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Horus thank you so much for your long and reasoned response to my questions.
I never used CAD but we had a mould designer at my last job who worked with it to design complex injection moulds. I remember that he had a very large monitor and the pad was also large with many icons of 'tools' readily available on the pad.
I agree the videos seem to only stress that you can sign emails and write on images, not exactly what I would want. No doubt one would have to spend big bucks to get a fully functional tablet. I manage quite well with a mouse and will stick with that. I probably would do best to get a new optical mouse and spend a few bob on a decent one rather than spend on something that would not meet my expectations.
Thanks for your advice.
Edit: Horus I have always used a wired, non optical, mouse. IMO a mouse that operates with rollers is going to be less sensitive than a multi directional optical mouse. Does that make sense and what mouse do you use. The Logitech M305 has very good reviews. Do you know this mouse and have you any comments on mice please.
Glad it helped to some degree Grandad, although maybe you should see if you can try one out before dismissing the whole idea. They can as I said be used to replace a mouse and I suppose the nearest thing they can be compared to is using a ‘touch screen’ insomuch as you use the pen as a pointer device and touch the menus and options instead of left clicking your mouse. Where they do come into their own is the example you saw when a programme user can just touch and place a set of standard items into a design, so instead of say having to draw a nut and bolt or a drive motor and gearbox, they can just select a suitable icon and drop it into their design, or maybe add a certain texture at the touch of a button. The best comparison I can make is when I once spoke to a guy about flying helicopters and how difficult it must be to master that single control lever to maintain direction and stabilisation in flight and how some flying skill would be required. He surprised me by saying that the best people to train were none pilots as they had not developed certain reactions that a skilled pilot would have, so they learned to use the stick more intuitively as they did not have inbuilt reactions that could be detrimental to learning to fly one. I suppose that using a mouse is a bit like being a trained pilot and it makes the tablet less intuitive and harder to use for some people.
On the subject of “what mouse” that again can be down to preference. I like a mouse that fits nice and snugly into my cupped hand, the back of my palm, the thumb and little finger must all be able to rest on the mouse pad at the same time and my index finger reach easily to the end of the left mouse button and easily move to the right and fall onto the scroll wheel without any other hand movement required. My next finger will be resting on the right mouse button and I should be able to use my thumb and fourth finger to easily grip the sides and swish the mouse right and left by pivoting my wrist and barely moving my arm to do so and I have mine set up so that the whole of my forearm is resting flat up to the mouse mat. The mat itself will depend upon the mouse you use, but should not be too thick as this will impede the easy movement and cause your wrist to be turned upwards.
I tend to like the older pre-wired USB cable, captive ball type with just two buttons and a centre scroll wheel. These work best on a rougher surface mouse mat, but if you can try to avoid the cheaper ‘diving suit’ rubber type that are commonly sold as they get very dirty quickly and clog up the ball sensors inside the mouse. If you can, try to buy a solid surface type that will wipe down easily, but not with a glossy smooth surface as they will not work well on these, look for one that has a fine matt looking surface to it, a bit like a poorly done spray paint finish would look like. This type can be easily cleaned by removing the base and cleaning the sensor rollers if the mouse gets a bit jerky and generally they have been the best ones for longevity. They don’t have to cost a fortune and a good one that fits the bill could be picked up for around £20 or even less. The only downside is usually the drag of the cable depending upon how you have it set up by your PC. I would avoid those with a retractable cable or those very small sized ones, they are OK for occasional use with a laptop, but that’s about all.
The next category are the ‘Optical’ type that work by shining a beam onto the mouse mat and it constantly sends a signal back to the PC to calculate its position on the screen. These can be more accurate than a ball type mouse provided that you keep the hole clean on the underside and you also use a good mouse mat. Get one designed for use with an optical mouse because the rough surface ones do not work well with them, neither does a mirror or shiny reflective surface as this sends back confusing signals from the mouse. Don’t concern yourself with ‘laser’ and ‘optical’ they are much the same and it is only a reference to the type of light being used, laser sounds better to some people, but it can be used on more surfaces than optical.
All mice have a DPI rating and the higher this rating then technically the faster or more responsive the mouse will be. Generally speaking the average mouse is around 800 DPI and you can relate this to your own monitors resolution as to how far it moves across the screen for 1” of mouse movement, so a 1000 DPI mouse would move around 25% further across the screen per inch of mouse movement than an 800 DPI mouse would. These higher DPI type mice are favoured by gamers as they get a (slightly IMO) faster movement, but for most users 800 DPI would be accurate enough.
Finally, wired or wireless? You can usually buy all types in either a hard wired USB version or a wireless version. The advantages of wireless is that there is no cable to snag and they can be used further away from your PC or Laptop. The disadvantages are they can lose connectivity easily, they can react slower or lag with the screen, they use batteries. To me the big killer is the batteries, they use them up too quickly and I find them a bit unreliable, it is the one type I avoid.
