The information on this page results from the experience of the author, Peter Mann, at the Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology. Take a look at the "About Us" page for for general information on the purpose of this web site.

This page offers more in-depth information on some of the books and courses offered for sale, relating specifically to colleges and universities. There is a separate page, "Trainers", specific to commercial MicroStation Trainers and Resellers.

Mohawk College believes that technical students need to be "bilingual" in their CAD studies and teaches both AutoCAD and MicroStation software. Many employers, particularly the larger ones, are demanding MicroStation skills of graduates. In view of this, the college not only includes MicroStation as part of some curriculums, but also offers the MicroStation 2D Level 1 and Level 2 courses as distance education courses that anyone can take, inside or outside the college. This arrangement allows colleges that do not offer MicroStation courses themselves to still have their students learn MicroStation at a cost comparable to a course fee in their own institution.

While Bentley Systems (MicroStation's developer) offers academic institutions a very competitive pricing arrangement for their software (link to Bentley's Academic page), the difficulty for most students where MicroStation is not offered is obtaining the software for a distance education course. To solve this problem, Bentley offers students registered in a MicroStation course the Academic Edition of MicroStation software at an extremely low price. This is a full-featured version and differs from the commercial program only in that a "Restricted Use" dialog box is present when the program is started. This dialog box cannot be closed, but can be moved completely off the screen. Link to Bentley's Academic page for more information.

For some colleges it is more advantageous to buy and maintain ten or more MicroStation academic licenses but direct their students to Mohawk's distance education courses for the necessary instruction. Evaluation can be coordinated between colleges to ensure student performance, and successful students can add MicroStation skills to their transcripts. The MicroStation Lab Books are a key ingredient in this linkage; the books are designed as self-paced texts and are ideal for distance education or for classroom instruction.

In addition, Bentley, Inc, announced in January 2005 that it is offering its PowerDraft software free to students. PowerDraft is a slightly reduced-function version of MicroStation. For more information on downloading the software and comparisons between PowerDraft and full MicroStation, click here.

Please "Contact Us" for more information.

Residential Design and Construction Program

This six-course program of studies allows colleges an easy and cost-effective way of offering general building courses to the public. The courses are aimed at homeowners and beginning tradespersons and offer direct, straightforward building and renovating information and skills. These are popular courses and they have been running successfully for many years at Mohawk College where it is offered as a Certificate course. To see the program listing in Mohawk's Continuing Education catalog, click here and select "Engineering Technology" and then "Residential Design".

The setup of the program depends on the facilities available at your college. Ideally, you should have drafting rooms and carpentry, plumbing, and electrical shops on campus. If not, you may be able to access outside facilities at high schools or other locations. If this is not possible, then offer only the courses that can be hosted at your institution. You are free to alter or merge course instruction to meet your requirements.

The textbook, Illustrated Residential and Commercial Construction must be used by each registrant (see the copyright information on our R. D. Program page).

Please "Contact Us" for more information.

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