Among many modeling softwares like Pro/Engineer, Siemens NX and Solid Edge, CATIA (Computer Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application) is one of the best three dimensional modeling softwares available in the industry which eases manufacturing process.

It is a multi-platform software used by many leading manufacturing companies in aviation, production and automobile industries. This software uses C++ programming language from which it delivers interactive design tips and also many stress tests which can be conducted easily reducing manufacturing costs by developing a scaled model of the proposed product.

This also works well on re-designing a product based on customer suggestions which shows its flexibility to use by all kind of manufacturers. CATIA is developed by Dassault Systems, France which originates as a software to design Mirage fighter aircraft. Later it is re-designed for more flexibility for aviation, shipping and automobile industries. By this software, we can classify a product easily on the multiple stages of product development. Some stages are Surface design, Assembly, Wireframe and Drafting. Drafting is the final sketch of the product given to the manufacturer to encode with CNC or whatever manufacturing method they use.

CATIA has three versions namely CATIA v4, CATIA v5 and CATIA v6. CATIA V5 is considered as the more stable version since it supports almost all Operating systems. It can also installed on Windows 7, changing compatibility settings to Windows XP by right-clicking the program icon. Nowadays, CATIA is also used by small-scale manufacturing industries to increase their sales and to have a good will in the market. Top Aerospace companies using CATIA are Boeing, Bombardier and Agusta Westland. Automobile companies like BMW, Volkswagen, Bentley Motors and Porsche uses CATIA in design and development.

If you need to reference a trademark in MS Word, such as Gizmo(tm) or Gizmo(R), there are two ways to do it:

1. After the word that needs a trademark, type open parenthesis, t, m, and close parenthesis. MS Word will automatically format the tm designation with a superscript. You can do the same thing to get a registered trademark, type open parenthesis, r, close parenthesis. MS Word will automatically format the r with a circle around it, superscript, etc.

2. You can do the same thing in MS Word by holding down the control and alt keys along and then typing tm or r.

How to copy and burn a DVD movie with DVD Shrink 3.2 and Nero.

These are the quick, easy instructions “a cheat sheet”, if you will. You can do an internet search for more detailed instructions and screen shots.
1. Open DVD Shrink 3.2.
2. Insert your DVD movie in your DVD drive.
3. Select “Open Disc”.
4. The “Open DVD Disc” box pops up. Select the location of your DVD drive and click “OK”.
5. Now the software will analyze your DVD. A box with “___% Analyzing” will appear. This only takes about 2 minutes to complete.
6. To copy only the main movie (i.e. no menus, extras, etc.), click Re-Author. Drag and drop “Title 1” under the “Main Movie” heading (on the right side of the box) to the left part of the screen under â”DVD”. Then click “Backup!” OR To copy the whole DVD, click “Backup!”
7. A box will appear. For “Select backup target” choose”Hark Disk folder”. For “Select target folder for DVD output files”, chose “C:\_______” (substitute the name of whatever move you are copying. For example C:\NANNY MCPHEE). Select “OK”.
8. Now the software will copy/encode your DVD. A box with “___% Encoding” will appear. This takes about 15-20 minutes to complete.
9. Once this is done, a message will appear that says “DVD Shrink has finished backing up your DVD. All output files are now ready for burning with appropriate DVD burning software.” Click”OK”.
10. Close DVD Shrink 3.2.
11. Take the DVD movie out of the drive and insert a blank DVD+R disc. Make sure you have a DVD drive that is capable of burning. A DVD drive that says “DVD-ROM” won’t do it, because it’s just a read-only drive.
12. Open Nero. When the New Compilation window appears select”DVD” from the drop down list, and select “DVD-Video”. Select “New”.
13. Drag and drop the entire contents of the VIDEO-TS directory on the right side of the box to the VIDEO-TS directory on the left.
14. Select “Burn.”
15. A Burn Compilation box appears. Select “Burn” again. This takes about 25 – 30 minutes to complete. You now have a DVD that can be played in any DVD player.

The first thing I loved with Skype, is the ease of installation on my Debian Linux system. Finally, there’s one VoIP application that runs easily and smoothly, without loosing hours to install and configure. And it works fine on other OS like Windows or MacOS as well!

Skype has a couple of key benefits at use, as well. First of all, and it’s not the least, it is absolutely free. Then, call between Skype users are free as well, doesn’t matter if you call next door or to another country. You also can call a standard or a mobile phone at low cost, using a pre-paid account. But the feature I especially appreciate is the “random meetings”.

If you want to meet someone new, just take a look at the list of people throughout the world that are waiting for a call, call him/her, and talk. That’s a really cool community, with very different people, from Dutch to Chinese, who is only waiting to meet other people to build international friendship. So if you don’t know Skye yet, have a look at their (multilingual) web site: http://www.skype.com, and enjoy! All you need is the software, and a basic USB phone set, of any kind.

Foobar2000 is a freely distributed, very useful and functional audio player. It is developed for the Windows platform. Foobar2000 requires very small amount of system memory, and it works with big play lists very fast. Foobar2000 includes one of the best audio decoders.

Now I don’t need Winamp or Windows Media Player. Foobar2000 is really s good thing! By the way, there are a lot of plug-ins for this player. You can download player on its official site – http://www.foobar2000.com (about 1.5 MB).

The last version of player is 0.9.3.1. Also, you can download the Software Development Kit (about 300 mB) for Foobar2000 for developing your own plug-ins. Foobar2000 supports a lot of audio file formats: MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC / Ogg FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, AU, SND, CDDA, WMA. It can display all Unicode signs. Foobar2000 support ReplayGain – both playback and calculation.

I would like to share my experience with “Dragon Naturally Speaking” speech to text software. When I first got it I was amazed at the accuracy of it. Don’t get me wrong, you have to speak clearly and enunciate, but actually, the faster you speak (up to a point) the better it recognizes your speech because of the context algorithms.

I am using version 8, non-professional, but there is a new version 9 which they tell me is 99.9% accurate. Keeping in mind that output is only as good as input and I bet it is 99%. I transcribe podcasts and sometimes use it to help me do that. If I don’t know how to spell something instead of using an online dictionary, I just speak my word and get the correct spelling. You can use it to surf the web if you wanted to or had too, but there is a bit of a learning curve for it. If I can scarf up the $100 I am going to upgrade to version 9 professional. And yes I am using it right now.