Have you ever forgotton your drawings in the overhead bin compartment of the plane, when headed to client meetings? I have. Thankfully though, I remembered them on the jet bridge. But, the panic I experienced helped me come up with a good digital back-up plan for when I have to hit the road for meetings. Maybe one day this will be the primary way we do it (who knows how quickly we’ll give up our physical drawings and trace paper, though?)
1) Take your iPad and load the app Autodesk Sketchbook Pro (these days it costs $7.99).
2) Load all your drawings as images to the iPad then insert them as layers into a fresh document of Sketchbook Pro.
3) Find your fun new stylus (Boxwave is a great brand that writes really well on the iPad).
4) Load up blank layers on top of the drawing layers you just added (these blank layers are your digital trace paper).
5) Pick your pen color, type, diameter, you-name-it from the pen selector. You’re almost ready…
6) Project your iPad screen for all your users to see and follow along:
- For a flat-screen TV presentation plug-in composite AV cables (don’t worry, Apple will sell you these.)
- For a normal projector use the iPad dock connector to VGA adapter cable (Apple will sell you this too.)
Once you’re all connected up, boom, you’re digitally sketching in your meeting. Scale might be an issue as you can change the scale of the drawing on the spot by zooming like you would in CAD or Revit. But, if you’re drawing all the time, you probably have a good feel for scale as you zoom in and out anyway. Or, you could set the zoom of a drawing near to a typical scale. As you develop options you like you can keep them as layers or you can take a print screen – forget going back to the office, putting drafting dots on possibly-tearable edges and scanning.
This is just one way to do it, I’m sure there are many more ways to conduct client meetings off-paper and digitally on tablets. Whether we will ever prefer these methods, I’m not sure. But, what I am sure of is, all of these items (iPad, stylus, cables, digital drawings) will fit nicely in your carry-on and won’t roll to the back of the overhead bin where you just might forget them as you exit the plane. Happy client meetings!
Image above from apple.com
Ashley, great article! I’ve mentioned your article on my blog-site, which is called “Reprographics 101″. My blog is for “reprographers”, and I know they will have an interest in your article. Please tell Mr. J Mark Jones (of your Dallas office) that “Joel from NGI (Florida) said hello.” (I retired from NGI when ARC bought NGI.)
Ashley, I have to agree that the iPad is one of the best tools to have as a design professional. In fact, I am writing this with my iPad as soon as I saw your tweet. A few other programs I think a design professional should consider are: Goodreader, INCHcalc, Quickagenda, GoToMeeting, Webex, Google Earth and of course AutoDesk now has CAD available. There is also a CA program by Velasystems, but I have not tried that one, yet.
As a past HKS Alumni, tell Ralph that I said, “hi”.