Due to timing and problems with my flight, I didn’t get into Kansas City until 12AM last night. Obviously, this means that I completely missed day 1 of the Annual Technical and Educational Conference. The schedule for day 1 of the conference was geared towards part 1 of a full two day course covering GD&T principles.
When I arrived to the conference this morning, I was immediately greeted at Registration by Donna Brenton, who help organized the event. Not long after that, Floyd McWilliams (ADDA President) introduced himself to me. Olen Parker, ADDA Executive Director, introduced himself right after. This conference is put on by a very friendly group of individuals with lengthy experience in the field of design drafting.
Day 2 of the conference started out with a brief opening word from McWilliams. ADDA Board of Directors each introduced themselves to everyone.
The first breakout presentation I attended was by Jeff Levy, who covered Google Sketchup very well. There was also an interesting presentation and video by Dr. Edward Price, who discussed the Chicago Stormwater Retention System. After that, I sat in on a portion of the second day of the GD&T training course. My own presentation in the afternoon covered the establishment of company CAD procedures. Finally, there was a very engaging presentation by Terry Schultz that covered workplace ethics. I’ll go into more detail about most of these presentations at a later date. As I’ve learned from other conferences, it’s a good idea to pace my coverage over the couple of weeks that follow the event.
So far, I’m seeing a lot of value in this event. The GD&T courses are high quality. There is enough variety in presentations to justify attendance for just about anyone in the drafting field from all areas, including mechanical engineering, architecture, civil engineering and graphic arts. There is a lot of focus on covering several CAD applications, including SolidWorks, PTC, AutoCAD and Revit.
It should be noted that I did receive a pass to attend this event, although I’m kinda earning my keep by being a presenter. No other expenses were covered by the ADDA.
A rather unexpected bonus at ATEC11 are the variety presentations, from the highly technical to practical real world application. Dr. Edward Price presented a video about the Chicago stormwater retention system, run by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. This program and collection of public works handles water pollution and sewer backup problems for 52 municipalities within Cook County. Price covered how Chicago is setting up a water management system that can handle 11″ of rain in one day (from the so-called 100-year storm; there have been several such 100-year storms in the past 10 years!). The system treats about 1.5 billion gallons of waster water each day. Overflow is often stored in several reservoirs, including one called Deep Tunnel. Treated solid waste from the system is used to convert old strip mine craters into beautiful prairie land via a program called the Prairie Plan. See the image below for a basic schematic of the water treatment system.