Kickoff Meeting

We had an informal (as if there were a formal) meeting today for all newcomers and returners. There was a good turnout, and not just civil, we had some mechanical and aeronautical engineering students express interest in welding and machining during the winter too!!! That's awesome and totally what we're looking for. Some vatos of height were also in attendance so that bodes well for construction.

'Delicious' laid out the basics of the design/build year including what we'll be up to this Saturday, which is Horseshoe Classic day here on campus as we battle Cal Poly at Aggie Stadium. We'll run 3 one hour sessions of SAP analysis in EUIII to get all new designers a basic experience of the AutoCAD DXF wireframe to SAP transfer. Matt will design 3 new deck options for this year's design for them to work on so it won't just be a practice exercise...it'll be for real! The typical box deck we've been looking it shows a little too much shear lag from one rail to the other, so two maybe three other design alternatives that have been discussed will be built from scratch for cross analytical examination. Should be fun.

Our next meeting is scheduled for 7:10 p.m. Tuesday, October 16th, probably somewhere in Bainer - exact classroom t.b.a. - when in doubt, however, you can almost always find somebody in the 1203 Bainer lab. Next Tuesday we'll go over some specifics from the 2008 National Student Steel Bridge Competition(NSSBC) Rules, look at some initial design options (we're basically down to 2 right now - as 3 others have been eliminated), and we'll watch some construction film from Northridge, and possibly Orlando...since we never managed to bring back any film from Salt Lake City. 2004 film may also prove useful as it incorporated a barge - we've got Wisconsin's (On Wisconsin!) run from Golden, so that may be worth a look.

Until Saturday and/or Tuesday - that's it from Chrome Oville. Stay low out there, and keep those feet movin'!

Have you got that attitude?