so it relies on an intelligent memory management technique Windows
SuperFetch that can significantly improve system responsiveness.
OK, what is SuperFetch? SuperFetch is fundamentally an upgraded version of
the tool called prefetch in Windows XP. It enables programs and files to
load much faster than they would on Windows XP-based PCs. SuperFetch
monitors which applications you use the most and preloads them at boot into
your system memory so they'll be ready when you need them.
Knowing that much, you can predict whether ReadyBoost would help you. For
example, the operating system on my laptop is Windows Vista Home Premium.
The computer has about 1.3GBytes of RAM. My utilization is best described
as "home office like". I'm not a game player (other than frequent hands of
solitaire) and extensive photo manipulation isn't my "cup of tea." Like most
of our UG members, I have my daily throughput of e-mail. I do get an
occasional JPEG picture attached to mail but even then, there are no multi-
multi megabyte files. I collect some information in "Quicken", some in
Excel and some in a relational data base but file sizes rarely exceed 100 -
200 Kbytes. Summing, with that operation, never have I exceeded 62% RAM
utilization. The $25 I spent for the 2 Gbyte thumb drive with ReadBoost
capability was wasted.
On the other hand, had I upgraded my desk top with its 512MByte of RAM to
Vista Home Basic or purchased a new PC with that same amount of RAM and had
I the same PC use, I'd have been about 280MBytes short of meeting my
requirements. In that case the same $25 purchase would have been a good
deal. In fact, doing so on my desktop would have meant even more; it would
allow me to upgrade from Vista Home Basic to Home Premium.
If you are running Vista or want to upgrade to that operating system and
your analysis suggests exploiting ReadyBoost to gain adequate effective RAM,
it's easy to use Windows ReadyBoost. When a removable memory device were
such as a USB flash drive or a secure digital (SD) memory card is first
inserted into a port, Windows Vista checks to see if its performance is fast
enough to work with Windows ReadyBoost. If so, you are asked if you want to
use this device to speed up system performance. You can choose to allocate
part of a USB drive's memory to speed up performance and use the remainder
to store files.
Important, once having made the choice of using the ReadyBoost memory to
meet your minimum requirement, you must always keep the USB thumb drive
plugged in when the PC is operated. Clarifying the last statement, if your
computer has 512MBytes of RAM and you use ReadyBoost and a multi GByte thumb
drive to allow the machine to run Vista Home Premium, you may encounter a
problem if you attempt is made to boot without that thumb drive attached.
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CCCC Page 8 October 2007
NTI Ripper 2.0 Review by Charles Dorsten
Since the days of computers, much of our language and terminology has
changed. So when I was asked to review an NTI Ripper digital music program,
I immediately thought of "Jack the Ripper". After loading the software, why
should I be surprised that the three Interface icons are "Ripper, Digital
Jack and Burner". Thinking this may take awhile to learn and review, the
company name of NTI (NewTech Infosystems started in 1993) should have been
familiar to me. After booting up my Acer laptop and checking my software
programs, sure enough, I have a more complete NTI program for burning CD and
DVD's installed on it. I just don't use my laptop for CD or DVD burning as
all of my music and vintage stereo info is on my desktop.
Ripper is a very easy program to use as the interface uses "knobs" for
inputting info. I guess they had me in mind as I collect "vintage stereo
equipment" and if it does not have knobs, I don't buy it! (The Ripper I/F
looks like a car radio with knobs.) The left knob controls the bit rate from
64 to 320 kbits/sec and the right knob starts the ripper. All you have to do
is place your CD in your CD drive, select the file type( .wav, .wma, .mp3 or
.ogg), select source (CD drive location) designate where you want to store
the files, click the ripper knob and that is it. It is VERY easy to use.
Digital Jack is the NTI player with the same type of I/F for playing your
music files. You have the usual choices of adding music files to your
playlist which opens with a click on the lower right corner of the player.
Again you have the control knobs for volume and play after loading your
playlist.
Burner is the third I/F player and has the knobs for write speed and burn,
turning the write speed knob for selecting the write speed (16x, 32x, etc)
and clicking on the burn knob to start the process.
Also included in the Ripper package are the usual options of being able to
change the "skin", display colors and options (audio CD settings, etc) plus
you can click the NTI label to change between the three I/F's.
I saw a special price on the web that NTI is offering $10 off the regular
price of $29.99. So for 20 bucks, it's a pretty good deal. NTI Ripper
supports Windows 2000/XP/Vista, and U3 environments.
Please note that this suite only works with digital music, as there is no
provision for conversion of analog music to digital. In that case you will
still have to use a program such as Audacity to do your conversions to
digital.
