Month: <span>February 2008</span>

Blogger? Journalist? Whatever!

Roopinder Tara has raised an interesting point about how different CAD vendors treat journalists and bloggers. Ralph Grabowski has responded with a “Who cares“. Now you have more CAD blogger navel gazing to put up with as I have my say on the matter. As a traditional magazine journalist (Cadalyst, 1995 – present) and now as a blogger, I’d like to say I agree with Ralph. The label shouldn’t matter, content should be king. From a reader’s point of view, that is. Where it does matter is from a vendor’s point of view. How to dish out the freebies? Should …

This blog is ugly…

…if you’re using Internet Explorer 7. Thanks to Rick for pointing this out. It looks fine in other browsers, including IE6 and my own preferred browser, Firefox 2. Now I have to try to work around the IE7 bugs (which include splitting and misplacing images) to get the blog looking reasonable for everybody. Sigh. Thanks, Microsoft. Anyway, this means you’ll probably see the layout change around a bit more over the next few days. Do not be alarmed.

Blog comments are now turned on

I’m new at this blog stuff, and I got something wrong in the settings. This meant you were allowed to comment as long as you were a registered user, but as I was the only registered user and there was no way of making yourself into a registered user, commenting was effectively impossible. This is now fixed, so feel free to comment away.

Customer Service 2 – Don McMillan

My last customer service story was about McDonald’s. This one is about Donald Mc., but there the similarity ends. After I returned from Autodesk University 2006, I decided to buy a DVD from the comedian that Autodesk put on before the Blue Man Group, Don McMillan. As you’re reading a CAD blog, you are probably geeky enough to appreciate this man’s funny engineeroid slant on life. The likelihood is actually 93.6%. (Did you know that 74.7% of statistics quoted on the Internet are made up?) I wanted to show my wife this funny guy and re-live some of the moments …

AutoCAD on Linux – Video

Lots of people get excited at the prospect of AutoCAD running under Linux. I’m not one of those people, but for those of you that are, here’s a video from a Linux enthusiast that shows AutoCAD running in an environment that’s doing all kinds of cool geeky stuff. It’s not mine and it’s from October 2006: YouTube Link Cool if you like that kind of thing, that is. I think the effects would drive me mad after a short period of dorkoid enthusiasm, but of course being Linux it would all be under complete user control. Before you get too …

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 4 – More on the Status Bar and Layouts

Here are a couple more tricks AutoCAD 2009 has up its Status Bar sleeve, this time to do with layouts. You may love the new Quick View Layouts feature or you may find it too slow. You may wish to use it sometimes and at other times use the traditional layout tabs. How do you quickly switch from one to the other? Right click, as shown in this animation. The left clicks are red, the right clicks are blue. As you can see, when the layout tabs are visible, the model space button and most recent layout button are replaced …

Thinking of registering a domain name? Just do it!

If you are thinking of putting yourself or your company out there with your own domain name (e.g. cadnauseam.com), there are many, many sites out there that allow you to enter a domain name and see if it’s available. Don’t use them. Why not? Because some of those sites will then immediately register that domain. You won’t be able to register it until that company decides to release it, which of course it will do if you choose to use that company’s overpriced domain registration services. This particularly unethical practice is known as domain tasting and is now the subject …

Shaan Hurley gets blue

Part of an excellent show put on by Autodesk at the end of Autodesk University 2006 was The Blue Man Group. I was so impressed by the show that I later bought a DVD and CD. The men in blue had a special guest… YouTube Link Artist site: Blue Man Group

AutoCAD tip – persuade Open to highlight your drawing

In AutoCAD, when you have a drawing open and you go to open another, does Open automatically scroll down and highlight your current drawing? This can be very handy when you’re working your way though a set of drawings. If this isn’t happening for you, here’s how to make it do so. In Explorer, go to Tools > Folder Options > View tab and turn off the toggle for Hide extensions for known file types. (Windows XP shown). This is the first thing many people do when setting up a new Windows system. If you fit into this category, you …

