Chinese characters

Want to add Chinese characters to your next project? I had a project lined up for tonight but needed to add Chinese characters to complete it. Took me a while to figure it out. Here's how you can do the same. If you run Windows XP or Vista your in luck because you probably have Chinese installed already like I did, otherwise you'll have to remedy that first. How can you tell? If you can see this 水空火尘 then your ready to start. I'll assume you can at step one.

1. First goto Control Panel > Regional and Language Options and change current format to Chinese under the Formats Tab. There are probably several choices. I chose Traditional.
2. Now click on Administrative Tab and Change system Locale. Choose Chinese here as well. This one requires a restart. Don't worry most everything will still be in English when you restart.
3. Have you restarted now? Good. Goto Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map.
4. In Character Map under 'Group by' select 'simplified Chinese by Pinyin'. You have to spell out the sound of the word in English to find the symbol you want, Pinyin means "spell sound"(Wikipedia).
5. Now open your browser and go here. Type the English word in the search field and it should give you symbols, their Pinyin, and English translation.
6. Once you find the Pinyin for the word you want all you have to do is click it's first letter on the mini keyboard on your screen and find it on the character map. Match up the symbol on the dictionary with one on the character map and click select. Add as many as you want then click copy.
   
7. Open your Cad/Cam and add text where you like. In the text field press ctrl+v and wallah! A foreign language.
8. Now just convert whatever you added to polylines so it won't disappear when you change your settings back to normal.
   

See, that wasn't so hard. Have fun and don't forget to change your regional settings back when your done. I'm making a giant Feng Shui coin, what about you? I'll post some pictures when I mill it out.

Back In Business

Well I finally got my machine running again which means more posts every Sunday for now on. Sorry to all for taking so long but I plan on making up for it. I've upgraded from mere threaded rod to stainless steel. I should have much better accuracy thanks to my cousin Matt and for under $100; Not too shabby. I should have some fun projects coming up including another go at box joints.
In the meantime, I've found a fun new resource, this time for machine designs that might as well be art. I was checking out The Steampunk Workshop which has some interesting stuff from a time when technology worked with a bit more style and sophistication. Thats when I noticed this. A site with tons of interesting mechanical devices some of which are accompanied by cad files (SolidWorks?) for creating your own. I just need to covert them to something I can use with CamBam and you'll see it here whether it works or not. Plan to make your own? Post a comment, I'd love to see it and so would plenty of others.
I'm back and I'll see you Sunday with a last minute and ill conceived plan to make something interesting and completely useless.