Computing Lab Information
The current status of the CEE computer labs:
Mason 298: Operational
SEB 102: Operational
SEB 122: Operational
Computing Labs
Introduction
The School of Civil & Environmental Engineering maintains computing facilities for the benefit of its students, faculty, and staff. These labs provide the following resources:
- Education facilities for teaching and learning;
- Engineering software to supplement the student's education;
- General purpose software tools for document and presentation creation;
- Internet access for information search and retrieval; and,
- Limited printing and plotting facilities.
We welcome comments and suggestions from all users of the computer labs. Many of your comments have already been implemented so that the facility is better suited for your computing needs. Please provide any suggestions to the ISG office or to the Associate Chair for Information Technology. These facilities exist in the Mason Civil Engineering Building in rooms 297 and 298, in SEB rooms 102 and 121, and in the Daniel Laboratory in room 209. The computers here are maintained by CEE ISG staff and a cadre of student assistants who help manage and operate the facility while it is open. At any time you may contact the ISG office (404-894-2210) to report problems with the laboratories. Problems and questions can also be sent via email to helpdesk@ce.gatech.edu or by completing the web page form found at http://www.ce.gatech.edu/helpdesk/. The ISG Manager, Todd Whitehurst can also be contacted for further information.
To facilitate an environment where the computers are functional for all of the intended users, several policies have been put in place. The policies help provide equal access for all CEE students, faculty, and staff. They are enforced by the UA's working in the computing labs. All users are expected to also help enforce these policies so that when you come into the lab, you can expect the same environment as the last time you were using the facility.
Operation < return to top >
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The hours of operation of the CEE computer facilities will normally be 8AM-10PM Monday - Thursday, 8AM-6PM Friday, and 12 Noon-8PM on Saturday and Sunday. These hours are subject to change, but will be posted by the entrance to the computer labs.
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Room 297 and SEB labs are sometimes reserved by faculty for teaching purposes, so please look at the schedule by the door to see if the room is reserved prior to entering the lab.
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The facilities in each room are nearly identical and user files can be retrieved from any machine in any lab by using the H:\ drive or Acme.
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Users may save their work on a temporary basis on the H:\ drive file space. This file space may be deleted at anytime and will be periodically cleaned. Save your work either to floppy diskettes, to the prism file system, or to ZIP disks installed on most machines in each room.
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Please pick up your work before leaving and log off the computer. A clean environment is not only nicer for all to work, but will also help keep the computers clean and working better.
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Software is not available for use from remote computers. Software has been licensed to run only on these computers, not by users connecting to these computers from outside locations.
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If a problem exists with either hardware or software, please do not fix it yourself. Please report the problem to the UA in the room, to the ISG office (SEB 317S), or via email as explained above. If you fix the computer yourself, we have no record that something went wrong and it is quite likely that other computers will experience the same problem.
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The phone in the rooms are for reporting and fixing of problems within the lab. The phones are not for personal phone calls.
Policies < return to top >
- There is no food or drink allowed in the computer laboratories. One accident can destroy a computer very quickly.
If caught with food or drink in the labs, priviledges will be revoked. - There is no smoking in the computer laboratories.
- Printing is available from the computers in all labs. The printers are to be used for limited printing of user files. Each user is limited to 250 page credits each semester that they are registered in a CEE class or as a CEE student. If you wish to have your quota increased, you can complete the Paper Request Form and purchase additional page credits at $0.05 per page.
- The black and white laser printers use 1 credit/page; the color laser jet uses 5 credits/page; and the plotters use 5 credits/page. With this in mind, it is strongly suggested that you use print preview to see how your output will be formatted prior to printing.
- Do not install any software on these computers. The computers are all coupled via a network to provide software to all the computers in the CEE labs. Installation of software can destroy the networking operations of all the computers.
- Do not change any system settings on the computers. All of us have our own personal preferences for the screen resolution, background colors, etc., but changing any of the system settings again can cause major problems with the network.
Hardware< return to top >
The computer labs currently consist of computers with Intel processors: either Pentium 4 2.4GHz or Pentium 4 2.6 GHz processors. Each computer contains a local disk for the storage of software programs and operating system resources. User files are not be stored on the local disk -- only on the H:\ drive, floppy disk, ZIP disk, or Acme.
Mason 298 also contains two teleconferencing computers. These machines have a digital camera for use with a personal headset or microphone and Microsoft NetMeeting. For health and sanitation reasons, you must provide your own headphones.
Each of the computers can print to any of our five printers:
- HP 8150 - Black & White Laserjet (Mason 298)
- HP 8550 - Color Laserjet (Mason 298)
- HP 8000 - Black & White Laserjet (SEB 102)
- HP DesignJet - Plotter, 600dpi (Mason 298)
- HP 755 - Plotter, 300dpi (SEB 101)
In Mason 298, there is also a machine with an HP Scanner and a machine with a CD burner.
Software < return to top >
Software currently installed in the lab consists of general purpose applications, such as Microsoft Office and Netscape, and specialized engineering applications required for course work. Specialized software will be used by a variety of classes and will remain on the computers so that students can use the software after completing the related courses. The instructors in those classes will provide specific information about the specialized software; our User Assistants are not familiar with all the specialized software.
The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering strongly enforces all software licensing issues. Students are not to make copies of any software on these computers under any circumstance.
The following software is available in all of the CEE labs.
- Windows XP Professional
- Internet Explorer 6
- Mozilla 1.5
- Windows Media Player 9
- QuickTime 6.4
- Real Alternative (Real Player freeware)
- Adobe Acrobat 5.0.5
- Microsoft Word 2002
- Microsoft Excel 2002
- Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
- Microsoft Access 2002
- Microsoft Visio Viewer 2002
- Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint 2002
- Microsoft Visual Studio .Net
- MSN Messenger 6.1
- AutoCAD 2004
- AutoCAD Land Desktop 2004
- Solid Edge 14
- GTStrudl 27
- Matlab 6.5
- MathCAD 2001i
- WinSCP 3.4.2
- SSH 3.2.9
- Active Perl 5.8
- Macromedia Shockwave
- Macromedia Flash player
- Sun Java 1.4.2
- MiKTeX (LaTeX)
- Google Toolbar 2.0
- McAfee VirusScan 7
- ArcView 3.3
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