BSA Construction Merit Badge – Community Service Project

Last month I was happy to join Batson-Cook Construction and Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to celebrate Construction Merit Badge Day at the Batson-Cook HQ and at a local construction site. As the father of an Eagle Scout, I was glad to help the next generation of designers, engineers and builders experience some of the tools we use every day to create the buildings we see today.

Scouts were given tools starting with pencil, paper and a scale. Scale? What’s a scale? A scale looks like a ruler, but instead of measuring only inches, we showed scouts how to measure in units of feet. A slightly tricky device to use, but once you learn how to use it, it is extremely powerful when trying to fit a large building on a small sheet of paper.

After learning the skills to draw manually, we moved scouts to drawing on the computer using AutoCAD for computer-aided design (CAD). Using AutoCAD, scouts learned how to draw the same building plan on the computer as they learned to draw by hand. I’m sure you can already guess which tool they preferred using! However, it was a great exercise to explain to young people the importance of knowing how to draw by hand as well as on the computer.

With the help of Batson-Cook, scouts were able to see how the design they created on paper and in CAD becomes real. By visiting a local construction project, scouts were shown and got to experience the tools construction teams use every day to convert drawings to real objects such as walls, windows, doors, and more.

This link will take you to the Batson-Cook website, where they have other images showing what the scouts were able to experience.

Thank you to Batson-Cook for reaching out to Applied Software on this project. We were able to provide laptops and software, and I personally enjoyed working with each scout who attended the training.

Good luck to all the BSA troops and each scout as they take one more step towards earning the rank of Eagle Scout!

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Applied Software encourages employees to get involved in community projects and supports their efforts worldwide. One of the company’s core values is to be supportive and ethically help others succeed.