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CCCC Page 9 October 2007
ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 11 by Gene Barlow
User Group Relations
Copyrighted September 2007
Acronis just announced a significant new release of their top rated backup
utility, Acronis True Image 11 Home. It is hard to understand how they could
possibly improve on this excellent product, but they did it with dozens of
important new features. The product may be ordered now on our secure web
site at www.ugr.com for just $29 as a download or $33 plus shipping on a CD.
The CD includes lots of extra tutorials and guides to help you quickly
install and start to use this product on your computer. Order it now and we
will ship your copy in the next couple of days.
New Try&Decide Feature: Certain operations on your computer are risky to do,
such as opening attachments to your email or installing a software product
that you have just downloaded from the internet. Bad things can happen to
your computer's hard drive when you do these tasks. The new Try&Decide
feature in True Image sets up a safe area in the Acronis SecureZone, where
you can try out these functions without risking damage to your computer.
Actions taken in Try&Decide will run in a virtual mode on your computer so
that you can test out the actions to see if they are safe and what you want
to keep. If you determine that they are safe for your computer, you can have
True Image apply these changes to your hard drive. If you do not want these
changes on your hard drive, you can tell True Image to throw them away and
not apply them to your computer. Now you can try out things on your computer
and decide if you want to keep them before letting them change your hard
drive permanently.
New Disk Clean-up Feature: This set of hard drive wiping and disk cleanup
features has been added to Acronis True Image 11 Home product. Included is a
Disk Cleaner feature that lets you totally wipe all traced of your files
from a computer hard drive before you sell or donate this old computer to
someone else. Simply deleting everything off the old hard drive does not get
rid of your personal and private information. File Shredder is another
feature now available to let you delete and totally wipe a file from your
hard drive. This keeps private information from being found on your hard
drive. Finally, a complete set of Disk Clean-up tools are included to keep
your hard drive running cleanly and smoothly. A clean hard drive gives you
better performance and is less of a security risk to you.
Other New Enhancements: There are many other important new features that
have been added to Acronis True Image 11 Home. The following are some of
these new features you will find in True Image:
* New Scheduler Features - Many new options have been added to the automatic
scheduling of your backups. These make scheduling automatic backups much
easier to do and more flexible.
* Silent Mode Backups - Now, you can run automatic backups in silent mode.
Any errors detected during the backup will be logged for you to read later,
but the backup will not stop, waiting for a reply from you.
* Archive Encryption - You can now have your backups not only protected with
a password, but now the backups can also be encrypted to make them much more
secure.
* Sector-by-Sector backups - In certain situations, you may want to backup
both your used sectors on a hard drive as well as sectors that may contain
deleted or hidden information. This is now possible with True Image.
* Ignore Bad Sectors - When your hard drive is starting to fail, sectors on
the drive may fail. Now you can backup the good sectors on your hard drive
even if bad sectors are detected.
* Search for File in Backup Images - If you want to find a particular file
in one of your many backups, but are not sure which backup contains the
file, you can now search one or many backups to find the file you are
looking for.
* New User Friendly Interface - The look and feel of True Image has been
cleaned up to make the product easier to use and look more user friendly.
The new True Image is a delight to use.
* System State Backup - You can now backup just key system files from your
computer's hard drive without backing up all your personal files and
folders. This lets you restore your operating system to a clean state
without having to restore your entire computer.
* Message Level Outlook Restore - True Image now lets you restore individual
messages from your Outlook backup folders without having to restore all of
your messages.
Acronis True Image 11 Home edition is available from us for only $29 (as a
download) or $33 plus shipping (on a CD) at our user group discount price.
This is slightly less than the upgrade price through Acronis and you get a
full new license of the product and not an upgrade license. If you order the
product on a CD, you also get our Perfect Backup Approach tutorial to help
you understand the best way to do backups. There is also a step by step
starter's guide for installing and using the product for the first few
times. The full Acronis manual is also on the CD for your use. In addition,
I try to help my customers when they have questions about True Image, in
addition to the normal technical support through Acronis. You can order your
copy of Acronis True Image 11 Home from us at www.ugr.com. Make sure you use
the order code of UGTIH11 when placing your order.
If you are a current user of Acronis True Image, then you will want to get
this new release and put all of the new features to work for you. If you
have not started a backup plan for your computer, then this is the best
product to accomplish this important task on your computer. In either case,
place your order today so that you can enjoy this new product soon. If you
have any questions about this article or Acronis True Image 11 Home, please
send them to gene@ugr.com. I look forward to helping you if I can.
