RUG News

The meeting of the North Texas COE was held on November 14 at the Tarrant County College campus and was well attended by many representatives of local companies. The agenda was highlighted by a special appearance by the F/A-22 traveling simulator in conjunction with many excellent presentations.

Beginning the morning was Mike Melton with an update of the new features in R12. Unfortunately, Melton's CATIA laptop irreparably crashed the week prior to the meeting and he was unable to provide the usual demonstrations of these capabilities however the presentation was filled with useful information.

Following Melton's presentation, an election was held to fill the three available slots on the NT COE Governing Committee. A very qualified field of five candidates vied for the three positions. After a very close election, congratulations are in order to Pat Ehmann, Bell Helicopter; Tom Schneider, Vought Aircraft; and Rick Zimmerman, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics who will join returning committee members Sandra Nowak, Lockheed Martin EIS and Alan Richbourg, Bell Helicopter. A big thanks to retiring committee members Cindy Hitt, Weatherford College; Jim Johnson, Lockheed Martin; and Steve Loveland, Bell Helicopter for their two years of service and leadership to the organization.

NTCOE 2004 Governing Committee 1

Following the election, Rick Zimmerman provided a presentation on the use of V4 for the F/A-22 simulator and he invited all of the attendees to take a spin in the F/A-22 throughout the remainder of the day.

Rick Zimmerman with F/A-22 Simulator 1

Rounding out the morning was a presentation on legacy data migration to CATIA V5 provided by Todd McCall of MBA, Inc

After lunch, Nathan Clark and Tom Schneider from Vought Aircraft provided an enlightening presentation on the Visual Basic interface for CATIA V5 and taking advantage of the capabilities for getting started with KBE. Following was a demonstration of some of the capabilities of DMU provided by Scott Mauk of Rand. Closing out the day was Kim Autry, Lockheed Martin, providing a very interesting and informative presentation on the CATIA V5 Tubing capabilities and the customization requirements for a production deployment of the product.

Thanks to all the presenters, to Tarrant County College for providing the venue, and to IBM, Weatherford College, and Rand for providing the refreshments and lunch. A special thanks to Rick Zimmerman for scheduling and managing the logistics of bringing the F/A-22 Traveling Simulator to the meeting. It was not only intrinsically interesting but provided a venue for meeting new colleagues from the Metroplex attendees.

The group plans to meet three times in 2004 on February 20, May 14, and November 12. All companies are welcome to attend. There are no membership fees and the meetings include a free lunch! See our web site: http://www.vought.com/ntcoe/

Want to find a local user group? Interested in creating a local user group? Discover how COE is reaching out to support regional user groups (RUG) at http://coe.neology.com/resources/other.cfm.