CAD Insider: Think of an iPad as big as a picture window. Luckily, it's on a stand, so you don't have to hold it. You and your team members can all look the same drawing in actual size wthout bang your heads together or getting in each others' space.
4 comments:
While this looks like a really useful tool, I have my doubts about the actual usefulness and the price. The biggest drawback to me is that you can't actually run any CAD software on it. All is it is essentially a giant touchscreen monitor. Until the price point is lowered or the functionality is increased, I don't think this is a viable product. The only real advantages I see are that it lets you distribute the marked up pdf's more easily and you could share across conference calls. But if a company has been using hard copy plans then they would most likely already have the capabilities to do both of those things so is it really worth investing tens of thousands of dollars for these screens in every conference room in every office?
First off, the misspelling of the word "assess" made me giggle.
I agree with Philip when it comes to questioning the usefulness of this. It almost seems easier just to buy everyone an iPad and then develop a program that allows the communication of "mark ups" in real time. While I'm sure the luxury of having a full scale drawing that you can easily digitally manipulate, I think the money could be better spent elsewhere and simple printed sheets would be ten times more practical.
This looks like a big fancy toy people would want just to say that they have one and not because it actually does anything that useful to them. As both Sam and Philip have said this product is almost not worth it to waste the money on. There are alternatives to the whole staff looking on one iPad that actually would cost less then the price of one of these. To me people are just getting bored with what we have and need to keep making the next great thing.
I agree with the other comments- it's essentially a giant touchscreen monitor, and not even all that useful if you can't even run CAD on it. The first problem I actually saw was- where would you put it? Having it in an office somewhere would severely limit its use, and involve a lot of unnecessary running back and forth, but you can't just bolt $14k worth of touchscreen to a shop wall. Yes, it's pretty, but it seems like it'd be a lot more practical and easier on everyone to just print the plans out. The article seems to be creating this false dilemma which presents the only two options as Ipads or this giant screen, when in some cases the old-fashioned way is simpler and better. If it could run AutoCAD it'd be a different story- this could change drafting in a big way, by combining hand and computer drafting. Until it does that, I'm pretty sure no one is going to spend $14k on it.
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