Central Valley Chapter - California Land Surveyors Association www.californiacentralvalleysurveyors.org Central Valley Chapter THE PRISM Volume 4, Issue 4 July 2014 2014 Chapter Officers Up President: Kevin Genasci Coming Date: July 23, 2014 Vice President: Landon Blake Meetings! Time: 6:00 p.m. Secretary: Rich Brown Treasurer: Tom Price Location: Perko’s @ 901 North Carpenter Road, Modesto Chapter Rep: Keith Spencer Speaker: Rob McMillan, PLS, E.I.T. - CalTrans Chapter Rep: Bill Koch Topic: 3D Mobile Scanning: The Bay Bridge Alt. Chapter Rep: Landon Blake Alt. Chapter Rep: Kevin Genasci 2014 Chapter Committees Date: August 27, 2014 By-Laws Committee: Time: 6:00 p.m. Keith Spencer (Chairman) Location: Perko’s @ 901 North Carpenter Road, Modesto Construction Committee: Landon Blake (Chairman) Speaker: TBA Education Committee: Topic: TBA Kevin Genasci (Chairman) Membership Committee: Keith Spencer (Chairman) Monument Preservation Committee: Mike Quartaroli (Chairman) Announcements Newsletter: Fresno State University announces Rich Brown (Editor) It’s 54th Annual Geomatics Engineering Conference is February 20 & 21, 2015 in Professional Practices Committee: Mike Quartaroli (Chairman) Clovis. Contact Marco Castaneda at [email protected] for more in- San Joaquin County Liaison Committee: formation. Kevin Genasci (Chairman) CLSA/NALS Annual Conference Stanislaus County Liaison Committee: Rich Fultz (Chairman) Is set for March 21-25, 2015, at the Silver Legacy Resort and Casino in Reno, Nevada Website: Check State CLSA for more information Keith Spencer (Web Master) NCEES 2014 PS Exam is set for October 24, 2014 2014 Chapter Programs Registration for the October PS Exam will be open from June 16, and closes at 3:00 Boy Scout Merit Badge: p.m. eastern time on August 28, 2014. Click here for more information Zachary Wong (Coordinator) TrigStar: Bill Koch (Coordinator) Still not too late to support your Chapter Workshops: It is not too late to help support your local Chapter. If you have not sent in your Rich Brown (Coordinator) 2014 Chapter dues please do so. You can bring a check to the next Chapter meet- ing. You can also pay online through the chapter website. Please support Table of Contents your local Chapter. Page 2 Classes, Training & Education Page 2 Thoughts from the Editor Chapter Waives 2014 Dues for Unemployed Members Page 3 State News At the October, 2012 meeting the Central Valley Chapter voted to waive chapter Page 4 CAD Tips & Tweaks dues for any members (or new members) who have become victims of the current Page 5 National News economic downturn and are unemployed. Please fill out the Membership Applica- Page 7 It’s In There tion, enter “Unemployed" on Line 7 for the Name of Firm, Agency or College, sub- Page 8 Just for Laughs mit your application, and your 2014 chapter dues are waived. Page 10 Pictures of the Issue Page 11 Classifieds Click here for the 2014 Membership Application PAGE 2 THE PRISM Classes, Training, and Continuing Education CAD Masters - AutoCAD Level I (3-Day Course) July 21-23, 2014, Sacramento August 4-6, 2014, Walnut Creek August 18-20, 2014, Sacramento ESRI - Introduction to GIS (2-Day Course) September 3-5, 2014 Walnut Creek Multiple Dates, Online Register here September 15-17, 2014, Sacramento Sept. 29-Oct. 1, Walnut Creek Register here Lorman Education Services - Plat and Subdivision Law in California CAD Masters - AutoCAD Level II (2-Day Course) August 26, 2014, San Francisco Register here July 28-29, 2014, Walnut Creek August 18-19, 2014, Sacramento CLSA Workshop September 8-9, 2014, Walnut Creek The Evolution of the North American Datum of 1983 in September 29-30, 2014, Sacramento Register here the USA—Coping with Changing Positional Coordi- nates Due to Crustal Motion CAD Masters - AutoCAD Level III Sept 19, 2014, Northern California August 28, 2014, Sacramento Register here Check State CLSA for more information CAD Masters - Civil 3D for Surveyors Fresno State University September 14, 2014, Walnut Creek Register here 54th Annual Geomatics Engineering Conference CAD Masters - AutoCAD Civil 3D Intro (3-Day Course) February 20-21, 2015, Clovis July 30-Aug 1, 2014, Walnut Creek Contact Marco Castaneda @ [email protected] for more information August 11-13, 2014, Sacramento August 25-27, 2014, Walnut Creek CLSA/NALS Annual Conference September 8-10, 2014, Sacramento March 21-25, 2015, Silver Legacy, Reno, Nevada Sept. 22-24, 2014, Walnut Creek Register here Check State CLSA for more information If you have information about a training or class, please submit to: [email protected] Thoughts from the Editor As we celebrate our Nation’s 238th birthday I want to take a moment and reflect on how prestigious the surveying profession is. Many of our Founding Fathers were at one time in their lives land surveyors. In fact, the