90's CAD Digitizer and AutoCAD - CalComp DrawingBoard II
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- Опубліковано 24 сер 2024
- CAD designers benefited heavily from the intrinsic math capabilities of computers but clashed with the text only nature of early systems. So they were one of the first sets of users to need more human native input devices. Enter the CAD Digitizer! I got this much later CalComp Drawingboard II as an example of them and was able to get it working! After much work and frustration though.
Drivers for Windows:
archive.org/de...
Drivers for DOS:
archive.org/de...
Shoutout to RetroCAD for finding DOS drivers!
/ retrocad
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having spend about 25000€ on Autocad.. I have to say the difference between the 2023 version and the 1997 version is surprisingly small...
why did you do updates then?
If you’re working with other companies, I’m sure they’re not using AutoCAD ‘97 nor will they save down for your convenience.
Maybe only when the Express tools were added, the rest is the same old rope.
Nah, it lacks a lot of functionality. It only has like the bare minimum.
It's not small. Autodesk expanded many functions in Autocad: like tracing, snaping options, 3d objects, upgraded how many commands work, added configurable CUI, added option to define own property set definitions, etc.
I recently retired after 42 years in computer aided design/engineering. I go back to when digitizing drawings and PCB layouts was CAD’s primary function (look up Computervision CADDS 1). I started my career using the big brother to the digitizer you have there (4 feet x 4 feet). I digitized hundreds of PCB layouts where the draftsman would hand draw the PCB layout using templates for the chips and discrete parts. And when I say templates I mean a piece of plastic they’d use a pencil to draw in the component pads. Traces were drawn in green for the top of the trace layout and red for the back. My job was to trace all of these into the computer where the proper thickness of the trace appeared on the computer screen as well as the solder pads and vias. These drawings were large 4:1 or greater. The final process was the photoplot the results at 1:1 onto film which is then used to fabricate the boards. Over the intervening years, CAD/CAE became more and more powerful and user friendly. I’ve worked with Intergraph IGDS, AutoCAD, but mostly Bentley Systems’ MicroStation. What ALL CAD systems even to this day have in common is complexity. What happens is as CAD became more sophisticated, the amount of information embedded into the designs increased requiring more specialization and integration into the entire design/build process.
Use any modern CAD software? If so, have any recommendations?
@Mr Guru I'd like to use AutoCAD, but since they went SaaS that's a giant no. What would you recommend for general purposes that hasn't gone SaaS? Preferably something with a built-in scripting language.
@Mr Guru This is true, but as I don't have AutoCAD now, getting an older version would require piracy because AutoDesk doesn't sell it anymore. As for what I would want it for, my Dad, but how and why the situation is what is would take too much for a YT comment. I'll have to see if I can't take some time to get him to learn FreeCAD which I don't actually know myself because I've never done drafting work.
We now live in a mature time where you can have a COMPUTER CAD career spanning 42 years. That's amazing that you stuck with it for basically your entire career length, nice one!
@@anon_y_mousse Rhinoceros... not Saas.. and a lot of commands work just like Autocad (you can do first class 3D, but drawings are ok too)
I used AutoCAD heavily in the 90s. My first "real job" I had in high school was tutoring a local architect firm in AutoCAD so they could transition from manual drafting to computer. Being 14/15 years old and "working" at a Architect firm - when most of my friends were working at fast food restaurants sure did a lot for my teen ego. Lol. Luckily, despite living in a rural area we had a fantastic technology teacher at the school, and a very successful chapter of "Technology Student Association" and one of the competitions every year was CAD.
Some friends and I shared around a pirated copy of AutoCAD (If I remember correctly it was like 50+ floppy disks.) I used to be annoyed that my nights spent on IRC and ICQ (remember ICQ? "uh-oh!" lol) because my left hand was much faster typing than my right from all the hours and hours using AutoCAD and entering commands with my left hand. Those were the days, staying after school in the computer lab to play Duke, Descent, Wacky Racers, Hi-Octane, GTA 1, etc with my friends. My "senior project" was I set up a mIRC server and had the class chatting with each other - which was very, very easy to do, but at the time - the teachers didn't know that.
It is probably my rose-tinted glasses, but I feel like the mid 80s - late 90s where quite the time to be into computers and tech and I am just grateful that the technology teacher and programs at my high school were batting far above average considering the area. Great video and brought back some great memories.
I was in a similar situation. My first job was "technically" a stockboy at the local grocery store, but I decided to get a head start on my college career during my junior/senior years in high school and so I started attending night school at the local technical college my junior year. I was majoring in industrial electronics. About 3 months after I started the job at the grocery store, a woman working for BAE Systems (defense contractor) decided to go back to school and get her electronics degree for a salary raise. She was not doing well and I was asked by the professor to tutor her. We got to chatting about where she worked and why she was back in school and I asked about any open part-time positions. Three weeks later, I had a job making double what I was making at the grocery store and doing a job I was far more interested in. I worked there for another 3 years until BAE decided to close that facility and merge it with one of their other locations, by that time I had graduated high school and was headed off to university, though I did hate to see so many of the people I had become friends with loose their jobs... some of them had been working there 20+ years.
