New Training Center

Hi everyone! I'm departing from my normal subjects to show you a little of the project the owners of our company have been working on all summer. As any of you who've come to Comm-Tech for training know, for about two years now our main office has been in Frederick, Colorado. It's a nice town, but everything was at least 5 miles away. It took a long time to go out to lunch, and if you wanted to run some errands during the lunch hour - well, forget it, you couldn't. We were on the frontage road of I-25 between Highways 52 and 119. But now we've moved to Boulder!

On the above map from Google I marked the two locations.

Here's a few pictures of the progress of our new building. It is so nice!

This is one of the future classroom, taken as I was standing in the front where I would normally stand. We'll have our coffee and snacks on that countertop.

On the right is my future office - notice the window? I took those 2 photos on September 3rd. When you visit us you'll see the huge progress we've made!

These next 2 were taken while we were in the moving process. What a huge job that was! One is the open office area, the other is looking at the balconey through the boss's office door.

We moved into the building on September 8th. We worked our heads off, but there was still an awful lot of work to do.

The photo of them hanging the screen for the projector looks a little surreal, doesn't it?

Here's the new kitchen, we'll have plenty of space for you all to eat your lunches there during class. Within walking distance is a PDQ station with a Subway inside, and across the street is a hotel (for out-of-town students) with a wonderful restaurant inside, the Eggcredible Cafe.

These trees are what you see outside the kitchen window. Makes a nice change from gazing at the semi trucks on I-25.
Today I took this picture of the classroom they've named Cherryvale Trail - it's all finished. Most of the time the AutoCAD classes will be in this room, and the Civil 3D, Map and Land Desktop classes wil be in the other one, named Mapleton Hill. Everything is set up and ready to go!

Below is the view of our building looking west on South Boulder Road. I realize when you're driving here you won't quite see this view, since you'd have to be in the wrong lane. But I wanted you all to notice at the bottom of the photo is an entrance to some of Boulder's hiking trails. I got this map that shows this entrance and some of the nearby trails from the City of Boulder's website.




On the right is a picture of the new building taken from the corner of South Boulder Road and Manhattan Circle, looking east.

Today was a beautiful day, so I climbed up onto the roof parapet and took this photo of the Flatirons. We all love looking at the mountains. We're sure you'll love our new training center, with it's bigger classrooms, better kitchen, and its more convenient & attractive location. I sincerely hope you come to the Open House on Friday the 21st!

New Dimension Tricks

We are completely moved into our newly remodeled office building. (I'm posting a bunch of pictures in my next blog.) After so much chaos and disruption I am very happy to get back to a normal work day! If you click on the link you can see our new digs. I now have a window looking out over trees and things! Who wouldn't love that?

Today I'm going to show you a couple new features that have been added to Dimensioning.

Here's a picture of the two I'm writing about, shown on the pulldown menu, Dimension Space & Dimension Break. Of course these are on the Dashboard and the Dimension Toolbar, I just like the fact that you can see the icon and the command name at the same time on the pulldowns.

This first tip is a little different take on the Dimension Space (DIMSPACE) command.

When you have a line of dimensions that maybe should have been created with "DIMCONTINUE" - as you see on the right here - with Dimension Space you can easily fix 'em up. After starting the command, choose the dimension you want all the others to line up with. The one I chose is highlighted there (on the right)

Then use a crossing window to pick all the ones you want to line up with it, and use Zero as the spacing.

All the dimensions will line up with the one you chose as a reference. Sweeeet.

This command is most often used when you have a whole bunch of dimensions stacked too closely, or just so unevenly that they don't look professional.
The steps are the same - start the command, pick the reference dimension, and then use a crossing to pick the rest of the dimensions you need to line up properly.

Then enter the spacing distance in drawing units. In this case the spacing chosen was 15. Looks a lot better, doesn't it?

Remember, if the number you chose just doesn't look right, there's always Undo!

The last thing I want to show you today is the Dimension Break command.

When you have dimensions that overlap you don't have to use a Wipeout anymore. You can set any dimension to break where it overlaps another one by using the DIMBREAK command. It's really easy to use.

Start the command, either select the object you want to break, or M for Multiple and then select several dimensions using a crossing.

Then you have to hit Enter to accept the 'Break' option, and that's IT.

Nicest of all, when you grip edit the location of a dimension that has had DIMBREAK applied to it, the break moves with it.

Give this a try! I'll be writing again soon, so have fun drawing and I'll see you here next time.