Wacom Tablets-Solidworks

Can't offer any comments, but it would be neat to see one of these eventually run Windows 7 with the touch portions of the OS being more mainstream now.

I have an Intuos 3, but I never use the stylus with SW. Right- and middle-click are too awkward for me. Anyhow, even splines don't wrok well with "sketching" in the traditional artistic sense, so the stylus has no advantages in SW.

The 5-button mouse works well though, since it can't get dirty and skip. Dirty and sticky, yes. Skipping, no. I took the formerly fuzzy bottom off and put teflon pads ("mouse skates") on instead. Absolute positioning versus relative is nice, but not essential. People who don't get it won't borrow your computer.

At SWW, SW and Microsoft had some of the Microsoft Tables with some sort of eDrawings package that they custom built for a touch interface. It was pretty interesting, although still very klunky. It took a few "touches" to get it to do what the demonstrator wanted. Apple & HP both ordered touchscreens for delivery late this year, so home computers may have touchscreens by Christmas (think 10"); so this may be the way of the future. It still needs some work, though.

I'm intrigued.. Went ahead and picked up the cheapo model from amazon.. I'll post back how I like it..

I went with the "cheapo" $70 version.. couldn't see spending $200 on something that I might not like and give to my kids to destroy.. lol

I use the wacom Intuos 3 Wide format tablet tied to a 24" HP widescreen display. You need to marry up the tablet format to the display format so a standard tablet tied toa widescreen display you end up either distorting the relationship between tablet to display, or you lose the top and bottom bands of the tablet.

To be honest there is little benefit in using a tablet with SolidWorks at the moment except maybe for detailed spline use. To be worthwhile you really need to have an application that responds to the pressure sensitivity and angle of the pen - like Painter or Photoshop. Some polygonal modelling systems do use the tablet and new concept modellers like MOI are designed specifically around it.

I think there was a discussion about this a while back and I suggested then that there are some functions in SW that could be made to work with a tablet - like freeform where increased pressure increases the effect of the deformation, or even variable radius fillets, where you can sketch alon an edge and the more pressure you apply the bigger the radius.

Personally I prefer the tablet to the Cintiq as you can see the whole image you are working on with the tablet, whereas the Cintiq (aside from the bulk and cost) needs a lot of manipulation (like pen and paper).

If we do get small lightweight high resolution touchscreens these would be great, but I've not seen any decent ones yet.

This might interest yiou though:

http://macbooktouch.com/mactouch/

or one you can buy now:

http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=152

Well it just came in today.. and I like it.. Going to take a bit of getting used to, but I can see if I need to draw something freehand that its going to make things much easier than the mouse.. as for replacing my mouse.. maybe, only time will tell.. its going to be a slow transition if any..

I tried a wacom tablet for a time to try and combat a bout of RSI I was suffering from. I used it in conjunction with a free gesture recognition program called stroke-it (yes really). In the end the buttons on the pen were just to awkward for long term use for me. I now use a Evoluent vertical mouse as well as my space explorer, the mouse has five custom buttons and is proving very comfortable to use.

Yea, I dont see any real benifit, maybe if I could train myself to use it exclusively.. But there is some photoshop/paintshop stuff I need to start doing, and it should really help..