My first real CAD job used a version of this tablet in the early 90s. My tablet had specific functions on the left and top with a "drawing" area in the lower right. You could select the commands with the puck (not mouse) or use the keyboard. I was alot faster using my left for the key commands as I didn't have to move the puck off the lines I was drawing.
I went to a local technical college sometime around 2000 that assigned you an IBM laptop that you got to keep upon completion of the course. At this school I discovered Counter Strike 1.2, so I failed the course. I am now an HVAC and refrigeration technician.
When autocad 13 for Windows came out, digitizers went out the window. With menus you don't need to use digitizers. Autocad 12 for DOS was the last one.
Your excited - Imagine being a 14 year old in the 80's and discovering your high school's new CAD lab with its dozen of Olivetti M24 computers + Summasketch digitizers and wicked HP plotters. I spent more time in that lab then the computer lab with its boring old TRS-80s.
Wow, nice highschool. That's amazing
That's one big highschool Budget?
My high school drafting instructor still had a pen plotter back in 2004. They didn't use it much but, it was interesting to watch it draw (print) out a page line by line.
Wow, my first hs had TRS-80s, the one's that looked like bowling ball returns, and I learned to touch type on those. Then my second hs had Autocad setups with the digitizers and a cool plotter, and I designed a whole house in class, and plotter printed it out. We would all sit and stare as it printed. I know the same excitement!
I used one of these for years during my early days of drafting (91-97). The mouse thing is called a digitizer puck. The clear area was there for customization. You could create lisp routines in AutoCAD (LT had a scaled down macro set, from what I remember) and map them to 'squares' in the upper area where you would place a hand drawn or printed sheet under the mat with icons representing your custom commands. Typically it was used for inserting common blocks especially in the plumbing, electrical and HVAC worlds.
I literally went to my PC (was watching originally on my TV) just so I could come to the comments and say exactly what you did, lol. I've always missed working with this back in the day... like 27+ years ago.
LISP (shutters)
I used this exact setup in my vocational class in high school back in the 90e. I felt like I was using a million dollar mouse lol. When the teacher upgraded to Autocad 2000 we all thought we were living in the future.
I miss those days for so many reasons. Thank you for this video.
I drove by my structural engineer friend's office the other day to pick him up, he was working on some AutoCAD / SCADA stuff at the time and man, they still work like that for the most part! The things people in the '90s came up with are truly amazing. Thanks for the great video!
The only time I ever used the tablet mode to trace a paper drawing was for bringing in topographic maps. The most amazing thing was programming the digitizer puck buttons. We came up with a technique for having a shift key so you could have 25+ commands and osnaps on-hand.
Shelby, your left hand is usually on the keyboard issuing commands like L, Enter to draw a line. It's vector based, so you click at each line endpoint using a snap. I use microstation every day but I'm remembering Autocad 14 from back in the 90s.
Funny, I retired two years ago from Bentley Systems after 25 years of service. Your name rings a bell.
@@FrankConforti hi Frank :)
I've only messed with AutoCad 13 to AutoCad 2000. I miss using AutoCad.
I remember the CAD systems at college, running in DOS, dual screens (one for the commands) and I think the tablet also had command shortcuts on it. The full on versions of AutoCAD needed a dongle.
Ah the early days of DRM.
Back on AutoCAD 14, I replicated the menu system from the tablet to pop up in AutoCAD using AutoLisp.
It had the icons and you could click on different tabs.
in the mid 90's the tablets were already falling out of favor.
Wow, AutoLisp. I'd almost forgotten about that!
I love the absolute excitement you have in your videos. As always, I love the content. Also haven't seen Autocad LT since High School. Probably somewhere in '96 or '97. We never got to use the tablet though, or the HUGS plotter.
I remember digitizing paper maps in a Geography department at university in the 90s. We used a massive digitizing table about a metre squared. The crosshair controller is called a puck.
This brought back some memories of High School Tech Drawing. You're gonna need a plotter now.
I was a drafter in the 1990's and used a digitizer with a 16-button puck. We used Personal Designer by ComputerVision, now owned by PTC I believe. It was a wireframe 3D CAD that let you do some fun things like entering a formula to generate input (such as to generate a spiral for a screw). The puck buttons could be programmed with macros to seriously speed up the work. We designed printers, some of which I still see in operation today!
