Explore
About SPA
GT City Planning Resources
- Atlanta Opportunities
- Specializations and Curriculum @GT
- GT Printing and Computing
- CP Studio Library & Other Refs
- Useful Internet Resources
- Online SPA Discussion Forum
Being a technologically-oriented school, Georgia Tech has a vast amount of computing resources at our disposal. Some of the resources most commonly used by City Planning graduate students are listed here.
Here is Glenn's "Tech@Tech" presentation on technology issues for CP grad students. Presented at the Fall 2007 first SPA meeting (8/28/07).
Web version of Tech@Tech presentation
Recommend viewing in Internet Explorer, but will work in Firefox.
Print version as PDF (2 slides per page)
Use your [technology] fee and save a tree. Central Printing is a little known but exceedingly helpful asset that is available to every single student at Georgia Tech. From any computer on or off campus, you can send files to the Georgia Tech central printers to be printed, stapled, and delivered to a specially marked mailbox (bin) in the basement of the main library.
The great benefit of this service is that printed pages do not count against your weekly campus printing quota (currently 100 VPU per week*) and by default, they come out double-sided. This format is perfect for creating less bulky hard copies of the voluminous readings that City Planning students are responsible for. Bump up to 4X efficiency by printing two pages per sheet.
This is a little bit trickier, but still quite useful when you are over your quota or have very long documents to print out (the lab printers don't like anything more than 20 pages at a time.) Accessing central printing from anywhere besides the aforementioned computer labs is a two-step process:
1) Convert your document to post-script (*.ps) format, and 2) Upload the document to central printing through http://print.labs.gatech.edu.
To convert your files (any type, including *.pdf, *.doc, *.xls, etc) to post-script, you first need to install an appropriate post-script driver. This only needs to be done once on any computer you are using.
1) Start menu --> Printers and Faxes
2) "Add Printer"
3) Select "local printer", uncheck the plug-and-play box
4) Use the following port: "FILE"
5) Find " Apple Laserwriter 8500"
All done. Now when you want to print something though central printing, first print to the Apple Laserwriter and make sure to put the .ps extension on the end of your file name. Then login to the http://print.labs.gatech.edu website and upload your file. Pick it up from the basement of the library in a few hours.
(If you are extra technologically adept and have a bunch of pdfs to print out, you can use the batch processing tool in Adobe Acrobat to automate/iterate the above process... You can also use SSH to print, as seen here and here)
| Monday | 8:00am, 9:00am, 12:30pm, 4:30pm |
| Tuesday | 9:00am, 12:30pm, 4:30pm |
| Wednesday | 9:00am, 12:30pm, 4:30pm |
| Thursday | 9:00am, 12:30pm, 4:30pm |
| Friday | 9:00am, 12:30pm, 4:30pm |
| Saturday | None |
| Sunday | None |
Note: You may have to submit your print job two hours before the delivery time to ensure that it is included in the next delivery.
Click here to see the status of your recently submitted central print jobs. Supposedly this page is updated every 30 minutes.
There are four official computer labs in the architecture building that GTMCRP students may use:
Scanners are located in the Design Lab and the Architecture Library. There is also a large-format scanner in room 358.
There are three main sets of printers in the Architecture building that City Planners can use. They are:
Your COA student account is given $5.00 at the beginning of each semester for use of these printers. A black and white page costs $0.05 and a color page costs $0.20. When this money runs out, you can recharge your account by giving more $$ to Tech Support in Room 360. There is no warning that pops up on the screen if you try to print something but don't have the funds in your account to do so.
Besides limited access computer labs (such as the ones in the Architecture building), there are several general labs around campus. They are located in the Main Library (1st floor) and Student Center (2nd floor). The Main Library also has a multimedia design center and is open around the clock. You have a weekly printing quota of 100 VPUs to use in these labs. This quota is recharged automatically every Saturday night at midnight, and unused VPUs do not accumulate.
If you have your own laptop computer, you can log on to the Georgia Tech wireless network from almost anywhere on campus both indoors and out. See instructions here: http://www.lawn.gatech.edu. If you have trouble setting this up, OIT staff in the basement of the main library or Rich building can help.
The College of Architecture also has its own virtual private network (VPN) that you can use to access the COA server inclduding course folders, public folders, and your network drive (H:/). You can also print to COA printers when connected to the VPN. Here is where you can find appropriate VPN software so you can get to your COA files from the comfort of your living room.
As of this year, it seems you can also access your files through the main COA webpage, under the link "Network Shortcuts".
One perk of attending Georgia Tech is that you are given space for a personal webpage. By default, the address is http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtXXXX, where the X's are replaced by your assigned GT# (e.g. gth999z). Besides its obvious use as a outlet of personal expression, this webspace is useful if you have a group project and multiple people need to be able to access files from anywhere.
If you are somewhat familiar with file transfers (SFTP or SCP) and HTML, give it a whirl: Prism webpage FAQ
WinSCP is a good free client for file transfers, and can be used to access the main Prism server (@ acme.gatech.edu) from anywhere.
Besides the file transfer application listed above (WinSCP), various other software programs can assist you while completing your City and Regional Planning degree. Many programs are available free to Georgia Tech students, or are generally available on the internet. They include:
Endnote: an excellent bibliographic program that automatically organizes and formats any sources you reference for papers
Google Earth: 3-D user-friendly GIS program encompassing the whole world as well as local directories. It's not ArcGIS, but it's supercool. And free. Go get it now!
Copernic Desktop: Kind of like Windows "Explorer", except built right into your taskbar and much faster.
The main library offers a series of classes each semester to learn how to use these programs. They are typically one to two hours long, and cover topics such as:
Georgia Tech has a preconfigured spam filter rule already setup in each email account by default. For legal reasons it is disabled by default. You can enable it by doing the following:
Office of Information Techology (OIT): Frequently Asked Questions
College of Architecture: Frequently Asked Questions (link?)
* VPU stands for "Virtual Printing Unit". 1 black and white page equals 1 VPU, while 1 color page equals 5 VPUs.
**Speedy is by far the best color printer in the building, but please, convert large files to pdfs prior to sending them to this popular machine or you will create a huge backlog and other students will silently plot your demise, especially towards the end of the semester. Converting a file of any type to a .pdf is as easy as selecting "Adobe PDF" from the "Print" options menu.