As a matter of fact my own mouse has just about come to the end of its life, but I have used it every day for about 8 years, so I can’t complain. So what will I be buying? More than likely it will be a Wired USB, Optical mouse between 800 to1000 DPI and much as I described earlier, I will buy a decent one but not some fancy make with a logo on it and it will probably cost me under £20.
Grandad thanks for asking the question about Mice etc etc & Horus your advise on the tablet/pen,Cad & mice
I've no idea what you were explaining to Grandad about the tablet & Cad but I have seen Roy doing some drawings on Cad to do with his work, I only found out recently he had Cad.
As for mice the one I'm using now & the one before are Wired USB Optical both being around £9.99, I don't use a mouse mat but instead I use a blank A4 sheet of paper & it works great...one corner of the paper is stuck under my keyboard just to keep it in place.
Horus I tried holding my mouse the way you do, that was so uncomfortable for me, I have my fore finger on the left mouse button & my middle finger on right button at all times, my fore finger switches between left button & scroll really easily..........my thumb, third finger & cranny just balances on sheet of paper.
Its all down to what each is comfortable with me thinks
Horus I tried holding my mouse the way you do, that was so uncomfortable for me, I have my fore finger on the left mouse button & my middle finger on right button at all times, my fore finger switches between left button & scroll really easily..........my thumb, third finger & cranny just balances on sheet of paper.
I think we are both describing the same thing Kiya, but I used the term 'index finger' instead.
The optical mice will work on just about anything, I have even used one on my knee the main thing though is to avoid anything shiny or reflective as it can give a false feedback of its true position.
There are lots of different CAD programmes available depending upon what you need to do with them and they are extremely clever programmes. I love using anything that is graphically based love designing using them, one of the best is AutoCAD, but it is very expensive unless you have a friend who uses it. At one time I would spend hours creating full 3D creations just for the fun of it, but nowadays I don't use it that often, maybe I should keep it up though.
Did Parts 1,2 & 3 of Paths today took most of the afternoon
I got a bit stuck along the way in Part 2 but phew!!!! I think I got there in the end...................just my usual carry ons with layers.
When working on Layers for each curve am I supposed to see the curve's in the thumbnails?? I wasn't seeing anything till I changed tool & switched to Paths tab, all seemed to be working there ok, swithching off/on,the colour of curve's being in the right order etc
Kiya, you won't see the curves on any Layer that you put them on regardless of whether you are looking at the thumbnails in LAYERS or in PATHS unless you go into the PATHS tab after you draw them and switch on the 'eye' icon to make the Path visible. When you do that it will then be visible in either the LAYERS or PATHS view as a red line, so it looks like you are seeing it correctly.
Well saying as you asked and Roy may be interested in seeing them, here are a couple.
This one is of an old oil lamp of which we have a pair at home, so one day when I was bored I did an exact dimentional drawing of it in 3D. As you can see by looking at some parts of the drawing it has to be constructed in every dimemension, height width and depth and this wire frame image could be rotated and turned in any direction you would want to look at it, like turning a ball in your hands, nothing is missing and things not visible in this view would become so if it were rotated. I have added a 'render' to the frame to make it look more real, so nothing you see here is a picture or a painting, it is all created within the programme.
This one is of a motorbike rear suspension unit and I did it to create a spiral spring which at the time was very difficult to do, but maybe with later versions it is now an easy process, this is how the wireframe would look.
This is how it looks when I add some materials and some colours to make the 'render' look more realistic and notice how although you cannot still see the spring all the way up, it is still there because it exists in the wireframe drawing above.
Thank goodness I got the paths right but it would take me to this time next year to make a nice pattern
Your AutoCad drawings are fantastic !! I can only imagine the time it took you to do that .
I've seen a couple of drawings Roy has done, I think its massive turbines he works with for the oil rigs but he always tells me to go & not disturb him while he's working at home
I've told you before about my father at 15yrs old losing his father & his 3 elder brothers at sea on the family boat, a little time after he went through a series of operations on his feet & ankles.
While he was recuperating at home & the family tragedy still making headlines in all newspapers worldwide a Lord blah blah from around Stirling way took pity on my father & his mother ( no benefits in them days ) this Lord offered to pay all expenses for my father to attend Glasgow Uni for 2yrs training to be a draftsman ( they thought it was the right course to go because my father being disabled ) after his 2 yrs was up & passing all exams till the final one..............they failed him, why!!! because he was left handed.
I believe from this at that time a draftsmans tools were only made for right handed people & nowadays they are made for right/left .
We just couldn't see that happening today....huh!!
Although we might seem to be drifting off topic here I think it can be said that much of what we are learning with Gimp is the basic principles of CAD design. Our mould designer at my last job also used Autocad and Kiya you may be interested to know that CD discs of his designs could be loaded into a CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine and his design which was created on a flat screen would be converted into a 3 dimensional mould tool for producing any of the plastic or rubber items you may have around your home, all automatically and with great precision.
