The buzz around the 2004 Autodesk University was that attendance was up significantly. Well, so was participation in this year’s Top DAUG competition, by over 150 percent! The competition was launched, once again, by our Top DAUG mascot during the AUGI Beer Bash on Tuesday night. The AUGI staff was much better prepared this year with over 20 systems and a new test interface developed by AUGI member Jason Wood.

The first 300 contestants received the new 2004 Top DAUG T-shirt provided by sponsor HP. The test was administered by 2002 Top DAUG winner Chris Lindner, and many other AUGI volunteers. Thanks to all who helped out.

In the first part of the competition, held on Tues and Wed, contestants were given a test containing 35 multiple-choice and true/false questions testing on a variety of AutoCAD topics. High scorer Lee Ambrosius finished in the top 10 for the third time in a row, this time turning in the best score of 79.5% (28/35). The low score was 15.6% (6/35), and the average was 39.4% (14/35). It’s always interesting to see if any Autodesk employees took the test. This year, the highest ranked ‘desker was 18th.

The contest was timed and contestants were instructed that they had five minutes to complete the test. Contestants could exceed this time limit, but were docked 1/10th of a point for each second over five minutes. Contestants that finished under the five minutes were rewarded similarly, 1/10th of a point for each second under five minutes.

The top 10 scorers from Part 1 advanced to the final competition containing a drawing exercise. The finalists were:

1	Lee Ambrosius	79.5%
2	Greg Silva	76.3%
3	Bob Tusini	76.3%
4	R. K. McSwain	74.1%
5	Claude Godin	73.3%
6	David Harrington	72.8%
7	David Zavislan	70.4%
8	Shawn C. Zirbes	67.5%
9	Edward C. Lick	67.3%
10	Ron Sorensen	66.4%

The final shootout was held on Thursday at “high noon.” Each finalist had 10 minutes to complete a basic 2-dimension drawing in AutoCAD 2005. Only one contestant completed the drawing, while a couple others came very close. The 2004 Top DAUG winner was David Harrington. You may recognize the name: David is technical editor for AUGIWorld and writes The CAD Manager column in that magazine. Second place was awarded to Greg Silva and third place went to Edward Lick.

Congratulations to everyone who participated. Make plans to come back next year and give it another shot with a whole new competition! Special thanks to Tom Salomone with Hewlett Packard for again sponsoring this year’s event.