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Greetings!
Evaluating Printers
In March's issue of PC World Magazine, there is an
article on printers. Did you know that Epson has four
pending lawsuits against it because of the way the ink
jet cartridges work?
Apparently, when the Epson printer senses low ink, it
simply refuses to print. Tests show that the sensor
can come on when there is still 20% ink still left in the
cartridge. The sensor is supposed to come on when
there is 6% ink left. The printer refuses to work
because it can become damaged if you print with no ink.
When you evaluate a printer purchase, you should look
not only at the cost of the printer, but the cost of the
ink. The ink costs can easily surpass the printer cost
within the first six months if you do a lot of printing.
PC World tested Canon, Dell, Epson, HP, and Lexmark
printers. Canon did the best in terms of amount of
page yields per cartridge when using black ink only-
printing 526 pages instead of the expected 330, with
an ink cost of 2.7 cents per page. HP came in second
but their page yield was less than promised - only 785
pages per cartridge instead of the 833 promised. Cost
per page for the HP printer was 3.8 cents per page.
The Lexmark and Dell printers were the worst with a
cost of 7.1 cents per page.
For color printing, Epson won with a cost of 4.8
cents per page. Dell and Lexmark also were the worst
here with a cost of 9.7 cents per page. Canon came in
second with a cost of 5.3 cents per page.
When you are purchasing a printer, you also should
consider whether or not you will be able to get drivers
compatible with your operating system. If you plan to
upgrade your OS, be sure to check on your printer
company's website first to make sure a driver is
available to support the upgrade...otherwise, you may
not be able to print at all.
Find out more....
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Creating the Right Password |
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Passwords can be problematic. My oldest son uses a
56 character password on his computer and has
assigned it to a hotkey combination on his keyboard.
One suggestion is to build a password by using the first
letter in your favorite motto or rhyme- Three Blind
Mice See How They Run - becomes 3bmshtr.
If you have Windows XP, you can save your
password using the Forgotten Password Wizard. Use a
blank floppy disk to store all your passwords.
- Go to Control Panel->User Accounts.
- Select your account.
- Select Prevent a forgotten password in the task
lists and follow the steps.
If you have a lot of passwords, you may want to
consider installing a Password Saver program.
Download a Free Password Saver from Roboform »
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MTEXT v. TEXT |
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If you use MTEXT (Multi-line text) which is an
extremely useful facility, you will use TrueType fonts
whether you like it or not! MTEXT only works with
TrueType. If you specify an SHX font in MTEXT, it
substitutes the TrueType font that Autodesk provide to
mimic that SHX font. Those mimic fonts are actually
very poorly defined. TrueType is intended to always be
defined as open outlines, so that the character weight
is defined. AutoCAD's SHX-like TrueType fonts
(ROMANS.TTF etc) were created by an automatic font
generator that faithfully copied the SHX single-stroke
form, including the clunky way of using short straight
line segments to create curves. This type of definition
prevents those TrueType fonts from ever having
anything but the minimum stroke-width regardless of
character size. The remedy is: Don't use SHX fonts in
MTEXT.
If you find the MTEXT in your MTEXT dialog box difficult
to read because of the font you are using:
Right click on desktop-->properties--settings--
>appearance-->effects-->uncheck "use the following
method to smooth edges of screen fonts".
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Have you attended a CAD Manager Boot Camp? |
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If you are a CAD manager or in charge of keeping your
network up and running, consider attending this boot
camp. If you can't get away from work or your boss
won't pop for the cost, consider buying the book (It's
only $150 and it ROCKS!!!!)
The three day boot camp covers everything from
installation issues to implementing standards to
reducing your design costs.
I guarantee you will make your money back within a
week of returning to the office. People fly in from all
over the country to attend these boot camps, so you
also can learn alot from the other attendees.
If you are the president of an Autodesk user group,
ask if you can get a discount...and mention CADzette.
CVIS's CAD Manager Boot Camp is an intensive three-
day training event designed to sharpen your CAD
management skills. Boot Camp will supply you with
important tools necessary to oversee the myriad tasks
and functions of your position with increasing skill and
efficiency. Through interfacing with the staffs of CVIS
and Autodesk, as well as CAD and IT professionals from
across the country, you will be introduced into a broad
base of knowledge from which you we be able to glean
expertise that will prove to be extremely beneficial for
your company as well as invaluable for your own
professional growth.
The dates for CAD Manager Boot Camp are May 13 -
15, 2004 in Las Vegas, Nevada. We will be meeting and
staying at the 'New Frontier Hotel and Casino' located
at 3120 S. Las Vegas Blvd. CVIS has arranged for all
attendees to check in on Wednesday May 12 and
depart on Sunday May 16. This allows for arrival the
night before an early Thursday morning start time. You
also will not have to rush off the airport if you choose
to stay the night that Boot Camp is finished, but can
leave the next day. We have also included all meals for
the duration of the actual event from Thursday through
Saturday.
The cost for Boot Camp is $1495, which includes four
nights accommodations and three days meals; the
required Boot Camp Binder is an additional $150, taxable
for a total of $1645.
