Computer Aided Drafting Virtual Reality Interface

Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) is pervasive in engineering fields today. It has become indispensable for planning, creating, visualizing, troubleshooting, collaborating, and communicating designs before they exist in physical form. From the beginning, CAD was created to be used by means of a mouse, keyboard, and monitor. Along the way, other, more specialized interface devices were created specifically for CAD that allowed for easier and more intuitive navigation within a 3D space, but they were at best stopgap solutions. Virtual Reality (VR) allows users to navigate and interact with digital 3D objects and environments the same way they would in the real world. For this reason, VR is a natural CAD interface solution. Using VR as an interface for CAD software, creating will be more intuitive and visualizing will be second nature. For this project, a prototype VR CAD program was created using Unreal Engine for use with the HTC Vive to compare against traditional WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) interface CAD programs for the time it takes to learn each program, create similar models, and impressions of using each program, specifically the intuitiveness of the user interface and model manipulation. FreeCAD, SolidWorks, and Blender were the three traditional interface modeling programs chosen to compare against VR because of their wide-spread use for modeling in 3D printing, industry, and gaming, respectively. During the course of the project, two VR modeling programs were released, Google Blocks and MakeVR Pro; because they were of a similar type as the prototype software created in Unreal Engine, they were included for comparison as part of this project. The comparison showed that the VR CAD programs were faster to learn and create models and more intuitive to use than the traditional interface CAD programs

A CAD/CAM/CNC Curriculum for High School Students

The need for CAD/CAM/CNC curriculum for Washington State was researched. Based on research a resource workbook for CAD/CAM/CNC was in demand. In order to meet the demand for CAD/CAM/CNC curriculum and bridge the gap between the state standards, drafting frameworks, STEM curriculum, increased focus on implementation within multiple disciplines, providing a starting point for teachers who want to use CNC machinery in their program, and prepare students for quality jobs and careers related to CAD/CAM/CNC, a workbook was created. The workbook includes 27 hands-on lessons and projects, student handouts, applied STEM problems and activities, tutorials, drafting standards, state math standards, and equation sheets. The workbook is designed to be used as a resource for CAD/CAM/CNC teachers in Washington State

Phenomenology, Colonialism, and the Administrative State

In A Realistic Theory of Law, Brian Tamanaha rejects the claim that universal legal principles exist, and its variant that essential features of law applicable to all societies can be identified. He argues that we should define law in accordance with our society’s ordinary usage of the term and analyze law in other societies on the basis of the practices they follow on subjects that fall within the boundaries of that usage. Tamanaha then observes that the effort to identify universal principles or essential features of law has interfered with our understanding of the way that law, as we define it, has evolved over the course of human history. Even more importantly, this effort has occluded our understanding of our own legal system, which is largely organization-based and managerial, and carries out a wide variety of functions beyond the traditional one of regulating relations between private persons. There are at least two major arguments against the positions that Tamanaha advances. The argument against rejecting any universal legal standards is that this rejection is a form of cultural relativism and thus precludes our ability to make moral judgments about other nations or other societies. Are we truly willing to say that slavery or human sacrifice is not wrong, but merely reflect a different cultural perspective; are we willing to say that there are no universal principles by which we can condemn someone like Hitler? The argument against allowing all the organizational and managerial practices of our society to count as law is that it validates governmental action that violates important legal or moral principles. Are we truly willing to say that discretionary, opaque, and result-oriented behavior of modern administrative agencies does not raise concerns about their lawfulness? These may seem like separate objections, stated at different levels of generality, but I will maintain that they suffer from a common defect and thus are best answered with a single argument. That argument is that the principles by which we formulate our moral judgments are the product of our own society, the very same society that has generated our modern form of government. The idea that we can articulate and apply universal moral principles is simply a rhetorical device, characteristic of own society, and one that cannot withstand sustained examination. This does not preclude us from advancing moral arguments; rather, it means that the best moral arguments we can advance— the ones that will be most meaningful to us—are derived from our own conceptual framework, that is, the framework generated by our own society. It also means that the concepts of law and government that will be most meaningful to us are our own concepts of those institutions. We can criticize those institutions, but global condemnations of them based on different concepts, concepts that are not our own, are also little more than rhetorical devices designed to grant an illusory validity to particular criticisms being voiced within the context of our own society’s debates. The underlying theory of this argument goes beyond the boundaries of the discussion in Tamanaha’s book. The book is designed to refute certain widespread positions in Anglo-American analytic jurisprudence and does so within the framework of that jurisprudence. The basic approach of analytic jurisprudence, like analytic philosophy in general, is to interrogate our own beliefs, to demand that we reflect on the values that we hold and the consequences they imply. Tamanaha’s reliance on this approach is not a defect, because the positions against which the book is directed are probably critiqued most effectively on their own terms. In my view, there is a more philosophically and psychologically convincing way to address general questions about law and legal systems. This is Husserl’s phenomenology, an approach less common in Anglo-American jurisprudence but dominant on the European continent. I argue that phenomenology leads to a different and more effective answer to the two objections that might be raised against Tamanaha’s position, and thereby offers a different perspective on that position. Thus, it is not a critique of Tamanaha’s argument, but rather an alternative route to the same conclusions that he reaches. This article applies a phenomenological approach to the subject matter of Tamanaha’s book, and the potential criticisms against it, in four sections. Section A shows why there are no universal principles of law and why any claim to such principles is incoherent. Section B then argues that the effort to find universal principles that apply to all legal systems is an inadequate and indeed defective way to understand legal systems other than our own. Section C argues that this effort is also an inadequate and defective way to understand our own legal system. The final section then applies these arguments to the modern administrative state and shows that global critiques of it, even at the most sophisticated level, tend to be based upon such asserted universal principles. The administrative state is our society’s mode of governance; its specific features can of course be criticized, but its basic existence is the product of the same conceptual processes that generate the basis for any criticisms that we might advance

