David,

Before you let her off the hook, Jeanette had already assigned me to respond to your rhetorical questions.
This post is more of a confirmation than an answer.

As you suspect every single ARA seminar with over 50 people in it will have at least one that says "too advanced" and at least one that says "too basic."

For many of years we've put on "local" seminars because our clients continue to ask for them and we get good feedback as to their usefulness.

We build these eclectic seminars from the list of questions we receive on an ongoing basis *and* from looking over our clients shoulders on followup trips months or years after we have installed systems. Our viewpoint is "most often missed tips." But I should also say, that at about 1/2 of the tips we share are those we also learned looking over our client's shoulder. All of us have "stumbled" across some unique feature of a program by accident; I have the good fortune of seeing how people apply these to real jobs and then passing them on to others.

Thank you Roy.

I'm a living testament to how people can benefit from your "over-the-shoulder" observations.

You've visited so many shops throughout your career that I don't expect you to remember the day you came to G&W Trophies, in No. Hollywood, CA (my alma mater). I believe you were a rep for Newing-Hall at the time.

Here's my recollection:

Sitting at the Newing-Hall machine, you asked me to create a layout. The first thing I did was blow out all the machine's default margins etc. I was never very pleased with the way autolayouts spaced lines etc.

I then quickly sketched proposed sizes of lines onto a piece of paper and used a calculator to establish my baselines.

You asked, "Why don't you let the machine do the work?" I said, "I don't like autolayouts."

You said (paraphrase), "Even if that's the case, you can let the machine create an overall layout, then tweak it to your liking."

It was one of those "DUHH?" moments, and one that's embarrassing to confess before the forum :-)

Thanks to your over-the-shoulder advice, I still have ultimate control over my layouts, but I'm saving a lot of time and paper :-)

Thanks again,

David "The Stunt Engraver" Lavaneri
DGL Engraving
Port Hueneme, CA