Fancy SOLIDWORKS input device

A fun thing about teaching SOLIDWORKS is that every class is different.

This week, Matthew Carter is in my SOLIDWORKS Essentials class. By the end of the first day he was tired of using 3DVision’s “tired old keyboard/mouse/monitor system” so Tuesday he brought in his own setup.

Several months ago Microsoft unveiled some of their touch screen computing input devices. Since, I have been wondering how useful these would be in the CAD world. I have never actually used one of these myself; but it appears after an eight hour day, you would be pretty tired flapping your arms around all day, and I wonder how accurate your picks would/could be using chubby little fingers as a selection tool.

(Here we see Matt working on his Wacom Cintiq 21UX) The concept of the system isn’t really any different than a tablet PC -but the biggest advantage I saw is it is small enough to place in a good working position close to you, but sturdy enough to stand on its own so you can rest your arms on it. He seemed to be pretty fast on it!

Matt wouldn’t let me test my theory on if it was strong enough for me to rest my head and take a little nap on it….IMHO this would be a required feature! [Except in my SOLIDWORKS class.]