The Role of Engineering Graphics in the Civil Engineering Technology Curriculum

This author presents the concept that the basic mechanical drawing course at Pueblo Community College is no longer relevant to the graphics skills required in industry and should not be a prerequisite in the civil engineering technology curriculum. A review of literature reveals that basic mechanical drawing courses are not routinely integrated into civil engineering technology programs in the Colorado Community College System. The literature shows that the majority of programs in the community college system utilize computer aided drafting as the prerequisite. Alternatively, as a replacement, the author presents a hybrid mechanical drawing-computer aided drafting (CAD) curriculum that integrates scaling, geometric sketching, and spatial relationships. The curriculum is supported with the use of on-line lecture material and training modules

Do Constitutions Requiring Adherence to Shari`a Threaten Human Rights? How Egypt’s Constitutional Court Reconciles Islamic Law with the Liberal Rule of Law

Over the last thirty years, a number of Muslim countries, including most recently Afghanistan and Iraq, have adopted constitutions that require the law of the state to respect fundamental Islamic legal norms. What happens when countries with a secular legal system adopt these constitutional Islamization provisions? How do courts interpret them? This article will present a case study of constitutional Islamization in one important and influential country, Egypt. In interpreting Egypt\u27s constitutional Islamization provision, the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt has interpreted Shari\u27a norms to be consistent with international human rights norms and with liberal economic policies. The experience of Egypt does not tell us how constitutional Islamization will necessarily unfold in every country. It does demonstrate that, in a world where Islamic norms are contested, a progressive court can effectively develop and apply a theory that interprets Islamic legal norms to be consistent with democracy, international human rights and economic liberalism

Sovereigns, Trustees, Guardians: Private-Law Concepts and the Limits of Legitimate State Power

One major tradition of understanding the powers and duties of sovereigns has particular relevance to arguments for revival and refurbishment of the odious debt doctrine. Here, Purdy and Fielding survey the critical role of private-law concepts in the development of this tradition. In this account, the state is a constructed and purposive legal actor, composed of a set of powers assigned by its subjects for the pursuit of certain human interests and bound by the obligation to secure and respect those interests. Moreover, they narrate that if there are inherent powers in a sovereign, they are only those that are implied by its inherent duties

Advocacy Under Islam and Common Law

This Article shows that both Anglo-American and Islamic legal traditions have been highly sophisticated in supporting advocacy as a doctrine of justice. And both traditions must save this doctrine from distortions that have corroded the doctrine\u27s normative foundation. This comparative study will hopefully provide insights into jurisprudential recesses of each tradition. It might also inform lawyers, judges, and academics of the two traditions, possibly generating mutual respect and learning