How much possible on tablet PC?

[zackayak]

Hi all,

I am new to architectural drawing, and am starting from scratch with new equipment and software. There's a lot to learn, so I'd really appreciate advice...

On the hardware side, I picked up a Fujitsu 5022 Tablet PC to go with my PC desktop. It's a slate with no keyboard. For software, I'm planning on using Vectorworks and Sketchup. My goal is to do as much as possible on the tablet. I'm thinking that the more I can do in the field, the more efficient and accurate I'll be. Plus, I like to be out and about.

Vectorworks seems great on the tablet. Sketchup is totally keyboard based and requires much more computing power than the tablet offers.

Here's what I think my work flow will look like:

I'll be using Vectorworks on the tablet to capture existing site & structure details and hopefully to build my working model. Then I'll bring the model home to Sketchup on my PC for design work. How far will Vectorworks take me on the tablet before I run into performance limitations (1.1 g processor, 1250 RAM, no keyboard)? It sure would be great to alter and view plans live with clients in the field.

I think that the tablet functionality I am looking for exists in a program Nemetscheck offers in Europe called Metric, but that interfaces with Allplan not Vectorworks.

What tips do you have, what other apps should I consider, am I wasting my time trying something that won't work?

Thanks for your feedback!

Zack

[islandmon]

Zackayak,

I've used a combo of keyboard,Wacom Tablet & trackball mouse since '87.

There are no input > display limitations. However, if your planning on performing 'Digitizations' on existing plan sheets that's another issue. I gave up on that approach years ago. If necessary I scan parts of plans and then reverse engineer the CAD to match. DXF/DWG is the way to get existing data into VW.

CAD is virtually inconceivable without a quality keyboard with numeric pad.