For more information... »
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Toplines Bites the Dust |
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Autodesk announced this week that they will no longer
be emailing subscribers their Toplines newsletter.
Toplines featured free tips & tricks and tutorials from
great Deskers, like Ellen Finklestein, Bill Kramer, Lynn
Allen, and Neil Munro.
Ellen told me that she is very sad that Autodesk
decided to discontinue the newsletter. She very much
enjoyed the partnership with Autodesk and hearing
comments from loyal readers.
Toplines was a great service provided by Autodesk.
The newsletter was not a money maker (there was no
advertising, unless you count Autodesk promos) and
was done simply as means to support customers, build
goodwill and help users be more successful with the
product.
Hopefully, at some point, Autodesk will resurrect this
valuable resource...in the meantime, you may want to
consider substituting AUGIWorld, which also has
tutorials, product reviews and case studies. AUGIWorld
is also free and an excellent guide for users.
To subscribe to AUGIWorld »
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LaunchPad Provides Aid to Educators |
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Leading edge technology for FREE! If you're a teacher,
those words are music to your ears. And if you are also
interested in receiving courseware, a student
certification program, student career assistance, and
scholarships, so much the better. This might sound too
good to be true, but it isn't. LaunchPad, the innovative
input system for CAD drafting, is giving away free
LaunchPads to schools with qualified programs.
Beginning in February 2004, teachers can apply for
LaunchPads to incorporate into their labs. Not just one
keypad per lab, but one keypad per computer,
regardless of whether that's 10 or 100.
What is included in the LaunchPad "Career
Enhancement Program"?
- A CadOperator Drafting System for each of the CAD
workstations in your lab.
- A complete turnkey system including: curriculum,
lesson plan, workbook exercises, and tests for the
instructors to utilize.
LaunchPad has designed this program so it can be
easily integrated into your current instruction. We also
have two different curriculums that are tailored to both
the secondary and post secondary environments. The
programs are designed to prepare your students to
successfully pass the LaunchPad Certification exam.
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A scholarship program that donates 5% of all alumni
sales back to the educational facility allowing the
instructor to award the scholarships to the appropriate
students. In addition, one LaunchPad CadOperator
Drafting System will be given to the scholarship
honoree.
Contact Tony Miller via telephone at 602-792-1986
x304.
Read on... »
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AutoCAD 2004's Reference Manager |
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The Autodesk Reference Manager provides tools to list
referenced files in selected drawings and to modify the
saved reference paths without opening the drawing
files in AutoCAD. With Reference Manager, drawings
with unresolved references can be easily identified and
fixed.
To access the Reference Manager, go to Start-
>Programs->Autodesk->AutoCAD2004->Reference
Manager.
Once you have opened the Reference Manager, select
Add Drawings to select the drawing with XREFS, you
want to work with.
The process to change saved reference paths follows
these stages:
- Make sure all drawings that you plan to work with
are closed and that their properties are not set to Read-
only. Reference Manager does not change saved
reference paths in any open drawings or drawings that
are read-only.
- Add drawings and folders of drawings to the tree
view. (You can edit the paths of files referenced by the
drawings on this list.)
- Select a drawing on the tree view
pane. (on the left side) The references are displayed in
the Reference list
pane (on the right side).
- Select one or more referenced files from the
Reference list. (on the right side towards the bottom of
the list)
- Right click and select Edit Selected Paths.
- Use the Browse button to browse to the location of
the file.
- If the file is not in the indicated path, you will see a
question mark and a message indicating that the file
was not found. If the file is in the selected path, you
will see the word 'Resolved'.
- Click Apply Changes (located on the top of the
dialog) to save the path changes in the drawing
files. The updated drawing files are saved in the current
AutoCAD file format, and their BAK files are updated.
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Create an XREF Report |
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You can create a report of all the xrefs and all the
fonts, plot styles used, etc. In order to create an easy
report to work with, do the following:
- Change the view in the Reference Manager to List
By Reference Type. You can do this by going View-
>List by Reference Type or Ctrl-R.
- Go to File->Export Report.
- Type a report name and browse to the folder where
you want to save the report.
- Open the report you created in Excel.
- You will see that all the XREFs are listed first (under
the Type column, note that they are XREFs). You can
then delete all the rows below the XREFS and any
unwanted columns.
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Have you Checked Out SmartLister? |
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Wow, what a cool resource this website is! Lots of
cool utilities, free training videos and some very
intriguing products. Goes to show that there are few
new things going down here and there...
SmartLister will automatically measure your selected 3D
AutoCAD solids and then quickly and easily create Bill of
Materials, Cut Lists and Mill Lists.
SmartModeling, bundled with SmartLister, will allow you
to easily stretch 3D solids and assemblies. These two
extremely powerful abilities are not found in any CAD
application and have been requested countless times
by skilled draftspersons throughout the world.
Even if you don't want to buy their products (which
you probably don't need if you use Inventor or MDT),
you will probably find something of interest in their
freebies.
Check it out... »
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