I've had quite a few emails asking me if I speak Chinese (because I have been demoing using the Chinese version of AutoCAD). No - I don't speak Chinese - but I do speak AutoCAD! All it takes is a little practice to use the software in a different language. The icons are the same - the placement in the menus and dialog boxes are the same. If you really know AutoCAD I bet you could use the Chinese version too (but then why would you?). Trying to put myself in the audience's shoes I thought how very difficult it must be to fully grasp what I am presenting when they don't understand anything on the screen! Imagine someone trying to show you AutoCAD pointers with an AutoCAD in a different language.
A group of us went touring yesterday and visited the Digital Stoneexhibit where the artwork was designed using Autodesk products. It was truly amazing - unlike anything I'd ever seen. We also visited some of the sights in Shanghai - below is a picture of Joseph Wurcher, Shaan Hurley, Ray Eisenberg and myself in front of the traditional Chinese Starbucks. :-) Matt Olding, one of our fellow tourist buddies, took the picture of us (thank you Matt). Shaan must have taken 1000 pictures that day - if you have some spare time on your hands and want to view them be sure to visit his Blog. And I just noticed he had a shot of me up on his blog as well! I look a little dumbstruck in the picture below - don't I?
I am off to Taipei, Taiwan today (doing a seminar there tomorrow).
An AutoCAD Hip Tip on Annotation Scaling Displays:
If you use Annotation Scaling you've no doubt run into that irritating ghosting that occurs when you select an annotative object. For example - if you have a dimension that has multiple scale factors attached to it you get to see a ghosted version of all those scales when you select it. The figure below shows an example of a dimension looks when it is not selected:
And the following figure shows what it looks like when it's been selected.
Ick! Well there is a top secret system variable (at least I had a hard time finding it) called
SELECTIONANNODISPLAY that magically turns off all of that ghosting. Just set SELECTIONANNODISPLAY to 0 and you'll be much happier!
As for me...I'm off to the airport now!
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