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Controlling the Machine is no longer being updated. Don't worry, though, you can still follow Nate Holt at his new blog, AutoCAD Electrical Etcetera. You'll find it at http://nateholt.wordpress.com. Or you can subscribe to his feed to get latest words of wisdom automatically: http://nateholt.wordpress.com/feed/. You also can continue to view the Controlling Machine archives for Nate's AutoCAD Electrical tips and tricks.
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Dual Monitor Setup - Why did I wait so long?
May 10, 2006, 04:05 AM Nate HoltAbout a year ago, my Autodesker friend John mentioned that he was using his notebook and an external monitor together in some kind of dual monitor setup. I made a "that's nice" mental note and that was it.
Well, I finally tried it. Wow! It's so cool. I have my notebook open and propped up next to my big Sony flat-screen monitor and software development life is good. I can move stuff back and forth across the chasm between the two monitors. Lot's of extra room! I can have AutoCAD Electrical open on the big monitor and detach and float the Project Manager modeless dialog along the edge of the notebook's screen along with Outlook and my code editors and such. The whole AutoCAD screen is available for graphics. Why did I wait so long?
Setup was easy (using Win XP). Go to the Windows "Display Properties" dialog and select "Settings". Look for a "multiple monitor" option under "Display:" along with an unfuzzed "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" toggle. Flip the toggle "ON" and hit "Apply". This is all it took for my two monitors to start working as one double-wide monitor.
The only adjustment I had to make was trying to keep track / find the cursor. It was easy to lose it with so much more room. I tried a couple options. The first was to turn on mouse properties --> Pointer Options --> "Display pointer trails" toggle. It worked and I could easily find the cursor but it was just too distracting. The next option was the "sonar ping" option under the same dialog above. It shows an expanding circle at the cursor's location when you press and release the CTRL key. This was a bit less intrusive and only showed up when I needed it (or whenever the CTRL key was pressed). But my final solution was to keep the bottom "Taskbar" flipped to "Auto-hide". Now, if I can't find the cursor, I just wave the mouse around until the taskbar pops up. This locates the cursor somewhere along the bottom of the screen.
Again, so cool. Why did I wait so long?
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