Windows 7 Key Quick Try This 3D, The Fuel for Hot

We break from our Winter break with a guest post from Chris Becker. Chris is one of our team's developers who wanted to share some observations on using 3D in PowerPoint 2007. The result is a quick set of steps you can walk through and explore the power of the new text and graphics engines. -RBHi, I’m Chris from CoolBeans fame! 3D is one of the great new features of PowerPoint 2007,Windows 7 Key, so I wanted to highlight what some of the new features are and how they can be used.For starters, how do you get a 3D shape? All shapes are 2D until you add a bevel or rotation onto them. Let’s start with a simple shape:A great way to start with 3D is to use one of the presets. This is the first item under the Shape Effects button:Choosing any of these items will add a bevel and/or a 3D rotation. I chose Preset 10, and I now have a very nice looking 3D shape:Using the Bevel and 3D Rotation ################## under Shape Effects, I can customize the look and angle of the shape. You can also change the fill color just like you would on a 2D shape (I’ve darkened it here slightly to show off the bevel better):Finally, you can add text just like you can with a 2D shape by selecting the shape and typing onto it. The text is rotated in scene with the shape:Of course, text can have bevels as well, just look under Text Effects. Here I’ve chosen one of the 3D WordArt styles:And now we have a professional looking, 3D graphic created entirely within PowerPoint! Why is this better than rigging it up in another application and pasting it in as a picture? Obviously it is easily editable within PowerPoint with no application switching, but also when resized this shape will re-render at the correct size (no blocky bitmap artifacts), it responds to themes and can be copy and pasted natively between PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Outlook!Thanks Chris! <div