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Senior Drafter for NASA shares his secret
for saving weeks of MicroStation work (and provides Super
Bowl pick).
"My dream since I was eight was to work at the Space
Center," states Terry Jackson, the sun-tanned Senior
Drafter for Space Gateway Support in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
He started out in drafting about 30 years ago, straight out
of high school. He confesses that "it was the only thing
I ever wanted to do." Since the debut of CAD onto the
drafting world, Terry has trained himself on four different
programs, including MicroStation, and was later appointed
shift supervisor and trainer. Now, aside from being the Senior
Drafter, he is the head of the CAD Standards Committee.
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| Leon McGovern (Director of Engineering, left) and Terry
Jackson (Senior Drafter and Chuck Norris fan). |
MicroStation Today had a chance to get to know Terry
better and hear about the exciting projects that he has been
a part of, throughout his 20-year CAD journey.
MicroStation Today: What are your daily
duties as the Senior Drafter?
Terry: I design, create and maintain CAD Standards and draft
construction drawings. I work with 11 drafters in my particular
department, but we have approximately 20 MicroStation seats
here.
MicroStation Today: What have been some
of your most memorable projects?
Terry: Designing the Launch Control Center, the NASA Headquarters
building and the power dispatch center for the Air Force.
The Launch Control Center project involved designing a conference
room that looks out over the firing room (command center where
all the launch engineers sit and ensure the launch is successful).
The object was to make an area where dignitaries could come
and watch a shuttle launch through glass windows overlooking
the firing room.
For the NASA Headquarters building project, we were tasked
to design what engineers called "force protection"
(due to the events of 9/11). We designed the front of the
building and grounds so no vehicle could get close enough
to the building with any kind of explosives to do any damage.
The offices for the Center's director and other NASA officials
are in that building.
Lastly, we designed a high-tech power dispatch center for
the United States Air Force. There, Air Force personnel monitor
everything going on in the Air Force station from one room.
It has become quite a showcase as far as power dispatch rooms
go.
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| Clouds cast shadows as Space Shuttle Atlantis crawls
back inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. To the left
of the VAB is the Launch Control Center, which houses
the firing rooms that are used to conduct shuttle launches.
Photo: NASA |
MicroStation Today:: How do Axiom tools
help you in your work?
Terry: CellManager has been extremely valuable and
it has saved us at least 200 hours in just a couple of months.
This tool is great for building and combining cell libraries.
It allows you to be able to see any duplicate cells, scale
the cells, rename, change weight, change color or change line
type. Where it used to take weeks or months to do, it now
takes hours or days.
FileFixer has also saved us a lot of time with just
a few files that have been fixed. Due to software conflicts,
we were losing levels and getting "end-of-file missing"
errors. Because of the complexity of the drawings, it would
have taken several weeks to redraw the drawings. Because of
FileFixer it only took approximately ten minutes to
fix the files.
We own Microsoft Office Importer and are still incorporating
into our procedures. Microsoft Office Importer will
save several hundred hours of production time a year once
it is fully implemented.
MicroStation Today: When was the last time
you broke the rules?
Terry: Last week.
MicroStation Today: What is your favorite
TV show?
Terry: "Walker, Texas Ranger". I love the way [Chuck
Norris] fights.
MicroStation Today: Who's your Super Bowl
pick for this NFL season?
Terry: Indianapolis Colts.
MicroStation Today: Terry, thank you for
your time! We think Chuck kicks some major butt as well. Good
luck in your future endeavors!
Call now!
For more information on MicroStation
Productivity Toolkit contact an Axiom MicroStation
Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774 extension 9321 or e-mail
9321@axiomint.com now!
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