What’s cool in today’s hot housing market?—New home construction, existing home renovation, new forms of living space, and an exciting new technology to design and create them. At the March 7 General Meeting, Scott Yates, of H & R Design of Danbury, and son of this writer, will reveal the sophisticated media of all types for computer-aided design, and their intercon-nectivity that help energize and empower the architectural process from dream to concept to blueprint and to finished product.

Scott has been an architect for the past 15 years and has specialized in residential, commercial and specialty architecture, including acoustics design for sound studios and media rooms. He has accomplished all this with the aid of various applications running on a laptop computer.

He will show you some of the features of AutoCAD for the design of buildings, additions and rooms. He has used this application for the last decade in both the design and production areas.

Although AutoCAD is not a software product for the casual user, since it costs in the thousands of dollars, there are many much less expensive products you could use for some of your own projects.

He will display the work he did in the designing and renovation of his own house, along with renderings that were done using other products that show how the completed project will look. He will also describe and show some of his designs of media studios that have been built around the world, both for major companies and private citizens. These facilities use the latest technology available and cost from hundreds of thousands of dollars up into the millions.

Scott is knowledgeable in the detailed considerations necessary for high end multi-media rooms (both commercial and residential) of which the average person and local component resellers are likely unaware. For example, using software to analyze and modify the sound characteristics of various spaces.

He has dealt with super high end products that are rarely seen in stores today, even with the current interest in wide screen HDTVs and sound components.

All this relates to both practical uses of computers and the major thrust today to use computers and other electronic devices such as MP3 players, smart phones, and hand held movie viewers in the area of multi-media.

You are bound to leave this presentation with new perspectives on what can be done in the above areas and new ideas and information on the topics above.

DACS meetings are held at the Danbury Hospital auditorium. Activities begin at 7 p.m. with casual networking, Random Access and a discussion of what’s new in technology. There is a business session at 7:30, followed by a short break and the evening presentation at 8:00. General Meetings are free and open to the public so invite anyone you know who would be interested in this topic.