7 Best iOS Apps for CAD Users, Designers and Engineers

Creating CAD Drawing

Despite the fact that the mobile market expanded to the point where now most of the work is done on the go, AutoCAD remained one of the few software solutions to keep its desktop-first legacy intact.

The folks at AutoDesk definitely recognized the workplace evolution pattern (and even made a mobile version of AutoCAD), but that didn’t change the fact that the art of producing top quality drafts and designs still resides in the realm of the good old mouse and keyboard.

However, engineers and designers still largely belong to that group of tech-savvy people who spend a lot of free time on their mobile phones. Especially youngsters who are just starting out in the business.

That’s exactly why we decided to round up iOS apps that every CAD user needs to have.

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9 Tech Words Merriam-Webster Added To The Dictionary

Every year, more than a thousand new words are added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary and we’re all excited to see what terms will officially be documented and considered a part of the English language.

Actually, have you ever wondered how Merriam-Webster decides what to include? The answer — everyday usage. If people use those words in daily speech, they have a shot of making into the official dictionary. This means it can contain words and acronyms you wouldn’t expect to be cited by a traditional English language dictionary.

Thus, it isn’t any wonder why the dictionary is filled with new and not-so-well-known terms from all areas including science, medicine, pop culture, sports, and just about everything in between. And with the constant growth of technology, the English language grows as well.

That being said, we thought it would be fun to search for new tech terms that have  been added to the dictionary and are now considered a part of our everyday language. We created a list of the most interesting ones. Don’t believe us? Take a look for yourself.

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6 Ways Able2Extract Pro 11 Is Making Your Paperwork Easier

Editing Pages

If there’s one pain point for businesses, it’s the paperwork. Or rather the digital document work.

It’s the multiple tasks you have to do with PDF documents that can range anywhere from filing and revising to securing and reviewing. What makes it even tougher is that most of those documents are in the PDF format.

If you’ve been struggling to get your business on track with all the PDF work that needs to be done, you’ll be happy to know that Able2Extract Pro 11 is aimed at making things easier and stress free from here on in.

Take a look.

1. Contract Revisions Are Simplified

In any business, it’s essential to get contracts that cover everything. From drawing them up to negotiating terms, half the battle is in the collaboration process. Contract drafts are usually transmitted via PDF and can span multiple pages. Revisions aren’t fun and performing the edits, even worse.

PDF Annotations Panel

But here’s where it gets a bit simpler. Able2Extract Pro 11 can help you annotate PDF contracts right on the page. You can highlight clauses you don’t agree with, insert carets where text needs to be re-worded, or add sticky notes on additional details that should be considered.

 2. Redact Sensitve PDF Data When You Need To 

One thing about paperwork that can give you a ton of stress is leaking information you aren’t supposed to. Take tax filings, for instance. What’s more stressful than filing taxes for your business? Being selected for a tax audit where the revenue agency will inspect every ledger, receipt, and banking statement you have. The accuracy of your business books is crucial, but so is the security of the information that doesn’t need to be inspected.

Redacting PDF Data

This is where redacting any sensitive information is essential. Able2Extract Pro 11 can permanently and selectively delete any information you don’t want displayed. No need to extract the data to Word, insert makeshift black rectangles around your text, and re-convert it to PDF.  You can simply open your PDF, redact your content, and save your file.

3. You Can Work With Third Parties Seamlessly

Working with third-parties can be a nightmare when the documents passed around are secured PDFs and you all need to work around them. Having access to PDFs you can interact with is the first thing you need.

For those needing a way to work openly with security and PDF files by encrypting and decrypting your PDFs. Able2Extract Pro 11 will let you open, edit and decrypt PDFs to keep the collaboration process going. Or you can open, redact, and then encrypt the file to ensure that sensitive details aren’t leaked.

4. Edit Professional Business PDFs Without Converting

When it comes to company information in PDF, your first instinct is to type on the page in order to add in your changes. But it isn’t as straightforward as typing in MS Word. In fact, the inability to do what you naturally would is at the core of everyone’s frustration with the format.

But you can now expect to update your PDF documents almost in the same way you would in a Word Document. Whether you need to update pricing lists, product information brochures or company newsletters, simple text and page dits are possible in Able2Extract Pro 11. You can match the font, colour and size of the existing text or merge and split pages by just clicking in the PDF editing side panel.

Check out the video above for a taste of how to edit PDF files the smart way.