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 3 – Status Bar Right

Having covered the left side of the status bar, let’s move onto the other side. Some of it is familiar, but much of it is new or modified. Let’s have a look: This animation shows the following: The first icon switches to the model space layout. The next icon switches to a paper space layout, but which one? The one you were in most recently. The third icon gives access to the new Quick View Layout feature. Shaan Hurley has covered this quite extensively, so there is not much point in me going over the same ground. However, I will …

blognauseam.com lives! Plus a web browser tip

I have registered the domain name blognauseam.com because: a) it will stop anybody else grabbing it; and b) it will make it easier for people to remember the URL if they don’t have me bookmarked. No changes are required to your bookmarks or links, I just redirected blognauseam.com to blog.cadnauseam.com and will continue to use blog.cadnauseam.com. That leads me to a web browser tip. I’m sure most of you already know this, but if one or two of you go “Ah! Cool…” then it was worth typing it up. When entering a .com URL, you can save time by just …

Customer Service 1 – McDonald’s

I have a few customer service stories to share. Most are about bad service, but one is about very good service indeed. This isn’t that story. It’s a rant, but it’s true, and it is offered here for your amusement. A couple of years ago I took my eldest daughter L to a school friend’s party at a local fast food outlet. (It’s McDonald’s Melville, actually. I see no need to protect the guilty). As second daughter E would have been left out, I took her too. They could play on the playground together. L was being fed at the …

Autodesk University 2006 Video

I didn’t make this video and it’s old news, but as I contributed some photos and I’m in it, I guess I’m entitled to link to it in my blog now I have one. If nothing else, you can use it to see what I look like (unfortunately). Except I now look different. By the way, I meant everything I said in this video. Autodesk University is an awesome event. Created by Helge Brettschneider, originally posted on Between The Lines by Shaan Hurley. YouTube Link

Lynn Allen’s Famous Cell Phone Story

Whatever the subject, Autodesk evangelist and fellow Cadalyst writer Lynn Allen always gives a very entertaining and informative presentation. If you attend one and you’re lucky, you might get to hear this now infamous story. This footage was taken at Autodesk University, Las Vegas, November 2006. Sorry the sound’s not the best, you may need to turn it up a bit. YouTube Link

How can I complain about AutoCAD wasting screen space…

…when this blog layout is wasting so much more of it? OK, I haven’t complained about AutoCAD doing that (not here, anyway). Yet. But I will. First, I need to get my own house in order. So, expect to see this blog change its layout a few times over the next few days as I try to make the best use of your pixels. Do not be disturbed. OK, you can be disturbed if you like, but I won’t care.

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 2 – Status Bar Left

Enough of linking to other peoples’ observations about AutoCAD 2009, here are some of mine. There is a lot I don’t like about AutoCAD 2009, and I will be covering that side of things in more detail once I have the shipping product to play with and I’m certain that the bad stuff is still there. This post is about the mostly good stuff that will definitely appear in the finished product. AutoCAD 2009 is all about the user interface, but it’s not all about the Ribbon. There are other interface changes too, and some of them are quite welcome. …

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 1 – Links

AutoCAD 2009 is about a month away, but people with pre-release copies are already allowed to start talking about the product. I intend to do so soon, but for now here are a few mentions I found: http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2008/02/the-2009-produc.html http://lynn.blogs.com/lynn_allens_blog/2008/02/autocad-2009-is.html http://lynn.blogs.com/lynn_allens_blog/2008/02/the-autocad-200.html http://heidihewett.blogs.com/my_weblog/2008/02/the-word-is-out.html http://heidihewett.blogs.com/my_weblog/2008/02/autocad-2009-a.html http://discussion.autodesk.com/thread.jspa?threadID=643193 http://discussion.autodesk.com/thread.jspa?threadID=643871 http://mistressofthedorkness.blogspot.com/2008/02/some-autocad-2009-thoughts.html http://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/2008/02/time-flies-its.html http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com/2008/02/autocad-2009-in-2-minutes.html http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2008/02/autodesk-worl-1.html http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2008/02/autocad-2009.html http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=31k5jnveooq0qn8ecci6i72o34&topic=21356.0 http://forums.cadalyst.com/showthread.php?t=5808 http://thecadgeek.com/blog/2008/02/13/introduction-to-the-autocad-2009-ribbon/ http://cadit.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/02/autocad-2009–.html How do you get a pre-release copy of AutoCAD? Well, assuming you’re not a pirate, you can join up with the Autodesk MyFeedback program. It’s too late for AutoCAD 2009, but sign up now for 2010…