Tips for Presentations

There was a question on the discussion group the other day that got me thinking.  Some of you, certainly not all, need to put together documents with captures from your dialogs or your drawing window.  Could be an internal Memo, Training documentation, a Power Point, or even an AU paper.  This has nothing to do with Civil 3D directly, but it may be of some use to some of you.  Read on for a few tips.

The first thing you’re going to need is to get your screen image into your presentation document.  If you’re running Windows 7, you have the cost-free Snipping Tool.
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Or you can pay for something like Snagit.
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Snippet is free, but it’s tough to jazz it up with text, arrows, effects etc.  You can open the capture in Paint or Photoshop.  Paint of course is free too, but jazzing up your capture is only marginally better than Snip.  The torn edge, text, and arrow above was done in 3 seconds using Snagit.  Pretty tough in Paint.
It would be a very frustrating day for me if I didn’t have Snagit.  I’m in the support industry so I use it every day, but even if you don’t use it often, this kind of tool can be valuable.
Once the decision has been made which capture software to use, how can you best grab captures from AutoCAD?
  1. Whatever colour your media background will be, set the same background colour in AutoCAD.  I have two captures below, the bottom one with the black background just looks better with the black background on this page.  If this page had a white background, I assure you the bottom image would look better…except for that yellow.  Yellow just doesn’t work well on white.
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  • This is the biggest complaint I hear from audiences when they’re watching someone demonstrate AutoCAD or show slides of AutoCAD captures.  Turn on Linewights and set them to something usable, like 0.4mm.  The bottom image below is easier to read.  This is especially important when using an LCD projector.  No lineweights make for tough viewing from the audiences perspective.
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  • When capturing dialogs, move them away from any linework.  This is two-fold.
    1. It looks less than good to have lines behind the dialog…distracting (Top)
    2. Even if you manage to grab the dialog exactly at the corners, with Windows 7, you still see the lines behind it under the header bar. (Middle).
    3. The best. (Bottom)
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    Well, that’s it.  I hope your next company standards manual or your next AU class is that much better.
    Matt

    One comment

    1. neil jones says:

      The Screenshot tool available from Autodesk labs is also a good alternative to Snipping tool