Wacom Tablet Rocks!

[Scott Hopkins]

After reading Jeffrey’s glowing endorsements, I ran out and bought a Wacom Graphire 3 tablet this weekend. I went for the stylish all-white model. It only took a few minutes to get it up and running on my machine. I have to admit my fist impression well less than favorable. I hated the darn thing! With so many years of mousing under my belt, the Wacom pen pointer felt awkward and unnatural. It seemed jerky and impossible to control. But after about 20 minutes of playing around with it and refining the settings, the Wacom pen began to grow on me. Within an hour I was hooked and saw the light. I can’t believe I didn’t get one of these things sooner. It just feels so good! I think Jeffrey is right, it will probably make me about 20% faster on Revit. The pen has two settings, “pointer style” and “mouse style”. While the “pointer style” feels more like real paper, I found the “mouse style” requires a lot less arm and shoulder movement. By the way, the companion mouse that comes with that the tablet is excellent and will most likely be what I use for word documents and the like.

The only down side as far as I can see is that it is a bit of a hassle to put down and pick up the pen in between typing text. The Graphire 3 comes with a little pen stand, I guess I’ll just have to get in the habit of using it. Also problematic is the lack of a scroll wheel. I double splurged and replaced my 6 year old keyboard with a new Logitech keyboard with built in scroll wheel. Now I’m on fire!

[gregcashen]

Scott, this is the exact setup that I have, though I NEVER use a mouse anymore. I own 3 wacoms now and find it a real hassle to go back to the mouse.

I think Jeffrey has posted on this before, but what I generaly do is, if I am going to be typing a lot, I will put the pen down, otherwise I have gotten used to typing short sentences with it in my fingers....sort of spread between my right ring finger and thumb, with my pointer and middle fingers resting over it...sort of feels like chopsticks at first, but not too bad after a while.

It will definitely make you more productive over time. It will also get you used to using some of the zooming and panning shortcuts, such as holding the shift and the front/bottom button on the pen to pan and the shift+ctrl and the button to zoom (I think I go that right...it's sort of second nature, so I forget about) I always use the scroll wheel on the keyboard. Also use the shift and ctrl and shift+ctrl modifiers to constrain movement when moving and copying and to determine whether I want to move or copy objects when using the move commands.

[Chad Smith]

This has really got me interested in a tablet now.
I've have never seen one in real life, but my most curious question is, how do you know where your cursor is in relation to the pad? I'm guessing as you hover the pen slightly over the tablet (not touching) that it senses the pen moving.

[Wes Macaulay]

Chad, you're totally correct. Pointer speed is irrelevant on a tablet because the tablet detects the location of the stylus.

[PeterJ]

I have gotten used to typing short sentences with it in my fingers....sort of spread between my right ring finger and thumb, with my pointer and middle fingers resting over it...sort of feels like chopsticks at first, but not too bad after a while.

You're so clean living, Greg. I think of this as being like working with a lit cigarette between my fingers.

[Les Therrien]

excuse my ignorance. I am usually more ubeat on tech info. I have seen these before mostly being used by graphic designer.
I went to their website but it doesn't really give me a feel for the product.
What advantages would I gain by using one of these tablets (aside from no sore wrists - dirty minded people please don't go there!)

please tell me more!!!

[Steve_Stafford]

Les, check this THREAD and THIS . These devices have generated interesting discussions...I even bought one because of it.

[Les Therrien]

Steve, do you like using it?

[Steve_Stafford]

Use it exclusively at home, brought it to work and back for a month or so and then got lazy. I also wasn't doing a lot of drafting at that point either.

If you don't use a pen or pencil much, you may find your arm is tired after a days use. After a week or so of heavy drafting my upper arm and shoulder started to hurt. So I stopped using it for a few days...pain subsided and I started to examine how I was using it and discovered I had lousy form. With better form the pain hasn't returned and I really like it. The mouse feels clumsy now. It is amazing how much quicker you can execute a series of commands with the pen instead.

I have the Graphire II and recall some discussion here about driver issues for the Graphire III but I can't substantiate anything. I do believe the smaller tablet is what you want for cadd vs the large for graphics (photoshop).

Read the other threads and you should hear what you need to hear I think.

[gregcashen]

Definitely go with the smallest pad you can get...4x5 for wacom. I actually have mine setup so that I only use the bottom-left 1/4 of the pad for the whole screen, or in the case of my dual monitor setup at work, I use the bottom half, with the left 1/4 being for the left monitor and the right for...you get it.

The issue with the Graphire 3 v. the Graphire 2 is that the 3 gave up support for program specific settings. I buy only Wacom Graphire2's from ebay...about $60-65 or so, which is cheaper than the $100 graphire3.