SUNY Alfred CGET History & Alumni Pages

Some Notes and Reflections Compiled by Gary E. RAFE, Ph.D.

Following my graduation from SUNY Alfred in 1980 with an Associate degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology (Air Conditioning Engineering Technology), I had the great privilege to work with Prof. James R. WOUGHTER on a project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to put together the first two-year degree program in engineering computer graphic systems in the US.

The $249,962 NSF award, Comprehensive Revision of the Engineering Technology Curricula/Engineering Computer Design Graphics Technicians (NSF Award Number 7907295), allowed SUNY Alfred to purchase a used Computervision Designer V system in early 1980 [from?]. The Designer V was hosted on a CGP-100 mini-computer, which was based on the 16-bit Data General Nova mini-computer. This initial system (serial number 1100) ran the Computervision Graphics Operating System (CGOS) system software and CADDS3 application software. Additional hardware consisted of a Lear Siegler ADM3A video display terminal used as the system console, 9 track tape unit, Interact IV (?) flat bed plotter/digitizer (almost as big as a VW Beetle -- who has a picture of this?), and one 19G Tektronix-based vector stroke storage tube workstation terminal with a thermal printer "console" (anyone remember what that thing was called? SUNY Alfred must have been the largest consumer of that thermal printer paper for a while in the '80s). We worked with this system in an un-air conditioned Mechanical Engineering Technology laboratory on the third floor that first summer.

After the system moved into the "fishbowl" on the third floor of the Engineering Technologies (ET) Building in the early '80s, a second processor (serial number 4592) was donated to the program [from?], along with donated 19G storage tube workstation terminals, and purchased monochrome Instaview raster workstation terminals. By the mid-80s, the CAD laboratory was moved to a dedicated climate controlled space on the first floor of the ET Building, the Interact plotter was replaced by a Calcomp C965 belt-bed plotter (1986) [what happened to the Interact plotter?], and a direct serial connection was established between the "senior's" system and the Maho CNC horizontal machining center in a manufacturing laboratory on the third floor. We used short-haul serial modems to maintain the RS-232 signal level due to the distance between the CPU and the machine controller. In 1989, Computervision donated a set of Personal Designer software to the School that ran on Sun's x86 workstation and IBM PCs (read the Olean Times Hearld story here).

When I left Alfred in 1993 to work on a Masters degree at the University of Pittsburgh, we had a network of Sun Microsystems IPX SPARC workstations and an IPC (SPARC) server running SunOS to support CADDS4X solid design, and at least one tall-boy Designer-VX system running CADDS4X with 6 Instaview workstation terminals (5 monochrome, 1 color). I made it back to Alfred for one last "hurrah" in 1995-96 while I was a doctoral student at the University of Pittsburgh to run a series of seminars and workshops, and bring the lab systems up-to-date with Sun Solaris and parametric CADDS5. I believe it wasn't long after that the program moved to Pro/ENGINEER running on Windows PCs (likely due to Parametric Technologies acquisition of Computervision in the late-'90s).

If you have any recollections to share about the various facilities and systems used by the CGT/CGET program over the years, please pass them along to me.

As of late February 2008, I could find no reliable source of information regarding who graduated from the CGT/CGET program (Code #375), both while I was at Alfred and after. These pages represent my attempt to document the people, facilities, and systems associated with this ground-breaking program. The links below follow on to separate pages that list graduating classes alphabetically for the years the CGT/CGET Associate degrees were awarded. My goal here is to summarize briefly the careers (professional and educational) of alumni in a standard format and offer a means of contacting old friends and colleagues in a way that minimizes the exposure of public information (e.g., e-mail and personal web addresses), as information becomes available. The initial effort will be to list faculty, alumni, and friends of the program over the years. I take full responsibility for any omissions and errors in this reporting. If you find omissions and/or errors here, please contact me at the e-mail address given below.