[texhax] Newbie class question

[Thomas Jacobs]

Hi,

I am trying to merge three completely fine stand-alone papers into a
dissertation meeting the requirements of the graduate college for my
school, the University of Illinois.  It was recommended that I use
resources produced by the Electrical Engineering Department found
here:

https://wiki.engr.illinois.edu/display/ECEThesisReview/LaTeX+Resources

The first two downloads on the left are a class file and the skeleton
dissertation file.  While I am not inexperienced in using LaTeX, I
have no experience with class files.  I have spent significant time
trying to get this to work and one thing I continue to struggle with
is to change the margins to 1" from the default of 1.5" by editing
line 185 which appears as follows:

    \thesis at dim=1.5in %% ECE: edit to adjust margin (SR)

and seems to me to be the one to adjust to reduce the margin to 1".
Yet, it has no effect when I do so.  I have contacted the office
responsible for supporting such work and they appear to be unfamiliar
with the workings of the program and I have yet to track down the
author.

1.  Can anyone comment, in general, if this is typically a complex
thing to change?  Does one simply modify the class file or does the
actual .tex file require change as well?

2.  If someone is able to take the time to download the two files and
let me know if there is anything else that I could look at, I would
greatly appreciate it.  I freely acknowledge this will be time
consuming and will be happy to provide a consulting fee in the form of
a Starbucks gift card if anyone so desires.

Thanks,

Tom

--
Thomas Jacobs