Founder of Tenlinks.com recognized for pioneering online CAD communities and industry philanthropy

April 8, 2010, Denver, CO - The CAD Society today announced that Roopinder Tara is the winner of the 2010 CAD Society Joe Greco Community Award, for his achievements as a pioneer of online CAD resources and communities and his philanthropic work for the entire CAD industry across the last 11 years.

The CAD Society Awards acknowledge the contributions made by individuals that have affected and developed the CAD, engineering, manufacturing and architecture software industries. The Joe Greco Community award recognizes outstanding work in improving communication and developing community within the CAD industry, and is awarded in memory of Joe Greco, a past CAD Society president.

Tenlinks.com was founded in 1999, and was one of the first independent CAD sites. The site started as a series of useful lists about CAD. As Roopinder describes it, "If you want to find information on the Web about a subject, ten links picked by an expert are more useful than ten thousand links picked by a search engine. So I started putting together one top ten list after another for the subject I knew best: CAD. There was a top ten AutoCAD list, top ten MicroStation list, TurboCAD list, SolidWorks list.... I couldn't stop. Eventually, I had created hundreds of these lists and the site was getting popular."

The operation grew across the years to deliver 7 web sites that deliver CAD shareware, free CAD downloads, CAD product sales, CAD employment listings as well as several newsletters. Roopinder had previously worked for IMSI heading the TurboCAD division, as a CAD instructor and as head of a CAD engineering department.

Says Randall S. Newton, Editor-in-Chief, VEKTORRUM Executive Report, "Roopinder has earned respect among both his readers and his professional peers in the CAD media for setting high standards. He is a tireless advocate for the industry, not just with his online services but in his philanthropy, and in helping the engineering software industry to be about more than just selling and using CAD technology."

An avid cyclist, he rode his bike across America, raising $23,000 for scholarships, awarded by ASME and the Marin Education Fund, which helped 5 students attend their first year of college, most of whom would not have been able to attend otherwise. He has ridden and helped promote charity events with Autodesk and SolidWorks, and together they have raised over $200,000 to fight Multiple Sclerosis and cancer research.

In 2007, Roopinder partnered with SolidWorks to create a high-tech outsourcing operation that takes 2D drawings and creates 3D solid models, as part of the Rwandan government's exploration into the modern economy. This effort is known as Innovate3D and is delivering important opportunities for Rwandan engineers as they move into new technologies.

The awards will be presented at COFES (Congress On the Future of Engineering Software), this year scheduled for April 15-18 2010 in Scottsdale, AZ. Past winners of this award include: Richard Doyle, Evan Yares, Sean Dotson, Chris Yessios, Lynn Allen, Randall Rath, CJ Shirk, Kristine Fallon, and Ralph Grabowski.

About The CAD Society

The CAD Society ( www.cadsociety.org) is a not-for-profit industry association with the goal of fostering community and encouraging open communication among those who make their living within the CAD industry including AEC, mechanical, manufacturing, and GIS. The CAD Society is dedicated to creating an informative community and improving the tools its members employ in order to get their jobs done. This is achieved by providing an open forum of communication, which helps to illuminate the practices of industry vendors. It has been a leader in creating interoperability guidelines that encourage software vendors to develop applications that can openly share data.



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