Q: What is Cacidi Extreme CS4?
A: Cacidi Extreme CS4 is a plug-in for Adobe InDesign CS4 that allows you to produce any kind of catalogues, price lists, magazines, flyers, brochures etc. at any number of pages with very little effort.

Q: What are the system requirements for Cacidi Extreme CS4?
A: A computer capable or running Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista or Mac OS X, and of course Adobe InDesign CS4.

Installing
Q: How do I install Cacidi Extreme CS4?
A: After downloading Cacidi Extreme CS4, extract the downloaded zip-file to your hard drive. Open the resulting folder and launch the Installer application therein. This will start the installation process and guide you through the various steps for installing Cacidi Extreme CS4.
After installing the files, launch Adobe InDesign CS4 and open Cacidi Extreme CS4 from the "Windows" menu of Adobe InDesign CS4.

Q: The Installation program failed. Can I install the plug-ins manually?
A: Yes. The installation process probably failed because of limited privileges for you user account.
To install Cacidi Extreme CS4 manually, locate the "Plugins" folder inside "Installer Files" folder in the extracted folder you downloaded and follow the steps below that corresponds to the computer, you are installing on:
- Mac OS X: Open the "Mac" folder and copy the "Cacidi" folder containing the plug-ins to the "Plug-Ins" folder within the Adobe InDesign CS4 application folder. If you are running a PowerPC based Macintosh, copy the contents of the "PowerPCVersion" folder into the "Cacidi" folder you just placed in the Adobe InDesign CS4's Plug-In folder.
- Windows: Open the "Win" folder and copy the "Cacidi" folder containing the plug-ins to the "Plug-Ins" folder within the Adobe InDesign CS4 application folder. Next, copy the libmysql.dll file into the WINDOWS folder located at C:\WINDOWS\
If you already have a "Cacidi" folder within your Adobe InDesign CS4 Plug-Ins folder, copy the contents of the new "Cacidi" folder into the old, replacing existing files.
After installing the files, launch Adobe InDesign CS4 and open Cacidi Extreme CS4 from the "Windows" menu of Adobe InDesign CS4.

Q: Can I try out Cacidi Extreme CS4 to see if it's the right product for me before I decide to buy it?
A: Absolutely. When you start to use the plug-in, you are allowed to work with the software for 2 weeks before you have to enter a serial number in the "Activation" menu.

Q: After the trial period, when I decide to buy Cacidi Extreme CS4, how do I enter my serial number?
A: Enter your purchased serial number in the "Activation" menu and click "Activate".

Using Extreme
Q: So now I've got Cacidi Extreme CS4 up and running. What now?
A: If you installed Cacidi Extreme CS4 using the Cacidi Installer, a couple of demonstration projects have already been set up for you. Choose either of them from the Projects Fly-out menu (located in the upper right corner of the palette) and play around with them.

Q: I still have no clue what's going on or how to use this software!
A: Cacidi Extreme CS4 is a very complex piece of software that is designed to handle any (almost) kind of graphical production you may have where the data it self comes from either a data base or a text file. Try locating the User Manual inside the Cacidi Docs folder (its default location is within your Documents folder) and flip through that to get a better understanding of the software.
It is also recommended to attend to one or more of our frequent seminars in Denmark where the software will be demonstrated or to simply engage Cacidi Systems for a personal seminar based on your current production to get you up and running as efficiently as possible.

Q: What is an Item Design?
A: An Item Design is a collection of text, image and decoration fields. Each Item Design may have its own unique design and an Item Design will often correspond to a database entry.
When you create an Item Design, it is important that the Item Design corresponds to the database field definitions in the projects Data Source.
For more information see page 36 in the User Manual.

Q: What is the Page Grid and how is it different from using Adobe InDesigns guidelines?
A: A Page Grid is used by Cacidi Extreme CS4 to divide the InDesign page into tiles. Cacidi Extreme CS4 places the various Item Designs inside these tiles.
You are of course still allowed to use the standard guidelines from InDesign but the special guides that make up the grid are there to give you a visual presentation of the layout you can create and the dimensions of your Item Designs.
For more information see page 38 in the User Manual.

Q: What is a Page Design?
A: A page design is an outline of the selected page which is created by adding a number of Item Designs (one or more), loose ads and fields that may be skipped in the tiles of the Page Grid. After creating a Page Design it should be saved allowing you to layout any number of different pages for your catalogue.
For more information see page 39 in the User Manual.

Q: What does the 'Create' button do and how is it different from the 'Calculate' button in the Calculation panel?
A: Clicking the Create button will either initiate a Step 'n Repeat production using the same selected Item Design and placing a copy in each tile in your Page Grid until there is no more data in the data source. Upon placing the Item Designs, each Item Design will be merged with the data from the current line in the data source. If there are more data than number of tiles on the current page, a new page will be created, continuing the production, or, if your document already has a number of pages, it will continue the production on the next page.
The Calculation button will start a much more advanced process and, based on the Calculation Method, start placing Item Designs according to information from the Data Source and the current Page Grid. For more information on the Calculation process, see page 42 in the User Manual.

Producing a simple catalogue
Q: If I want to produce a simple Price List catalogue, what are the steps I should take?
A: First, depending on your data source, you most likely would want to set up a LOOP field using data grouping (see page 30 and 51-52 in the User Manual).
Next, create an Item Design that matches the design you want for your catalogue and place the [LOOP] merge field somewhere in the Item Design.
Lastly, set up a Page Grid that matches your Item Design and click Create from the Basic Panel.

Q: So, continuing on my simple Price List catalogue, a number of text frames in my production get text overflow from the [LOOP] merge field. How do I avoid this without having to create very large Text Frames for every Item Design in the catalogue?
A: First, expand the Text Frame with the [LOOP] Merge Field so it is high enough to contain every possible data group from your data source. Next, go to the Frame Settings panel, click on the Text Frame and click on the Resize Text Frame option in the palette. The Text Frame will now shrink in order to contain the text from the [LOOP] field without getting a text overflow.

Q: OK, so I added the option for resizing the offending text frame and it works great! But now, some of the text frames are so large from the grouped data, that they overlap into the next Item Design or below the bottom of the page. How do I avoid this?
A: You will have to set up an AutoCalc in Extreme to avoid this. Click on the Calculation panel and select the Measure Placement calculation method from the pop-up menu. Now, click on the Text Link panel where you are going to tell Cacidi Extreme what Item Design to use for this calculation. Here, you will notice four text fields. In the two top-most fields ender 1 and in the bottom left field enter the name of your Item Design. Go back to the Calculation panel and save the calculation by clicking on the disc icon. After this, click Calculate.

Q: Great, now everything works and my catalogue being perfectly build without need of manual correction in just 5 minutes. But what exactly did the Measure Placement calculation method do?
A: The Measure Placement calculation simply places your first Item Design on the page according to the Page Grid (it really doesn't matter how many lines the grid has, only the columns are used for this production). Then when it is going to place the next Item Design it takes a look at what space is left on the page (or column) beneath the prior Item Design. If the new Item Design to be placed is higher than the available space, it places the Item Design on the next page (or column) and so on. Thus, even though some of your Item Designs are larger than others to allow for the different heights of the LOOP text frame, no Item Design will overlap the other.