Ron Gillespie is president of PME Consulting, Inc., a consulting engineering firm in Florida that services the wood products industry, primarily in the sawmill industry. PME was founded January 1, 1987 by Ron and Lisa Gillespie, and for the last ten years have teamed with Ed Harris in Heber Springs, Arkansas, with a virtual office together connected via the Internet. They share projects that range from East Texas to Virginia and have even done some work in their original home state of Oregon. PME Consulting, Inc. 613 Fayette Drive South, Safety Harbor, FL 34695 (904) 583-9082
I started with the Mac really before there was one. My first experience with Apple was a Lisa. I was working as an engineer/project manager/internal consultant for ITT Rayonier. We were building a new sawmill. We created an office for the task at the mill site and one of vendors who was to get the process control systems provided us with a brand new Lisa. This was my first experience with the current Mac OS. Much of what was done with the Lisa ended up in the first Macintosh.
My first Mac purchase was a “Fat Mac” 512. It is amazing how happy I was with it and MacDraft at the time. I’ve come a long way since then. I now sport a 17″ Macbook Pro.
After leaving ITT Rayonier, I started my own consulting firm (January `87). Before too long I purchased ClarisCAD. I loved it! My experience was as a draftsman/designer coming up through the engineering ladder. It was so much like I learned how to draft way back in school. Simple and intuitive. My associate and I worked for years with ClarisCAD and accomplished great things with it. However we kept using it years after it was dumped by Claris. As we stuck with ClarisCAD, it was getting harder and harder to convert files and work with AutoCAD. Additionally, it was getting buggy as the Mac OS moved along.
Finally, I bought the Vellum Upgrade that Claris worked out and tried the program. Uh Oh! Back to the ClarisCAD drawings board! Next I purchased MiniCAD. Same result. Neither had the simple and easy-to-use interface that ClarisCAD had. I just felt stupid and was about to give up. However, ClarisCAD continued giving us problems so we had to do something. I saw an ad for PowerCADD and found the site. I downloaded the demo program and viola! It was simply the exact thing I had been waiting for. Fast, simple and a perfect transition from ClarisCAD. It felt like the upgrade that Claris never did. I went to the website and checked out all the tools and how they worked then tried them out with the sample program. (This I highly recommend for anyone considering getting PowerCADD or anyone who already has it.) We have never looked back. When I got into WildTools, I found out what a powerful tool CADD could actually become. It’s an awesome combination! We get drawings done so fast and easily now it never ceases to amaze me how my life has been changed by these programs.
I submit these drawings to Alfred with many thanks for his help and the folks at Engineered Software. I have never in my many years of experience dealt with any better software people.
Ron Gillespie
