This is a reminder that the Richmond AutoCAD Manifest (Users Group) meeting will be held Wednesday May 28th at 5:30 pm at our regular meeting place in the Board Room of the Human Service Building of the Henrico County Government Center at 8600 Dixon Powers Drive. 

If you are struggling with the classic dilemma of needing training but don't have the budget or the time for it you need to be at this meeting! Mike Carris from APW-CTS Professional Services will be here to introduce us to vBooks - a unique tool they use to distribute knowledge, training and support, and CAD Standards to the AEC community.  They have developed, vBook  technology, which can be used to create CAD Standards Manuals, Employee Handbooks, Training books and software application books. This unique system delivers text, pictures, video and documents or drawings using a patented web technology.

Mike will also present  Case Study and demonstrate how NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) is using the vBook technology to train and support 1500 users on Civil 3D.

In addition each attendee will receive a complimentary vOffice with a select set of vBooks.

As always, food will be provided and your CAD questions and answers are always welcome - this group is here for you! Please RSVP to let us know you're coming to meeting so we are sure to have enough food. Thank you for your enthusiasm for our industry and contributing to it by attending RAM meetings! 

Best regards,  Paul Kirill, RAM Chairman

There were 22 attendees at this meeting.

The meeting started with a question about using the DWG to PDF print driver. One member was having problems with the finished PDF's dropping text or parts of text. The general concensus from the group was that the DWG to PDF was not the best tool for PDF output. Some free alternatives to the DWG to PDF driver (and Acrobat) mentioned were PDF955 (www.pdf995.com) and PDFCreator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/). The problem with using an external PDF printer is that when you print, the file created is named using the drawing file name + layout name. If you have a custom program that names your plot files (PLT, PDF or DWF) using something like the sheet name, you can still get the same results by printing to DWF first. Typically, getting these files into PDF format is as easy as creating DWF's and dragging these files onto the PDF printer icon (the one that's in Printers and Faxes which you can find on the Start Menu or Control Panel). The DWF viewer will open and automatically print the DWF's.

A couple possible ways to reduce the file size of PDF's were introduced. One was to create DWF's first, them print them to PDF. Another was, if you use Adobe Acrobat, to check the default "output version" specified in Acrobat. If Acrobat 4.0 or 5.0 are listed, try using Acrobat 7.0 or 8.0 instead. The newer the Acrobat, the smaller the fle size (typically).

Paul Kirill mentioned a website with some good information about the nuts and bolts of plotting as well as some very handy tools help with your printing efforts. Most notably a tool to print or export the contents of your CTB file. The website to find these tools is http://www.noliturbare.com/index.php.

We also had a lively talk about Autodesk subscription. The gist was that everyone had to decide on their own if it was right for them. With subscription, there are some nice advantages with subscription like eLearning lessons, technical support direct from AutoDesk, handy add-ons for some of the vertical packages. We also talked about exploring multi-year subscription with our resellers. With multi-year subscription you can lock this year's rate, usually get a discount off of that, and you can put a 3-year subscription (for example) on a 3-year lease.

The main topic was presented by Steve Johns and it was on how to make you own menus with the CUI. His presentation included some powerpoint, some videos from Shaan Hurley, and some hands on demonstration. (the supporting files will be forthcoming in the Tips & Training are of the website).

And to answer June's question, here is the default location of the CUI files for AutoCAD 2008: C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name here>\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2008\R17.1\enu\Support

Just a reminder - the RAM Survey is up and active. If you didn't get an email with the link to the survey, please drop us a note and we'll send it over. And the survey isn't just for RAM Members!