Home Support Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) Boardmaker FAQ's Boardmaker Version 5 FAQs

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This handout is designed to take you through the basics of Boardmaker Version 5

1. Open Boardmaker. Go to the Start Menu, select All Programs, choose Mayer Johnson and select Boardmaker.
   
2. A window will open which gives you three options. Select “Open a New Board”.
   

3. Select the “button tool” from the tool palette at the top of the screen.
   

4. Move the “cursor” onto the blank work-space. Click and drag diagonally to create a button. Make the button about 4cm square.
   NB: Do not release the mouse button until you have finished drawing the new button.

   >>>> Tip: To create a square button, hold down the “Shift” key while dragging.

   

5. Now, select the “Button Sprayer Tool”.
   

   Move the Button Sprayer Tool into the centre of the button you made. Click and hold and drag diagonally to the right. This will spray a grid of buttons. Spray 4 buttons across and down.

   

6. Click on the “Symbol Finder Button”
   

7. The Symbol Finder window will have opened as soon as you clicked on the Symbol Finder button.
   

   Note: This window will move around your grid. You can drag it around yourself or it will move around as you put symbols on the grid.

8. Type the word “paint” into the symbol search window.
   

9. Click on the “thumbnail” view button
   

10. As soon as you click on the thumbnail view button a list of symbols which match the word paint will appear.
    
11. Click on the symbol shown above to represent the phrase “Let’s Paint”.
    
12. Now, type the words “Let’s paint” in the alternative symbol name field.
    

13. Now click on the first cell in our grid and the symbol will be placed in the grid.
    >>>> Note: If you press Enter the symbol will be placed in the cell with the red line around it.
    

14. Fill in the next 13 cells so that your board looks like this:
    
    
    

NB: When searching for a word like “no” which can appear as a whole word, in the middle of a word or at the beginning of the word, it can help to change your search settings. Using the symbol search buttons, you can tell Boardmaker whether you are looking for a whole word, letters at the beginning of a word, or letters anywhere in a word or phrase.

Changing a Symbol

Once you have finished the board, you may decide to change one of the symbols e.g. use a different symbol for water that the user is more familiar with. To do this, follow these steps.

1. Type “water” again in the symbol finder.
   
2. Select a different symbol for water than the one you used before.
   
3. Click on the cell “water”.
   
4. You will be asked if you want to replace the symbol, add to the symbol or cancel the operation. Select replace – and your new symbol will now be in the cell.
   

Adding a second symbol to a cell

There may be some cells where you want to have two symbols to represent a concept. In this example, we are going to add “I” to the “I need help” cell.

1. Go to the Symbol finder and select the whole word search button. Now type the word “I” into the search box.

   Select the symbol of the stick figure pointing to itself. Then, click in the Additional Word field and remove the word I.

   

2. Now click on the “I need help” cell.
   
3. A prompt will come up asking if you want to Replace, Add To or Cancel operation. Click Add To.
   
4. Click on the symbol of the stick figure – a dotted line will appear around it.
   
5. Place the cursor at the bottom, right corner of the dotted line and drag diagonally to shrink the symbol. Click on the other symbol and then resize it too, so that both of them fit on the one cell.

Changing the text in the button

At any stage, you can change the text in a button by clicking on the font tool, the letter A in the menu bar and then clicking on the text in the button.

Adding a title to your page

Click on the “A” tool and then click above or below your board. Now type the title “Paint”. You can select the word and then go to the text menu to change the size of the font.

For more information about Boardmaker, see the training CD that came with your copy of Boardmaker 5 or read the manual.

If you have technical support questions please contact Spectronics on (07) 3808 6833 or email support@spectronicsinoz.com

Happy Boardmaking!