The WESTEC exhibition, held on March 24–27, 1997, at the Los Angeles Convention Center attracted 683 exhibitors and nearly 30,000 manufacturing professionals, the biggest ever event. A wide selection of manufacturing equipment and technologies was displayed in an area of over 250,000 square feet, including machine tools of every description, plastics and integrated design and manufacturing . . . . Over 1000 international equipment lines were exhibited by leading international machine tool builders, and the technology categories included machining, milling, grinding and deburring, cutting tools, drilling and tapping, CAD/CAM, EDM, machine control finishing, laser systems, etc . . . .