Gene Barlow
User Group Relations gene@ugr.com
PO Box 911600 www.ugr.com
St George, UT 84791-1600
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CCCC Page 10 October 2007
LIVING WITH (WITHOUT) MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007 by Ray Isenson
The newest version of Microsoft Office, Office 2007, features one
significant change; the default file system is XML (Extensible Markup
Language). Without going into the details of the XML file system, it can be
said that the new system does offer some significant advantages to its
users. However it does offer one major disadvantage to any PC operator who
receives traffic from the Office 2007 user but who, himself, is still
running Office 2000, XP or 2003. The default version of Office 2007 saves
files with an extension .docx for a word document, pptx for a PowerPoint
document and so forth. Note the differentiating letter "x" following each
of the more familiar extensions.
The document initiator actually has the option of the older versions of
Microsoft Office, Microsoft Works or any of the myriad of other office
systems. However, be assured that many Office 2007 users will neither be
that thoughtful nor, in many cases, have the requisite computer savvy to do
such. Thus, it behooves those of us who can and would protect ourselves to
take the requisite action.
Currently Microsoft has made available a downloadable patch that will allow
a goodly number of PC users to protect themselves. Although some Microsoft
literature suggests that help will be made available for many additional
users, for the nonce the patch will help those whose operating system is
Windows 2000 w/SP4, Windows XP w/SP2 or Windows Vista. For those operating
systems the patch will allow them to read and write to Office 2000, Office
XP and Office 2003 (and the individual applications that make up those
systems.) The patch, "FileFormatConverter", a 28,192KByte download is
available at the WEB page, Microsoft.com/downloads.
In the event the computer being used does not have any Microsoft Office
capability; e.g. the office programs are Open Office, Word Perfect, Lotus
Symphony or the like, there is still a solution; albeit a very limited one.
Microsoft has made available a series of "readers", each of which will allow
the user to read or print out documents received in one of the Office 2007
formats. The simplest and most direct of these readers is one for
PowerPoint 2007. This 26MByte download from Microsoft.com/Downloads does a
commendable job of opening and running a Power Point presentation that had
been written in the 2007 version of that presentation program.
To cope with received documentation that was written in Office Word 2007 or
Office Excel 2007 the user must download the 2003 versions of the respective
readers and then modify them with the File Format converter described above.
The reader for Word 2003 is an 11.7Mbyte download; that for Excel 2003,
9.93MBytes. Experimental results achieved with the latter two have been
varied. In each case the intelligence contained in the document was
present. But the document formatting was not always maintained and
extraneous characters appeared outside of the body of the intelligence. In
neither case was the user able to do more than read and or print the
received document.
Summarizing, where an older version of Microsoft Office or components
thereof is on a computer, the patch to permit reading or writing an XML
formatted document is possible. The task is slow even on a fast computer.
Making use of readers is, at best, a very poor process.
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CCCC Page 11 October 2007
INTRODUCTION TO CAD by Al Montabando
(Computer Aided Design)
1. What is CAD?
CAD is a versatile Software Tool
What makes a Drawing Program a Cad Program?
Precision and Accuracy
Full Scale
Coordinate Geometry
Vector Graphics Display
2. Fundamental Elements
Commands and Tools
The Drawing Space
Model Space
Paper Space
Cursors and Crosshairs
3. Creating a Simple Drawing
Snaps Ensure Accuracy
The Line Tool
Using Flyout Tool Bars
Using the X, Y Coordinate Fields
Drawing Basic Shapes
4. Two Dimensional Drawing
Simplified Layout
Creating Views (Model Space)
Creating Viewports (Paper Space)
5. Three Dimensional Drawing
3D Tools
Polylines VS Grouping
Revolving a Profile
6. Lighting.
Illuminating Three Dimensional
Types of Lighting
Locating Lighting in Three Dimensional Space
7. Questions & Answers
Biography: Al Montalbano
Occupation: Retired (1996)
Employment History: Began 37 year career with McDonnell Douglas Corporation
in 1960 as an Electronics Technician. After attending courses at Citrus
College, Glendora, CA and receiving an AS (Engineering) from Pasadena City
College I was soon offered a position as Sr. Electronics Engineer developing
control systems for high altitude aerial reconnaissance systems.
1969-1975 Lead Engineer Lunar Topographic Camera System. Flown on Apollo 13
and later modified and flown aboard Skylab as the Earth Terrain Camera
System.
Mid 1980's Manager, responsible for the development of McDonnell Douglas
Aerospace Division's first Cad/Cam Lab. This development included the
purchase, installation and maintenance of twelve networked high-end Hewlett
Packard engineering work stations. Applications installed on these systems
were both mechanical (Unigraphics), and electrical (Racal Redac /Mentor) CAD
software systems.
1987-1996 Senior Manager, Design Engineering responsible for all engineering
development and disciplines at this facility with six direct reporting
managers and approximately 150 engineers. Included in these departments
were Electronics Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Software Engineering,
Drafting Department and Computer Aided Design, (CAD).
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