5.  Access Scanned PDF Information Easily

Thus far, the completely paperless office hasn’t arrived yet, which means you still have to cater to and work with scanned documents that are emailed in. This is especially hard when you need to access textual data from that PDF.

Able2Extract Pro has already had the scanned PDF conversion part nailed for years. What’s new is that it can convert image-only scanned PDFs into PDFs with searchable text. This means that you can navigate through PDF text with the search functionality when you need to make changes or find certain sections in lengthy PDFs.

6. Tweak Professional Branding Material Yourself

Marketing and branding material is essential when you run your company. When you need to distribute brochures or information packages online, your professional material will be published in the PDF format. So how do you effectively edit the branding material you have?

Improved PDF Editor

The enhanced PDF Editor in Able2Extract Pro 11 has a few new editing features that will allow you to make additions and refined edits to PDFs. It will allow you to modify content page objects: business logos, page borders, and large PDF page art. You can also add in images and insert vector shapes for an added visual boost. Make your edits right in the PDF without the need for conversion or any graphics software.

Business productivity is about to change. It’s all about getting set up with the tools that can get the job done. See where Able2Extract Professional 11 fits into your workflow. Test it out for 7 days with a free trial version.

7 Tips On How To Work With Multiple Worksheets In Excel

Excel Spreadsheet Diagram

Working with MS Excel is hard enough as it is with one worksheet. But when you work with more than one, the difficulty in dealing with that data increases tenfold with every single worksheet you add on.

To help, here are a few basic tips, handy tricks and informative tutorials to make working with multiple worksheets in Excel ten times easier for you.

1. Viewing Multiple Worksheets At Once

A simple tip to start—customizing your view. It can be easy to lose track of which sheet you’re working on, especially when you have several worksheets to deal with. To put your worksheets front and center,

a) Open your workbook in Excel.

b) Click on the New Window button for every worksheet you want to view in that workbook.

Selecting Excel New Window Option

c) In each new window, click on the tab of the worksheet you want to view.

d) Once the worksheets are displayed, click on the Arrange All button in the View window

e) In the following dialog, select your arrangement view. Ensure that you put a check in the Windows of active workbook option.

 Arranging Windows In Excel

From there, you’ll be able to get a bird’s eye view of every worksheet in the workbook you need.

2. Viewing More Worksheet Tabs

This is another simple tip that may go unnoticed. Because the scrollbar at the bottom hogs all the space at the bottom of your window, the number of worksheet tabs you can see is limited. An annoyance when you have more than 3 worksheets.

Expanding Excel Worksheet Tab View

To view more, simply hover over the 3 dots at the left of the scrollbar. Then click and drag it to the right. You’ll instantly start seeing more of your worksheet tabs displayed.

3. Grouping Your Worksheets Together

In Excel, working with your worksheets as a single group is a quicker way for applying formulas and formatting across worksheets with the same formatting.  For instance, let’s say you need to change your monthly rent costs and regular bills. If you’re moving in September and need to update your budget worksheets, grouping them together will let you input the data once to update the entire group.

a) Click on the first worksheet tab you wish to edit.

b) Then Click + CTRL (for non-adjacent worksheet tabs) or Click + Shift (for adjacent worksheets) on the other worksheet tabs to add it to the group.

Editing In Excel Worksheet Group

c) Modify the cell as needed. Click on enter.

To ungroup your worksheets, you can right click and select Ungroup Sheets option. This may seem like a basic tip, but it’s a powerful one to have!

4. Copying Formulas Between Worksheets

One handy tip for working with data across worksheets is to copy formulas that call for repetitive calculations. We’ve covered this tip before in our post, Work With Excel Data Like A Pro With 9 Simple Tips, but is a great tip worth mentioning again:

a) With the worksheet containing the formula you wish to copy opened, CTRL + clickon the tab of the worksheet you want to copy it into.

b) Click on or navigate to the cell with the formula or data you need (in the opened worksheet).

c) Press F2to activate the cell.

d) Press Enter.  This will re-enter the formula or data, and it will also enter it into the same corresponding cell in the other selected worksheet as well.

5. Using Formulas to Link Worksheets

Despite what you may think, data in multiple worksheets can be more efficient. When you need to add cell values from different worksheets, it’s possible to create and use a formula that can pull data from other worksheets that are in the same workbook and formatted similarly.

