Welcome!

This blog is about how I use my computer program, GemCad, to design faceted gemstones. Faceted gemstones are mostly transparent, often colored, minerals that are cut with flat, polished faces, or facets. GemCad is a computer-aided design program that runs on all versions of Windows from Windows XP or later. The final output of GemCad is a faceting diagram with a picture and table of angles that you can cut the design using a commercial faceting machine. You can learn more about GemCad on my website, gemcad.com.

I will also refer to GemCad designs downloadable from facetdiagrams.org an online library of facet designs. At the date of this writing, it has over 1500 designs you can view, download and open with GemCad.

I will be posting some rather esoteric design techniques, mostly aimed at intermediate-to-advanced users of GemCad, but I'll try to throw in some beginner topics as well.

You might also be interested in my YouTube channel. It has tutorials on GemCad and companion program GemRay.

About Me

I am Robert W. Strickland. I got interested in faceting in the late 1970s. My father, Bob Strickland, was a quadriplegic, a victim of the last wave of the polio epidemic before the vaccine was released. He had little arm strength but was spared nearly full use of his hands. He was a stay-at-home dad for me and my older brother. My mom taught school. He kept himself busy with various hobbies. He took up faceting. We learned how to do lost-wax casting. I cut a couple of round stones but immediately wanted to cut something different--ovals and other shapes. I got interested in facet design as a way to join my dad in his hobby. I am not all that much interested in cutting. I have cut, it's just that I don't get the same enjoyment out of it that I get from designing. We taught ourselves how to do lost-wax casting. We would often collaborate. I would help with design, my dad would make a wax pattern, I would cast it, and he would finish it, setting the stones he cut himself.

I have a bachelor's degree in physics. I started out in engineering. I found that to be not theoretical enough for my tastes. I was also interested in art, so for one semester, I was an art major. I took freshman art classes and took several jewelry classes. After I switched ot physics, I got special permission from the art department to continue taking jewelry classes.

My main career has been in the oilfield services industry in the field of well logging. Specifically, I have worked in the design and signal processing of tools that measure the earth's electrical resistivity, mostly induction logging tools. I program in C, C++, Python, HTML, Java, and Fortran. I took some Fortran classes in the late 1970s but am mostly self-taught in the other languages. Programming for me has always involved math and physics.

I developed a predecessor to GemCad, written in Fortran, in the mid 1980s that ran on a minicomputer. It wasn't until after my father's death in 1988 that I rewrote and released a DOS version of GemCad. It was then that I was befriended by my mentor, Walt Carss. At that time, Walt was the president of the Texas Facetors' Guild. He was one of the founders of the United States Facters' Guild. Walt introduced me to the worldwide community of faceters and did much to encourage me in the hobby. GemCad for Windows followed in 2002.

I live in Austin, Texas. I am happily married to a wonderful woman named Dorothy. We have two grown children. I am active in my local church. I sing in the choir and play handbells. I volunteer at an elementary school in a low-income neighborhood.

A few years back, I got addicted to building and playing ukuleles. I have built several tin ukuleles from lunch boxes, children's purses and decorative tins. I have built others out of gourds. I have restored several period ukes. I am now finishing an off-grid solar, house, insulated with strawbales that we hope to move into when we retire.