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RBF Consulting Senior Designer shares
his opinions about MicroStation Productivity Toolkit
and the future of CAD.
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| Lee Youngs — with his daughter
and wife (Jessie and Jan) — standing inside Big Ben
in London, England. |
IRVINE, CALIFORNIA, USA
— Lee Youngs, RBF Consulting's Senior CAD Designer and
20-year CAD veteran, knows that by using the many utilities
in MicroStation Productivity Toolkit he can have complete
control over his design projects and can prevent disasters
that can turn a project into a big headache.
We recently had a chance to get some insight on how Lee Youngs
utilizes MicroStation Productivity Toolkit on a daily
basis.
MicroStation Today:
Can you tell us a bit about your 20-year experience using
CAD?
Lee: I started my CAD career in 1985 working on an Intergraph
system using the old double monitors with the digitizing table
attached. I started out as a Facility Planner for Hughes Aircraft.
I switched over to civil in 1990 and have been doing work
for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)
and local cities ever since.
Currently, I am the CAD Senior Designer for the Transportation
and Public Works Department for RBF Consulting in Irvine,
California. I have been with RBF for over five years. RBF
Consulting - recently ranked "Best Firm to Work For"
in the nation by CE News Magazine - provides consulting services
for planning, design and construction throughout the western
United States and internationally. The firm, with a staff
of nearly 1,000 employees, maintains fourteen offices located
throughout California, Arizona and Nevada. Our Web site is
www.RBF.com.
MST: Tell us about how
you use Axiom utilities?
Lee: I have MicroStation Productivity Toolkit installed
on my machine and I find myself using it on a daily basis.
One great tool is FileFixer. I use it to clean up drawings
before converting them to V8 and to correct problems in MicroStation/J
files so errors don't get passed from one drawing to another.
I use Duplicate Element Remover to eliminate any extra
elements that may have been accidentally duplicated or placed
several times. I use Microsoft Office Importer to import
Microsoft Excel spreadsheets into MicroStation. This saves
the time of drafting tables by hand using graphics and text.
RefMerge comes in handy when Caltrans wants all the
design information copied into individual cut sheets (sheet
files) with no reference files attached.
I don't use all the tools in Toolkit yet — yet
being the key word. Axiom has always been willing to give
me lessons over the Internet to teach me how to use the tools
and what to use the tools for. That is a great help in time
and cost savings.
MST: What is the most
recent project that Axiom has assisted you on?
Lee: Right now, we are going through the painful process of
converting our cell libraries from Metric to English units
and I have relied on Axiom for assistance during this ordeal.
I got instructions on how to use CellManager to help
make this conversion less cumbersome. The cost of redoing
all existing cell libraries one cell at a time would be a
small fortune and would take countless days to accomplish.
MST: What would you like
to be doing in ten years?
Lee: Ten years from now, I hope to be retired and traveling
with my wife, Jan. We love to go to London, England and have
made three trips so far. The highlight of our last trip was
being allowed to go into the tower where Big Ben is located.
We reached the top — over 300 steps — just before
Big Ben rang twelve o'clock noon. Now that is an impressive
sight and sound! Big Ben is not open to the public or foreign
visitors and we had to get special permission from Parliament
to enter the tower. We also toured Liverpool to see all the
sites written about by the Beatles with a stop at Abbey Road
in London to make the experience complete.
Also, we really enjoyed our trip to Australia. Our daughter,
Jessie, sang at the Sydney Opera House with her high school
choir. Jessie is now in her second year of college and our
son, Jason, has made us proud grandparents with two fine boys.
MST: If you could trade
places with anyone for just one day, who would it be?
Lee: If I could change places with anyone for one day it would
have to be with Sir Paul McCartney. Just to have the memories
he has would be fantastic.
MST: What do you predict
will be the "next big thing" in CAD?
Lee: I think the next big thing in CAD is going to be the
ability to use both MicroStation and AutoCAD on the same project.
MicroStation can already read and manipulate AutoCAD files
and it will be nice to have AutoCAD manipulate MicroStation
files, as I heard will be the case with the 2007 version of
AutoCAD. This will allow a designer to always work in the
CAD program they are most familiar with.
MST: Thank you so much
for your time, Lee.
Lee: Thank you.
Call now!
For more information on MicroStation
Productivity Toolkit contact an Axiom MicroStation
Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774 extension 9558 or e-mail
9558@AxiomInt.com.
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