by Sandy McCauley | Aug 19, 2010 | Color Selection, Dongle, File Extensions, Free Videos, Hot Keys, License Files, Raster, Shortcuts
I’ve had a number of items on my To Do list for a few weeks and today was a great catch up day for making some miscellaneous videos.
Item Number 1: I’m going to once again BEG all of you to change a particular setting in Windows which hides your files extensions. Trust me… your “computer life” will be improved if you can see those little letter combinations which follow the name of a file. Sometimes, in a folder, you might find 5 files or more ALL with the exact same name! But they are vastly different files and even though you can usually figure out the type of file by looking over at the Type column, it’s MUCH faster to just see that file extension in the file name! In a prior post from almost two years ago, I explained how to do this in XP. But it’s a little bit different finding the setting in Vista or Windows 7, so I’ve made videos for both:
Showing File Extensions in XP
Showing File Extensions in Vista or Windows 7
Item Number 2: For those of you who haven’t back up your ACS/KNK/DM/GE license files, here’s a quick video to show you how to do it. For those with a dongle, it’s a good idea to have them backed up on a flash drive and even on a different computer, although you should be able to pull them from your installation CD. However, on ACS Studio, I believe the license files are now stored on the dongle itself. For those with dongle-less versions of the software, backing them up to another location on your C Drive is important in case you install an updated version of the software, which will wipe out your license files!!! If you don’t have them backed up, then it could be a 1 – 3 day wait (more over the winter holidays) before they can be regenerated if you lose them! So, make sure you copy them into a back-up folder. Again, I have made videos showing this for the different Windows operating systems:
Backing Up License Files in XP
Backing Up License Files in Vista or Win 7
Item Number 3: Now for something more fun! I recently read about a way to freeze raster images so that they cannot be inadvertently selected or moved. This is useful when you are manually tracing an image or editing a vector image that it still on top of the original raster. I made a quick video showing how to do this:
Freezing a Raster Image
Item Number 4: This is something I’ve been aware of since writing the first KNK User Manual, but somehow then forgot about it. In many of my videos you’ll see me select all images of a particular color by double-clicking the color on the Job Palette. It works fine… most of the time! But sometimes, for whatever reason, I will double click and it will just not select anything. There’s another short cut key which does the same thing: hold down the Shift key and click on a color on the Job Palette… same result. All images of that color will be selected. This is the new way of selecting by color I plan to always use.
Item Number 5: Another recent discovery that I think I already knew but had forgotten. Most of you know the usefulness and, in my opinion, the necessity of using a mouse with a middle scroll wheel for zooming in and out in the software. However, you may not have realized that pushing that middle scroll wheel will put you into the Panning mode so that you can pan around on your screen as necessary. Pushing it again will turn panning off. VERY handy!
by Sandy McCauley | Apr 15, 2009 | Array, Designing, File Extensions, File Import, Flourishes - Designing, Free Videos, GSD Files, GST Files, KNK, MAXX, Outlining Images, Print and Cut, Reducing Nodes, Round Corner, Sign Blank, Toolbars, Welding
Today I’m covering TWO topics that have been brought up by customers. The first is importing the GST template files that come with Craft Robo’s RoboMaster, Silhouette RoboMaster, and Wishblade Advance 3.0. The other is importing GSD files into KNK Studio.
With the GST files, we’ve had great success with the imports. I’m sure it has to do with how they are originally created but they all seem to work. Even the GST files purchased from Quickutz through their Silhouette software will import readily once the file extension is changed to a GSD. Here’s the video showing you how to do this:
Importing GST Files into KNK Studio
However, the GSD’s that are created from the umpteen different ways possible: manually drawn in various versions of RoboMaster, auto-traced in various versions of RoboMaster, imported from Inkscape, imported from Adobe Illustrator, imported from Win PC Sign, etc, all yield variations and only some will successfully import. However, it’s always worth trying the import before using one of the several conversion methods. But you have to watch out… sometimes it will import and not seem to be there or will only partially import, or will import with gaps in the vector paths.
So the following video shows you 6 different circumstances you might encounter when importing GSD’s. If you find something else quirky happening, be sure to send me the file. I’m happy to have a look and maybe I’ll learn something else to share here.
Importing GSD Files into KNK Studio
by Sandy McCauley | Sep 3, 2008 | File Extensions
If I have any single issue with Microsoft Windows, it’s that the default on installation is to hide the file extensions. This single tiny detail has led to more confusion and mistakes than any other individual detail in Windows that I can recall. Unless you can see them, most of you haven’t a clue what kinds of files you have in a lot of your folders. Granted you’re supposed to be able to tell by the icon, but that doesn’t help differentiate the different graphics files. Or when I’m trying to help someone manually install a program and there are FIVE files all called “Setup” in their program’s main folder, who knows which one is actually the setup.exe file! And I’ve had customers and students often send me the wrong version of a file because they can’t see the difference between several files if they’re all named the same.
So, today, I’m going to plead with all of you to go change that default setting so that from this day forward you will be able to see exactly what kind of files you have and avoid any confusion. It’s SO simple to do, I don’t even need to make a video for this one.
Open up My Computer (or Computer, if you have Vista)
Click on File>Tool Options (or Organize>Folder and Search Options, if you have Vista)
Click on the View tab
Uncheck the box next to “Hide extensions for known file types
Click on OK. You’re done!
And now… your computer days will be better! Here are a couple of screen shots just to make it clearer…
