Randall Rath is selling off copies of the Expresso Cafe. For those of you who don't know, the cafe is a place where coders exchange code snippets and advice on coding for AutoCAD. If you program in VB, you want to buy a copy...and it is a bargain basement price, too.

Would you like to have your own local, searchable, copy of the Expresso Cafe? Well, now you can! Randall has cleaned up all of the posts and included all of the attached files in a dazzling download that can be yours for the amazingly low price of 12.99!

Not to be missed, this download includes over 2,000 A Code A Day letters as they were meant to be viewed! These letters are questions posed by readers like you and the solutions.

Thomas Irvin, an architect, has taken it upon himself to improve Autodesk's native shx fonts.

Old timers are familiar with shx fonts, but newer users probably have no clue. MTEXT uses ttf fonts built-in to Windows...but in the old geezer days when we just had TEXT, text was created using old-fashioned lines, arcs, and points, otherwise known as shx fonts. Close examination often revealed rough, ragged edges, holes, and misalignments, but we struggled through. Since our monitors were using a much larger pixel value and our printers were dot- matrix, we managed to persevere.

Thomas has taken it upon himself to improve the old shx fonts and bring them into the 21st century, so they don't look so raggedy on our nice monitors and our precision laser printers. He has uploaded several different font versions to CADDepot, where you can download them for free.

Thomas recently asked me to forward some of his improved fonts to Autodesk in the hopes Autodesk will consider using his new and improved versions. This is a very generous gesture on his part and just goes to show that Deskers are the nicest users around.

I haven't heard back from Autodesk on Thomas' submission, but I hope they will at least check them out. After all, alot of us still use TEXT and shx fonts...and I think we all agree that they need some updating.

Thanks to Toby Jutras from Autodesk who lets me know that the Sheet Set Manager can work with LDD even without the MDI. Autodesk has put together a white paper outlining all the details of using this powerful new feature in Land Desktop 2005.

I have a client in Atlanta that is looking to hire multiple Architectural Drafters & Designers for a temporary basis. They are in need of people with RIVET or Architectural Desktop experience. If you are interested in this position, or know of someone who may be, please contact me at your earliest convenience.
Thank You,
Adam Wroblewski
TechniPower, Inc.
ph# 770.804.9977
fx# 770.804.9933
tpiga@flash.net

Saw the snippet about MColor and thought I'd send a bit of user praise about it.

I've been using MColor for about 5 years now for presentations. No one seems to know about the product but it's wonderful. Easy to use, fast and does some amazing stuff. It can be your PDF writer too for those that don't have one. It has become an indispensable product for our office presentations even with the new abilities of ACAD's gradient hatches and stuff - this beats it hands down. I can create a beautiful 2d color rendering of a project in 2 to 4 hours with sky and trees and stuff matching the clients color desires whereas a 3d model and rendering could take days. We do these for almost all our projects - even the lower budget ones - since it is inexpensive to create with it.

- Jon Jonas, Santa Rosa, CA

The MONITOR GROUP and his partner EUROSTUDIO present a BATITEXTES demonstration Thursday June 24, 2004, starting from 14h30 in our buildings, street of Uzès.

The presentation is being held in Paris. The workshop will cover several different CAD utilities and software for architects.