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I N T H I S I S S U E
Working from your Strength - Leveraging the positives in your style - Part 1 Note from your users: I don't get no Respect Book Review - AutoCAD 2008 and AutoCAD LT 2008 Bible Survey
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A R T I C L E S
Working from your Strength
- Leveraging the positives in your style - Part 1Over the past few Journals we have looked into many different types of CAD Managers. We looked at three styles of management in June, three more in July and concluded with three in August. Most of the traits we looked at were from the negative perspective. We now turn our gaze toward the positives. Working from your positive strengths is a sure way to make advancements. We will look at a few characteristics, practices or perspectives that you might bring to the table. You may not have them all, but by using these characteristics as a starting point we will look at how you can leverage them to make progress in another area. I approach each one as if you have this strength and what you could do to use more effectively. Read More... Note from your users: I don't get no Respect I think that all employees, coworkers, clients, consultants and just about everyone you come in contact with wants respect. As a CAD Manager, you achieve your results through others. You cannot make every CAD file comply with the CAD Standards, you get that done through others. You cannot move to the next release on your own. You can install it, configure it, customize it and more, but the end users actually make the move. So respecting them will get you more than disrespect. How do you respect your users? Treat them as clients. That is what they are. They are the reason you have a job. They are the people who pay your bills. Always treat them as if they were your only client.
Book Review AutoCAD 2008 and AutoCAD LT 2008 Bible - Ellen Finkelstein - Wiley Publishing 2007 When Moses came down from the mountain top, he had everything that the Hebrews needed to know on two stone tablets. Now I understand that the rest of the Torah ("law" in Hebrew) or Pentateuch ("five books of scrolls" in Greek) takes many more words than would ever fit on two tablets. My Bible takes 330 pages to cover the first five books.Taking on the biblical proportions of AutoCAD requires 1251 pages to cover everything you need to know about AutoCAD and LT 2008. The introduction page of each chapter pays homage to those stone tablets using a rocky background image. Nice touch. The book is broken up into 7 parts ranging from the Basics, Drawing in 2D, Working with Data to 3D Drawing, Organizing and Managing Drawings, Customization and Programming. These seven parts are followed by an Appendix and DVD. Each Part has multiple chapters and ample illustrations. She really does cover just about everything you would need to know to get a solid foundation for CAD. There are many step by step procedures that are well documented and easy to follow. The author included icons that flag important data. These icons let you know when to slow down and take a closer look. Almost every page has something tapped out for special attention. Many of the illustrations show you exactly what each button on the dialog boxes does what. The Basic are real basic. Starting from scratch may seem like a burden to some of us, but there are jewels to dig up even for the seasoned user. She even covers digitizers, pucks and the standard tablet menu (I still have one of these, but I don't use it). There are many charts and lists of commands in the book that are worthy of photocopying and taping to your monitor or cubicle wall (does that violate copyright laws?). Part 5 of the book delves into Organization and Managing Drawings. It covers my favorite topic - CAD Standards. There are step by step procedures for using the Standards tools in AutoCAD for checking one or many files. There is a very long section on Sheet Sets and how they are to be used. This may be one of the most under used tools in the software. While the price is kind of steep ($49.95 US Retail). It is well worth the money. The only drawback, which is actually a tribute to its in depth coverage, is that there is so much in there. But the DVD has the complete text of the book in searchable PDF format. This is one book that novice to advanced users can embrace. And it will help you move from beginner to hot shot in no time.
C M J Rating - 4.5 out of 5 TRON Light Cycles Get the book from CADDManager.com (cheaper than retail too!) August 2007 Survey How big is your firm? I asked a few questions about your firms - size, employees, seats of CAD, and number of offices. Looks like we have some readers that come from very large firms.
See the full results from August 2007
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WELCOME
Back to School With summer behind us and autumn coming soon, we turn our gaze to some positive notes about leveraging your strengths. Do you respect your users? Think it through... Another book review - this time we look at the Bible - The AutoCAD 2008 Bible Mark W. Kiker, Editor ON THE WEBSITE
Take the Latest Survey How satisfied are you with Autodesk? Let everyone know by taking this months survey. ON THE BLOG
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