Strother Scott is a Managing Director of BB&T Capital Markets in Richmond, VA. Nights and weekends he is active at Fishing Bay Yacht Club, Deltaville, VA where he has served as Finance Chair, Commodore, Long Range Planning Chair, and he is currently webmaster for the club website www.fbyc.net. He has a house in Richmond about three blocks away from Alfred. Email: [email protected] Cell (804) 405-5999
I am not an architect or graphic artist, but I work at a bank. I am however married to an architect who uses PowerCADD and WildTools on a regular basis; my brother Alfred wrote WildTools; and I am “computer savvy” as one would expect in Alfred’s brother. Like everyone else, I am continually amazed that Alfred can make WildTools do what it does — all produced out of an office with one programmer, versus something like Autodesk which has 4,810 employees.
My usage of WildTools is limited to maybe 40 hours a year. I use it in my volunteer work as Long Term Planning Chair and Webmaster for Fishing Bay Yacht Club and also to put together our family Christmas Cards because I know how to use it for photo collages and text — and so there is no need to bother with Adobe products. I have learned how to use about 10 or 15 of the tools, I can import a pdf of a real architect’s drawing and put it in a layer to be traced, be seen, or be left unseen.
I have mastered only a few tools, bézier curves for tracing real drawings, hatching using the standard hatches. I have no idea how to make a real hatch of water or waves, or to “transform.” I now have about 70 layers in the yacht club drawing and about 30 sheets to save the various drawings and planning documents I have made over the years. The drawings I have submitted to the Drawing Room are not unusual or particularly well done — the point is they work for me, and I can produce them pretty quickly and easily. And yes, when I have a problem, I call Alfred, and he gives me the answer — “it is in the manual.” But my wife has the manual — I don’t — so he sent me to the electronic download page where both the PowerCADD and WildTools manuals are located.
I never print any drawings, I just use Ambrosia Software’s Snapz Pro to capture screen shots as a pdf if I need to print it to hand out at a meeting or to display on the Club Bulletin Board, or as a jpeg if I plan to upload them to the website. Most of the planning documents are password protected, but you can see samples in the list of links at the top of the 2004 Optimist Atlantic Coast Championships page or — maybe better drawings — at the 2007 Flying Scot North American Championship Layout page.
Strother Scott
