Neal Trantham, owner of Nebraska Accident Reconstruction, tried different diagramming software programs before deciding which one to use in the accident reconstruction classes he teaches and in his investigation firm. Trantham, who also is a Trooper with the State of Nebraska, says students in his classes span a broad spectrum of talents and skills from young officers just beginning their careers to officers about to retire.

“My biggest challenge is making these classes interesting and keeping them flowing so people at both ends of the spectrum don’t feel the class is going too fast or too slow,” Trantham said. To maintain this ‘flow’ of instruction, Trantham chose The Crash Zone. This program, published by The CAD Zone, Inc. (www.cadzone.com ), is essentially the same as The Crime Zone. Both programs are ideal for drawing Crime Scenes and Crash Scenes.

Trantham felt The Crime Zone was the most intuitive and easiest to learn of several drawing programs he surveyed, meaning students could be successfully creating diagrams very quickly. Since it contains pre-drawn symbols and features for drawing both crime scenes and crash scenes, there is no need for an investigator to own more than one diagramming program.

A Drawing Program ‘Above All’

Trantham says he likes Crime Zone because it is above all, a powerful, yet easy-to-use drawing program. “It’s a drawing program first and then other bonus features are added to it,” he said. Trantham appreciates The Crime Zone’s extensive basic drawing features, as well as the advanced features such as Animation Tools, 3D Body Poser, Easy Builder Toolbox for drawing floor plans, the 3D Stair Builder, and the industry standard Vehicle Database, among other powerful features.

Investigators who have been doing drawings with pencil and paper will appreciate The Crime Zone’s ease of use. Trantham notes, “By the time students come to us for training, they already have experience preparing hand-drawn scene diagrams. They are able to apply the same principles across the board when using The Crime Zone because the software is so intuitive.”

Features like the Coordinate Data Table and the Easy Lines Toolbox are designed to help the user turn their measurements into an electronic diagram in a way that is very similar to creating a hand diagram. You can even enter measurements that were taken using a baseline or triangulation procedure and The Crime Zone creates the points, lines, curves, and arcs for you, all with complete accuracy.

Training Movies and Documentation Another Advantage

The other aspect Trantham likes about Crime Zone is the extensive documentation and training movies that are included with the program. “These movies are topic-based,” Trantham said. “So, if students get stuck on a certain feature that they are trying to apply, they just click a button, watch a two or three-minute movie on that feature, and they are back diagramming. This has been really helpful,” Trantham said. All the movies are also available on The CAD Zone’s training Web Site, so if you do not have your program CD, you can log on and watch them there. (Click here to visit The CAD Zone Training website.)

So far, Trantham has had excellent success with using The Crime Zone in his training classes. Students respond to it well and he knows they are applying it at their jobs. Students often send Trantham diagrams they have proudly created with Crime Zone for their own investigations.

“This shows that there is not a huge learning curve with the software,” Trantham said. Even after six months have passed since taking Trantham’s class, students, he said, still are able to pick up the software’s features and get a basic, scaled diagram completed.

Crime Zone Eliminates Diagramming Frustrations

It actually was a real investigation that prompted Trantham’s decision to go with The Crash Zone software. Trantham and some other investigators were working a motorcycle crime scene one night using a diagramming program that the state of Nebraska had adopted. The investigation team had not used the software for a couple of months. “We wanted to change the profile of the centerline of a road to a double yellow line on one side of the intersection and a dashed line on the other,” Trantham recalls. “It took an hour to figure out how to do this with the software we were using. I was so frustrated with this experience,” Trantham continued.

Soon after that, I saw CAD Zone on a web search and ordered their demo CD. Upon getting it and loading the CD, within an hour I was diagramming, and I was able to create that double line and dash line within seconds!” From that time on, Trantham has used The Crash Zone (The Crime Zone) for his own investigations and as the program of choice to teach students in his classes.