Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Autodesk Men In Black
The Autodesk corporate web site (both the US www.autodesk.com and local www.autodesk.de) has a new black look. I hope that it doesn't mean dark future for Autodesk.
It confirms (to some extent) my November speculation about the design changes towards black. Well, the AutoCAD box is not black but the Inventor box is and Revit boxes are now black as well. It seems that Autodesk now distinguishes the old 2D "white" product line and new 3D "black" products. And as Autodesk wants us to buy the 3D products, the visual difference is as bold as possible. Simply - if someone offers you a white CAD box and a black CAD box - always take the black one...
It confirms (to some extent) my November speculation about the design changes towards black. Well, the AutoCAD box is not black but the Inventor box is and Revit boxes are now black as well. It seems that Autodesk now distinguishes the old 2D "white" product line and new 3D "black" products. And as Autodesk wants us to buy the 3D products, the visual difference is as bold as possible. Simply - if someone offers you a white CAD box and a black CAD box - always take the black one...
Monday, March 19, 2007
Easter Egg in AutoCAD 2008
Autodesk is hiding Easter Eggs in AutoCADs again. After two skipped versions, AutoCAD 2008 now again contains an Easter Egg (a hidden entertaining function) but it has been found programmatically only. It is still not known how to launch it through the user interface.
Read more on the Between the Lines blog.
Read more on the Between the Lines blog.
Monday, March 05, 2007
AutoCAD 2008 - your new DTP application
Not that AutoCAD will replace FrameMaker or that it will become the typesetting tool for your local newspaper, but - the new function set of the MText editor is quite impressive in AutoCAD 2008.
Especially the column formatting seems to be powerful enough to typeset any column text, including freeflowing newspaper-like columns, with hard column breaks, gutter settings and individual text-alignment in each column. Column text can be controlled either by defining numeric parameters or interactively by grips.
See the lorem-ipsum sample text reflowed into dynamic columns with individually specified height and individual text-alignment. Note the fully justified text in all columns - distributed spacing is used in the left two columns and standard soft spaces are used for aligning in the right two columns.
Especially the column formatting seems to be powerful enough to typeset any column text, including freeflowing newspaper-like columns, with hard column breaks, gutter settings and individual text-alignment in each column. Column text can be controlled either by defining numeric parameters or interactively by grips.
See the lorem-ipsum sample text reflowed into dynamic columns with individually specified height and individual text-alignment. Note the fully justified text in all columns - distributed spacing is used in the left two columns and standard soft spaces are used for aligning in the right two columns.
Labels: AutoCAD 2008, text