{"id":33546,"date":"2008-04-15T13:52:15","date_gmt":"2008-04-15T17:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/swcommunity\/swugn-spotlig-1"},"modified":"2008-04-15T13:52:15","modified_gmt":"2008-04-15T17:52:15","slug":"swugn-spotlig-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/2008\/04\/swugn-spotlig-1.html","title":{"rendered":"SWUGN Spotlight &#8211; Central Texas SolidWorks User Group"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I can&#8217;t help but have a certain fondness for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.swugn.org\/pages\/calendar\/UGdetails.html?id=334\">Central Texas SolidWorks User Group<\/a>.&nbsp; Formed in September of 1999, it was the first independent SolidWorks User Group in Texas.&nbsp; The original membership consisted of SolidWorks users from the Austin and San Antonio areas, but that changed when the group got a little too big for the centrally located meeting room (see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.swugn.org\/pages\/calendar\/UGdetails.html?id=210\">SASUG<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>In the nearly nine years of it&#8217;s existence, the group&#8217;s leadership has changed only twice.&nbsp; Current group leader <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cazdezign.com\/\">Bill Casnovsky<\/a> has been doing a terrific job for several years now, and the group is as strong as ever (if not stronger).&nbsp; CTSUG has historically attracted some high level SolidWorks talent to their meetings &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.glddesigns.com\/\">Gerald Davis<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/dezignstuff.com\/blog\/\">Matt Lombard<\/a>, and SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray have all presented at meetings (hmmm..climate?). They meet quarterly in a very nice conference room donated by the good folks at The University of Texas (Hook&#8217;em Horns).&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.triaxialdesign.com\/\">Phil Sluder<\/a> is scheduled to present at the May 22nd meeting.<\/p>\n<p>The CTSUG membership boasts some pretty famous folks, well, at least among SolidWorks users.&nbsp; Steve Calvert can be found every morning on the SolidWorks discussion forums answering questions and generally helping out whomever he can.&nbsp; Rick DuRapau is one of my favorite people of all time.&nbsp; A local Austin entrepreneur, Rick is probably best known nationally as the inventor of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lehighgroup.com\/storehorse.asp\">StoreHorse<\/a> folding sawhorse, but is known locally as the crazy dude that <a href=\"https:\/\/floathouseaustin.com\/p1.htm\">floated a house on Lake Travis<\/a>.&nbsp; Steve and Rick are just two of the many wonderful SolidWorks users that CTSUG claims as members.<\/p>\n<p>Austin, Texas is one of the best places in the US to live and work.&nbsp; Having a local SolidWorks user group like CTSUG just makes it that much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I can&#8217;t help but have a certain fondness for the Central Texas SolidWorks User Group.&nbsp; Formed in September of 1999, it was the first independent SolidWorks User Group in Texas.&nbsp; The original membership consisted of SolidWorks users from the Austin<\/p>\n... <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/2008\/04\/swugn-spotlig-1.html\">Continued<\/a>","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[454],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-user-groups"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}