Selecting Text issue with Word 2007 and Vista

They say that being the pioneer means you have to catch all the arrows.

This was the Vista adventure a couple of days ago.

Vista installed some updates for me (that's right, it didn't ask me first), and after that Word's functionality got 'interesting'.

I tried to edit my Word document, and I couldn't select any of my text with the mouse! I use the arrow keys and edit my document the (very) hard way, but the mouse cursor would just float over the top of the words like they weren't there.

After grumbling and complaining to my laptop, I decided to do a Google search, and found the following solution.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;940791

It does involve a registry edit (albeit an easy one), but as always, be cautious and backup your registry.

After doing this, the problem went away!

Happy Friday!

Adding more fields to Vault (because there's never enough!)

I recently was asked how do I add fields to my Vault file list.

It's actually much easier than you realize, once you know where to look.

Here's the fields that I currently have shown in my file preview.


My next step is to go ahead and add a new one. First, all I have to do is right click on the title bar.

This brings up the 'Customize Field' dialog box, where I can choose the fields I want to add or remove. Note that you may have make sure the pulldown in the upper left is set to 'All File Fields', if it's set to 'Frequently Used Fields', it may be blank (since no fields may have been used frequently in your case)!

Once this is done, hit okay, and the new field will appear (or the ones removed will disappear). In the example below, I used the 'Add' button to insert a 'Last Write' field (circled).

Hope this is helpful!

Keeping Yourself, or at Least Your Gravity, Centered

One of the nice 'subtle but significant' new features in Inventor R2009 is the ability to add a center of gravity marker to your drawing.

In this example, I'm going to show the COG (center of gravity) symbol on the fixture shown here:



I'm starting out with a view of a simple jig, but we want to show the COG for this asssembly. Here's a picture, although we'll actually show the COG in the top view.

Here's the steps.

1) In the browser, locate the part or assembly where you want to show your COG.



2) Right click on the assembly of interest, and choose the 'Center of Gravity' option.


3) That's it! the COG will be shown on your view! You can also place dimensions on it so you know exactly where it is!

Changing Your View (Cube)

It's been a while since I've posted, and again, it's been hectic.

But here's at least one of those 'little things' that I've noticed poking around in Inventor.

When you're using the view cube (which I've been practicing with), you can use it to orbit too.

If you click anywhere on the cube and drag, you can orbit your part without having to go to the icon, or your F4 key.



Happy Inventing!