Derek Dubout

Dubouts

After studying science and engineering, Derek Dubout worked in the Facade Engineering Group of Australia’s leading government research organisation, the CSIRO, at the Division of Building Research. There he was involved in collaborative research projects with the building industry examining building facade design improvement, testing, fault diagnosis and rectification detailing. Derek currently works for Ian Bennie & Associates, a consulting mechanical test laboratory in Melbourne, Australia. Ian Bennie & Associates is primarily involved in the testing of windows, doors and buildings facades as well as providing diagnostic testing and rectification detailing for faulty building facades. derekdubout@optusnet.com.au

I’m relatively new to PowerCADD and WildTools, and all I can say is wow! My work in a mechanical test laboratory requires me to be multi-disciplined, and I use the program for a wide range of drawing. From equipment design and detailing to simple diagrams for inclusion in test reports. I use PowerCADD and WildTools because they provide an extensive array of tools that make it easy to produce the drawings I need in an extremely short time frame. Not only that, I reckon they’re great fun to use.

The Rubik’s cube is a little project I set myself to get a feel for using WildTools 3D and producing animated GIF images. The drawing process turned out to be extremely easy. I just made a drawing of the cube in its messed up form, selected one of the tools from the 3D palette (putting the program in 3D mode) then selected the “Rotate to Zero” command. Bingo! PowerCADD did the rest … just kidding, there was a little more to it than that, but WildTools 3D did make it very easy to create the individual drawings.

Derek Dubout

Derek and WildTools

It’s a bit painful for me to put this into the Drawing Room because of my long involvement with Derek.  For a number of years, he was closely involved in the development of WildTools and we had enormous fun working on ideas and things that could be done in WildTools.  Derek is easily one of the brightest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, and he hasn’t been involved in WildTools and PowerCADD for a number of years simply because his work required them to spend time on other things.  Here’s hoping Derek will come back into our world. But my lord, it was fun!

Alfred Scott