Excuse me if I hijack the thread for a moment.
First, I want to make clear I'm not a CAD user. I do not like CAD. To me, it is kind of a primitive software, something that resembles more painting than technical drawing, devoid of logic, full of contradicting and overlapping commands. I have a CAD package but I only use it when I have no other choice. Those guys that invented CAD had no idea of topology and it shows.
CAD is probably one of the few software packages that still has as many interfaces as software brands. It will take 100 years for manufacturers to converge, at the pace they seem they are going today. It seems as if they still have not understood 3D logic (me neither! I'm not giving a solution, I'm just complaining).
Every time you change your CAD package you are looking at a solid 1000 pages manual, don't you?And that's not counting the 1.500 pages "For Dummies" version, that is the one you really need to read. CAD is the only software I know that
always include lengthy tutorial films... I rest my case. That's, I think, the good thing of Google Sketchup: the tutorials are nice.
This view comes from the fact that I rarely draw anything but maps and my 3D things include coordinate projections and geoid changes, so I cannot speak for the majority of people in the forum.
Ashamedly, I confess I am this kind of lowly life-form that crawls in the floor of some engineering shops known as a "GIS user".
However, I've drawn with many things, from calligraphy pens on parchment to china ink on tracing paper to 3D printers and I have to say that
the critical instrument is not the software, it is the pen.
You have to take in account that I may have a very good mind for 3D drawing but my hands are very clumsy. I am not a good drawer.
The one and only subject I did not pass in my life was Drawing 101. I cannot draw a straight line using a ruler and a pencil. My technical drawing teacher once put a note on one of my exams ("Change your career!") that I'll never forget.
Anyway, that was before computers. Now I use a graphic tablet.
I have an Intuos 4. I've used everything here, since the 80's, from old Calcomps, UCLogics and DigiPros to the Genius line in the 2000's. I've had other Intuos and Bamboos and also Graphires from Wacom.
These guys at Wacom charge you more than others (start at 200 U$ or so) but they can make you happy.
The pen has an eraser (you flip it to erase). The pen holder actually works and holds the tips and the tip-exchanger tool, so, at last, I haven't lost them.
The thing has a round control, like the IPod, very intuitive. You can swivel the entire thing 180 degrees (it has extra USB ports) for lefties.
Pen and mouse are cordless and use no batteries, of course.
Oh, baby, I love you!
Compared with it, drawing anything with other instrument is like... I don't know. I still have my old china ink set and my old rapidograph set. For the old guys in the forum, it's like changing from the former to the later...
If you have to change again to a mouse... well, you feel like drawing with a potato.
A graphic tablet is not totally "natural" (for those who learned to draw with a pencil and not with a computer, of course). I still draw some things by hand, scan them and digitize them using ArcPress (it is in the ArcInfo package, to move from raster to vector: very, very good).
Now I have my sights set on the last Wacom, a Cintiq, but I'm still organizing my apartment, so... sigh.
It's a cross between a tablet and a screen (it's a screen where you can draw with the pen). It's cool and costs about a grand.
I don't know if someone knows a cheaper alternative, thanks in advance for any advice.
... dream a little dream of me...
Nobody I know shares my appreciation for graphic tablets, but I thought that maybe in this forum someone could be brave enought to raise from the chair and say "My name is XXX and I am also a graphic tablet user".
(btw, GIS users, do... not... raise. Leave me behind, save yourselves, the CAD mob has no pity, they are totally mad from reading those thick manuals!).