This tutorial from ExcelFormulas gives you a solid easy-to-understand explanation of how this trick can make your task easier. It  goes the extra mile and even shows you how the same methods can be applied to multiple workbooks, as well.

6. Consolidating Data From Multiple Worksheets

If you need to combine data from different worksheets, this tutorial from Tuts+ Computer Skills will show you step-by-step how to combine your data from multiple sheets into one pivot table.

This is perfect if you’re keeping track of different types of information that are related but are separated in individual worksheets. You can dynamically connect them into one single worksheet so you can update them all at once. Note that this tutorial uses Excel 2013, but is virtually the same for Excel 2016.

7. Importing Multiple Excel Sheets from Multiple Excel Workbooks

This following trick from ExcellsFun is a bit more advanced, but helpful for getting your Excel data from different worksheets and workbooks into an individual worksheet using PowerQuery.

Using the example of track sheets being used to analyze sales rep performance, this tutorial also links out to a resource where you can access those practice files for a good hands on learning experience to master this skill.

What tips do you have for working with multiple Excel worksheets?

5 PDF Tasks You Didn’t Know Could Be Done Through A Web Browser

Web browsers have come a long way. There was a time when finally being able to view a PDF natively inside Firefox or Chrome got everyone excited. Now, viewing PDFs is the most basic PDF task you can perform.

Aside from viewing PDFs in your browser, you now know more than a handful of PDF tasks you can accomplish online. But we’ll bet that there are still a few PDF web tricks you didn’t know about. Here are 5 you probably didn’t know about.

1. Translate PDF Text

Because you know that PDFs are hard to edit, it’s natural that you wouldn’t peg the format as one you could translate into different languages. However, it is possible to do so without converting your file and manually translating it word for word with Google Translate.

The online translator  is a popular tool for anyone who needs a quick reference. But in case you didn’t notice, it also has an option where you can upload a document to be translated–PDFs included! Obviously, just as the translations for manual text entries may not be 100%, the translations for documents can be slightly inaccurate, as well. So use this tool with that caveat in mind.

2. Convert PDF to JPEG, Excel and PowerPoint

You’re strapped for time. You need to make some final analysis on tabular data. You need to prep approved images for publication.  You need to make some tweaks to a presentation you’re giving in a few hours. Any of these sound familiar? These scenarios are all too common, and in each case, a PDF file can be involved, making that single PDF task even tougher.

Convert PDF To JPG Online

In cases like these, online conversion tools can be a lifesaver. We know the constraints of time, money and resources. That’s why we’ve made it easy for you to get that PDF to JPEG, PDF to Excel and PDF to PowerPoint conversion done. No installation needed. No registration required. Just upload your file, enter your email and click on Convert. Your file will be emailed to you, free of charge.

3. Read a PDF File Out Loud 

Anyone who needs to review, research or do some reading can especially hate the task if it involves doing so with a PDF document and a busy schedule. Not only does it mean having to read a screen, but, if you’re on the go, it also means having to do it on a mobile device. Something a bit cumbersome for a 5-7 inch gadget. And that’s why SpokenText  makes this list.

This tool is an online text to audio converter that comes with the ability to convert text in documents to audio files (.mp3, .m4b) you can take with you. You literally turn your reading task into a listening one. It can convert Word documents, plain text files and PDF documents, just to name a few. This online tool has paid and trial accounts with a few customizable features that makes it worth checking out.

4. Bookmark Your Page In A PDF

Reading lengthy PDF files in Chrome is common and it can be pretty frustrating at times.  You close your PDF, lose your page and then open the file later on, only to scroll through the entire PDF  to find the one place where you left off.

The Chrome extension, Additor allows you to quickly bookmark the PDF you’re reading.

5. Sign PDF Documents

Signing PDFs is one of those tasks that you don’t want to do. It sounds tedious and difficult. So it may surprise you that it can accomplished online and with Chrome, no less. Of course, this capability is done through a Chrome extension: HelloSign.

Selecting Signature Type

HelloSign will let you add form fields and signatures to PDFs that are uploaded to Google Drive. Signed documents come with an audit trail to keep track of them, email notifications to all parties, and the ability to share the signed form. Read our tutorial on how to sign PDF documents. We feature a step by step look at how to use this extension to add a signature to your PDF documents.

With just a few of these tips, you can further enhance how you work with PDF files online. Give them a try and let us know how they work out for you.