"... Twenty years ago, when
I began my law enforcement career, drawing programs were unheard of. We were
encouraged to include sketched of crime scenes and crash scenes in our reports,
but never to draw anything to scale. Even the guys on our crash team rarely drew
scale diagrams. When I began reconstructing crashed in 1992, the need for scale
diagrams became very apparent. I found out that not just one, but several scale
diagrams were necessary: one of the overall scene for the court presentation and
at least three for drawing different approach and departure scenarios. Creating
the same diagram four times was a bit too laborious, and even having large frame
copies made resulted in diagrams that were not always to scale. It was time to
find a Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) program!
We have eight officers on our collision
team and everyone is required to produce a diagram for the crash to which they
are assigned as the lead investigator. That equates to drawing perhaps one
diagram every two or three months. On average, we are allotted two or three days
to do the bulk of our investigation. Therefore, it was imperative to find a CAD
program that was relatively easy to use and required no special training.
In 1998, Kevin Stich, a crash
investigator with the Beaverton Police Department, showed me a diagram that he
created with a program called Crash Zone, made by The CAD Zone in Beaverton,
Oregon. It was Windows-based, and as it’s name implies, was specifically
designed for drawing crash scenes. The companion program, Crime Zone (actually
part of the same package) was specifically created for drawing crime scenes.
Kevin introduced me to Derik and Janice White, the creators and owners of The
CAD Zone. I was immediately impressed with the White’s and their staff’s
enthusiasm for developing affordable, user-friendly drawing software for our
industry. Our Department immediately purchased the program and began using it
for all out scenes.
Not only were The CAD Zone’s programs
a breeze to learn, but on average it took each officer on our team only two to
four hours to learn while they also completed their diagram. The Crash and Crime
Zone programs are the epitome of user-friendly. The layout of the tool-palettes
and the extra features such as Easy Lines, Easy Intersections, Easy Streets,
Line Types and the Symbol Library make drawing a scene quick and easy..."