An Excellent Educational Resource for CAD users

I began my CAD experience by begging information out of the guy that did all the CAD work in the office that I worked in.  He wanted to get a job done and teaching was not his forté.  He admitted that teaching was not his thing and that I was better off trying to learn on my own or take a class.  Of course he said that he would loan assistance if absolutely necessary, but our definitions differ and off to school I went.  I took an AutoCAD 101 class at the local technical school and many questions were answered and limited, productive work was able to be accomplished.  To reinforce the "Basics" of what I had learned, I turned to the Internet.  The Internet chat rooms/forums and our software package vendor site were helpful; however, they were not the best for the next step above "Basic" kind of CAD things, i.e. unique template creation, scale issues, symbol creation, etc.  This type of CAD development fell into support cases and additional costs would have been incurred.  So, a little time passed and I began to explore what Field to Finish could do to improve field collection to drawing processes from a land surveying perspective.  Instantly, I realized that Field to Finish could greatly improve drawing times and I wanted to learn more about how I could utilize it at my company.
 
One of the many CAD sites that I had run across was thatCADgirl.com.  Jennifer Dibona runs the thatCADgirl consulting business.  She has the ability to come to your site and custom build solutions; but, she also provides online resources, via her website, that can be a huge help.  The site has links to a schedule of many helpful Lunch N Learn sessions that are minumal in cost and usually will get NC CEU credits.  The website also has an entire page of links for useful information for Carlson products and AutoDesk products.  On one occasion, I had to do a late registration for a webinar and Jennifer accomodated my registration even though it was 8:30 PM the night before!  You get the feeling that she actually cares about what she does and who she is affecting.

I am no CAD expert, but I can manage my way around a dwg file.  It has taken several years to get to this point, a far cry from the office with the self proclaimed non teacher as CAD master.  However, I feel that anyone needing extra help or has a question that needs answered can draw on the expertise of thatCADgirl.  This resource helped me develop my Field to Finish presence in office and field procedures, which did end up saving 1-3 hours per job.  Please take the time to look at the site because I feel that it can be beneficial!