My name is Ashley Jorgensen and I am a student in the DDGT program at Napa Valley College. As one of our assignments in the class, we were to create website to display all that we have learned throughout the course.

DDGT Course:

We used many different programs and learned many useful skills that pertain to many different areas of the digital design field.

First we learned how to hand-draft several different mechanical parts using just hand-drafting tools such as a mechanical pencil, a T-Square, an architectural/mechanical unit scale, 2 triangles, and an eraser. It was a difficult first task but, from that, we learned the value of how truly powerful the computer is in drafting precisely and efficiently.

We then moved to the computers and learned AutoCAD. Our first assignments were to draft the same drawings that we originally hand-drew. AutoCAD makes drafting a very easy task, since lines are drawn and erased with the push of a button, and dimensions are easily changed immediately.

After we mastered 2D drawings, we started 3D drawings in AutoCAD. We took our previously-drawn 2D drawings and made them into 3D using some very useful tools in AutoCAD.

We then used a program called Rhino, which is a 3D program, that makes digital art extremely simple. In Rhino, you can easily draw an object dimensioned precisely, or to no particular dimensions at all. Skewing, stretching and molding objects are the program's strong points, being that you can pull the work points in any direction to create any shape you wish.

Next we moved to my favorite of all the programs we learned; Inventor. It is a program made by the same company (Autodesk) as AutoCAD. Inventor makes drafting in 3D extremely easy because it uses an approach that is opposite that of AutoCAD; it is specifically tailored to drawing in 3D. First, you construct a part (or parts) in a part file, then you combine them in an assembly file. You can then put them in a drawing file and display them as 2D with a title block to print out, as you would in AutoCAD. Inventor is so easy to use because all parts/dimensions are able to be altered at any time, even after many other steps have been performed. This is extremely valuable because, being human, mistakes happen and you will inevitably need to go back and edit or change a dimension.

We then took a break from drafting and began editing pictures using Adobe Photoshop. This is a very valuable tool to be familiar with in the digital design field because photo editing is used in almost every aspect of the commercial field. We learned tools that helped us fix damaged pictures, alter the color saturation & related tools, resize and compress images, and create images from scratch.

Our next assignment was to learn website design. Our websites were created using Adobe Dreamweaver. This program makes learning html really easy because you can see the html code and simultaneously see how it will look in the web browser! It makes file linking particularly easy too, since Photoshop will tell you if you need to update your links, and will update them on all your pages at the same time.