Father of our Country, George Washington, among many other things, was a Surveyor. Then there was Thomas Jefferson, who was responsi- ble for the Lewis and Clark Expeditions. Then don’t forget about Abraham Lincoln, though his surveying career only lasted a few years. So there are three of the four figures from Mount Rushmore. Pretty prestigious if you ask me. Another famous American that performed the duties of a land surveying is Daniel Boone. He work performing the duties of a Surveyor in Virginia and Kentucky for many years. So, as we watch the fireworks, and bar-b-que those hamburgers & hotdogs, and eat that fresh apple pie, remember that there are a lot of professions that have aided in the creation of this GREAT NATION. First and foremost, the profession that comes to mind would be the military soldier. They risk everything, with very lit- tle rewards. Then there is law enforcement and even teachers. But let’s not forget the Land Surveyor. If he hadn’t done his job at the start of this Country, we might not be celebrating with 50 States. If you would like to comment on this topic or suggest another, please submit it to: [email protected] PAGE 3 THE PRISM State News Conference Wrap Up—CLSA/NALS Conference 2014 by Carl C. de Baca, PLS The image on the program for the 2014 CLSA/NALS conference of palm trees in the foreground and a city sky- line in the background was apt for this year’s get-together. It felt a little like paradise on the grounds of the Town and Country resort, where the conference was held. A constant 70 degree temperature punctuated by a sea breeze made the event the perfect way to say hello to spring and goodbye to winter. The Town and Country Resort Hotel was an outstanding choice for the site of our annual conference; the confer- ence committee and the CLSA central office should be warmly complimented for finding and securing this out- standing location. Spread over 32 acres of lush landscaping, the hotel complex featured multiple eating estab- lishments, terrific conference facilities, great accommodations and a friendly bar for late evening discussions. It was also next door to the Riverwalk golf course, where the CLSA Education Foundation kicked off this year’s activities with a charity golf tournament on Friday, April 11th. Educational activities started on Saturday, April 12 with all day workshops featuring John Stahl and Ryan Hunsicker and concluded with a busload of participants heading to Kearny Mesa for the annual CLSA Educa- tion Foundation bowling tournament where some ten ad-hoc teams got together for bowling merriment. Gutter- ball tickets were flying around all evening and much money was raised for the foundation through the competi- tive nature of the bowlers. Past President Armand Marois’ team won for the second straight year and his son Ian won the high score for the night. During the post-bowling raffle, the past-presidents of CLSA once again made out like bandits, at one point winning 5 raffle prizes in a row. Hmm… the raffle was run by a past- president, curious indeed. The CSU Fresno students did well at the raffle also - a little poetic justice perhaps. Each year this event gets bigger and better. It’s a lot of fun, an opportunity to hang out with some friends and Continued on page 9 PAGE 4 THE PRISM CAD Tips & Tweaks Working With Station/Offset Pairs - Part 2 By Landon Blake, PLS Introduction In the last installment of CAD Tips and Tweaks we created an AutoLISP function to define a station/offset pair in a drawing. Then we saw how to create simple functions to access the data elements of a station/offset pair. In this arti- cle we will write a function that return a text value that indicates what side of the alignment a station offset pair is on. This function is a little more complex than the function we looked at in the last article. A Function to Return Alignment Side We store the alignment side of our station offset pair using a simple int value of 0 or 1. This allows us to do easy comparisons and some other simple operations. But that isn’t a user friendly value. When we obtain the alignment side from a station/offset pair, we really want to return a text value of “left” or “right”. This requires a function with an “if” statement or conditional statement. Let’s take a look at the code for this function: (defun surveyos_station_offset_pair_get_offset_direction_as_string (entity_list / offset_direction_int return_value ) (setq off- set_direction_int (nth 3 entity_list ))(if (= offset_direction_int 0)(setq return_value "Right")(setq return_value "Left") )) You can see in this function we use an if statement. The if statement returns a text value of “Right” if the int value for offset direction is “0”. As a result, if the int value is “1” a text value of “Left” will be returned from the function.