It seems extreme that your father was rejected as a draughtsman for being a leftie. I imagine that at the time drawing boards were parallel motion which can certainly be used by left or right handed draughtsmen. I worked as a draughtsman for two years after leaving the RAF in 1957. The office was equipped with drafting machines which could only be used by a right handed draughtsman.
Perhaps they used parallel motion boards for training and drafting machines for final tests. I sounds very hard on him if they did not identify earlier that as a leftie he would have problems. Fortunately Cad systems today are ambi-dexterous.
I should have said earlier....it had been in the late 1930's when my father went to Glasgow Uni where they failed him, that 's why he was so disappointed after having done 2 yrs.
I can assure you it is a true story later he worked as a precision engineer at a airport ( i forget which one ).
I can remember myself sometimes when I went to school dinners our headmaster really getting on at pupils for holding their knife in their left hand, he would grab the knife from the pupil & place it in his right hand & say you dont you your left hand here
What a shame about your father Kiya and yes I can see why he may have had difficulty with with some of the earlier draughting equipment, he probably failed due to his speed rather than his ability as he just felt awkward using some items with him being left handed and they would have set a time limit on the exam. That attitude prevailed in many schools Kiya and it even extended to handwriting, how many poor souls were forced to write with the wrong hand?
Regarding the drawings being used on CNC machines they usually have to be converted into a DXF file or similar so that the machines can read them, although this is a choice available to you when saving a file in AutoCad. Most people do not realise that the machine is only following a set of digital instructions and it is entirely down to the skill of the CAD designer to get every minute detail correct, so you really do have to know your subject very well in order to draw it in manufacturing detail especially where machining is involved otherwise the machine just produces junk. One of the latest inventions I enjoyed producing files for was laser profile cutting machines as you could produce very complex developed pattern shapes in materials such as Stainless Steel that only needed to be pressed up and welded to become a finished item, you could even adjust the tollerance on the tapping size of holes it was so accurate, ah! happy days.
We were discussing mice about a week ago and my desire to get a better one than the Microsoft wired ball mouse that I have used for years.
I like Logitech products and after much deliberation I purchased a Logitech M510, £25 at Amazon. I disregarded many others of all brands because they were just too small for my hand. This one is a good size that fills my palm with all buttons where I need them. It has very comprehensive control adjustment from the downloaded driver and a very sensitive movement detection. I can use it directly on my desktop so don't need a mat.
As in the future I will be using PSE11 quite a lot I have programmed the 2 additional buttons for undo/redo last actions; left scroll wheel for show/hide tool options; and right scroll wheel for show/hide layers. These are actions that I found I needed to frequently return to with the mouse and the buttons make things faster.
I have just done the same myself, I finished up with a Microsoft Comfort Mouse 6000 and that cost me £20, like yours it will work on any surface, but I do like a mat of some kind. As I had not spent as much as I thought I would I availed myself of an offer they had at the time of a 1200mm long X 600mm wide (yes you read that correctly ) mat, it is very thin material but always lays flat and has a black not relective cleanable surface to it. The idea is that you can put all your stuff on the top and move any sort of mouse about wherever you like.
Forgot to say that in typical retail outlet logic I asked for the medium size mat as they did them in Large (the one I have) Medium and a Standard mouse mat size. "Well the Medium one is £17 sir and the Large one is £11" apparently it was reduced from £25 in this weeks special offer, but the medium wasn't, so I had a large with the intention of cutting it down. However I have left it full size as it fits nicely on my work area, just have to keep the coffee stains and crumbs off it now.
By the way I also used the custom buttons, but I use mine as forwards & back buttons when browsing.
I also downloaded Elements 5.0 from you know where, just for the sake of it.
Another thing you can usually do Grandad is to change the speed of the Scroll wheel and the sensitivity of the mouse click, it should be in a settings programme somewhere that was installed, probably the same place as the button setting options.
Horus wrote:Another thing you can usually do Grandad is to change the speed of the Scroll wheel and the sensitivity of the mouse click, it should be in a settings programme somewhere that was installed, probably the same place as the button setting options.
They are all in Control Panel>Mouse and much more, such as default pointer to 'accept' in options windows and hide pointer whilst typing. My option to set 'scroll wheel right' to F11 (show/hide layers panel in PSE11) is proving useful because F11, full screen, is something often used in any app;ication.
So far so good, I am happy with the new mouse and the fact that I can work anywhere on the desktop and don't run out of space as was sometimes the case with a modest sized mat.
From this place Grandad: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/
They have recently moved from the address shown into a very big wharehouse type unit, but they are mainly an online company. Fortunately for me it is within a reasonable distance and as it is located on the outside of the city I can drive into there without encountering much traffic and be in and out again on a fast link road to the M6 motorway so it is reasonably handy to use.
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