tablets and tablets

Ive been looking around at tablets as an input device recently, but most
that i see seem to be geared towards graphic artists with 1024 levels of
sensitivity, different 'brush' thicknesses, tilt up to 60 degrees etc, none
of which really seem to be useful features for CAD work.... What talets are
out there, and what tablets are being used by CAD operators? Most of the
ones i have seen are the Wacom types.

Thanks,
Shaun

 

Ok, Ive had a bit of a read and a look around and discovered the
'tablet.dwg' in the samples folder... looks pretty cool! But it seems to
be setup for a 12"x12" tablet only. Its probably one of those things that
you can only work out with time, but a lot of those functions on the tablet
layout are ones that i dont really use. I started out with cad when it was
a DOS program, so even nowadays when im using 2004, i dont know much about
the buttons to be clicked on. I only have a couple of the toolbars (view
ports mostly) in my workspace and work by having my left hand on the
keyboard and right hand on the mouse. Some of them do look really nice
though, and i can see i would get a lot of use out of them.... if only i
had a penny for every time Ive typed 'la'......

Having said that, 12x12 seems a very big area for a tablet, and working all
day i could see my arms getting tired! does the tablet itself react to
pressure from your fingers/arms ie. can you rest your arm on the active part
of it?

Is anyone using a 9x12, or even a 6x8 tablet? If so, have you made up your
own tablet overlay? how does the overlay itself work, is that part which
contains 'buttons' no longer a part of the 'drawing screen', or does the
entire tablet still remain part of the screen?

Thanks,
Shaun

 

You probably know that the functions on the tablet are re-configurable. I
use a mouse & keyboard these days, but I loved the tablet & keyboard. The
pointing device should be a pen, IMHO, as a puck tends to "dive" down when
you want to click on a function in the lower part of a tablet. I used a
wireless pen once, and found it better then the wired ones, since the thin
wire broke easily and the pens (had a few) stopped functioning.

You can switch of every toolbar you don't use, so it's up to you. I don't
understand "or does the entire tablet still remain part of the screen" ? The
tablet isn't a part of the screen and never was. You use it instead of
clicking on toolbar-buttons.

HTH,

The Jester

 

Have you had any experience with the Wacom tablets (graphire or intuos)? I
cant get a 12x12 for reasonable money here in australia, so I'm tossing up
between a 9x12 or a 12x19. Im assuming that if i got the 12x19 I could
assign the active area in autocad to be 12x12, and then use the other 12x7
area for other things, maybe use ot for photoshop work which i do a bit of
for my own personal use.

Maybe a bit hard to convey... what i meant was; is the entire tablet
(including all the areas with overlay buttons etc) used for drawing, or does
the area on the tablet overlay that is blank represent the entire screen?
I'd guess that its the latter, unless there is some way of toggling between
drawing and using the overlay, which would be cumbersome.

Thanks,
Shaun

 

I only ever used tablets made by Genius (I think that was the company that
made them). No experience with Photoshop either.

Yes, the latter. Only the blank area in the middle of the tablet represents
the screen, although I remember you could set the tablet up so that you
could use the whole tablet to represent the screen and you had to click on
the toolbar-buttons on screen. Never used that mode, though ...

The Jester