Yes, sends me right back to 1997 engineering school. Windows 3.11, when we all were done with our CAD assignments in the lab, we quickly tried to start Trumpet Winsock and Netscape Navigator, which took EXACLTY 65 seconds to start on the lab PCs, and locked Alt+Tab in win311 for that time. So we did CAD, waited till the teacher made his rounds, started the browser, and when he returned alt tabbed. The rest was clever pretending to use the keyboard for input (which we learned to do as well, so was believable)
Your comment sent me right back to 2009 Singaporean primary school. Windows XP, and before the MOE required schools to use Symantec BlueCoat and Cicada Cube to block websites, while we were working on assignments, assuming bullies don't ruin or outright permanently delete them (that sadly happened to me a few times as I was a popular target for bullies), we would open the outdated Internet Explorer 6 and try to use that to watch UA-cam and access other websites, particularly Flash game websites like Y3, Y8, Miniclip, and of course, Club Penguin and Neopets. We had to switch between the software we were supposed to be using and Internet Explorer.
I love to see at work all this kind of devices, totally out of my reach back then of course, and often for very niche usage, that I saw in tech magazines. Thank you!
I was involved in setting up AutoCad on a 386/66 in 1990 on DOS. We had a similar digitiser, a powerful (for the time) graphics card and a massive CRT monitor. The hardware was around £6,000. The main thing I remember was the extreme configuration of config.sys and autoexec.bat needed to get the drivers to load.
In my Youth Training Scheme days (a weird UK modern attempt to replace apprenticeship, it didn't really work though) I was placed at an architects company. This would have been around '90 ish. They were very old school and everything was done on tracing paper. Some of their drawing equipment was from the 40's. They had two computers - a horrible Amstrad PCW thing and an IBM 5150 which was hooked up to an A0 sized plotter that nobody in the company knew how to make chooch. Me being in college at the time, could use both and they were in awe when I showed them how to draw simple line diagrams in Basic on the Amstrad (that was it's limit). I mostly used the IBM to play Space Invaders 🙂 although I could use the plotter. However, the partners both refused to 'go digital' and believed it was all just a fad and would go away eventually. The small amount of gear they did have cost them a fortune and they never saw any return (being totally computer illiterate and refusing to invest in any training). Fond memories though.
That was a common word to say at the time FAD , I used to in systems support , I would say to them , 'you can't disinvent the wheel,'
Man, this thing is so cool. I love being able to see the copper circle used to track the movement.
when i was in trade school, and used autoCAD it just came out in 1993, the plotter and the software was state-of-the-art.
we had a lot of fun!
Wow. I never thought that I would see things like this again. At the end of 90's or early 00's we had one like this at home, but with the different branding. It had pen, two mices and multiple inlays, but was just used as a tablet.
Blast from the past. In the last 80s I worked at a electronics store that had the "salvage contract" with Calcomp (just a stone's throw away). Being the 80's version of techies we pieced systems back together and "just like that", I had a 1023 E size plotter, and still do. I don't think I've turned it on for years (just like my wife). Of course that was a No-No under the salvage contract rules. But I'll risk it. Very COoL video and GR8T post edits. Cheers!
With LSP command abbreviations, I could run circles around a CAD tech using a digitizer. Also the 4 button puck was the way to go with the tablet.
Oh yes, multi-monitor setups... when I started working at an electrical engineering company in 2007 I had to dig up an old CRT from some back room to get a second monitor because the company was too cheap to get me a second TFT. My computer also had Windows 2000 because they'd run out of XP licences. Judging by the admin's complaints the hours he spent installing service packs and updates probably outweighed the cost of another XP licence. Oh and you could make it crash due to lack of RAM trying to open Autocad drawings with overly complex layouts.
The worst thing though was that the office was fairly close (maybe 50 m) from a railway line and every single time a big electric locomotive passed by the image of my CRT would start bouncing. I have absolutely no idea how the employees survived the 90s and early 2000s in that office, before TFTs!
I worked with Ford and installed quite a few tablets from various vendors. Once the tablet is setup and calibrated, the template is a godsend.
I've always loved old CAD software for some reason. It's crazy to think how much these old programs cost when you can pick up a modern equivalent for just a few bucks off eBay.
my husband, a land surveyor, thought this was neat! great video!
Love your caahnnel. I'm watching with coffee a few times a week to bring me back to my Tandy1000 days when I was just a kid hacking ms-dos games. Thanks buddy!!
Wow, that's such a cool device. I think your results would be neater and faster if you'd enable "ortho" and limit possible angles to ie. 45 degrees. It's also easy to toggle on/off with f8 iirc.
Edit: That must have been really good device for designers before. Those aren't bad results for such little usage. Really helpful for digitizing old equipment schematics etc.
It's so funny (in a good) way to see you're excitement when it starts to work.
Olha só isso... Eu passei toda a minha infância do anos 90 querendo um deste. Sempre via este equipamento em documentários e livros. Mas o tempo se passo, mas nunca vi um pessoalmente. O próprio Auto CAD, já era uma verdadeira lenda . " Olha vc pode desenhar o que quiser com ele..." Era tanta expectativa, que quando eu finalmente fui trabalhar com o CAD, já não tinha mais graça.
Wow that brings back high school memories. I learned CAD in a drafting class on AutoCad 9 (DOS) using that digitizer.
Wow, thanks for the memories! I remember using these digitizers back in 1992-1995. I took CAD in HS and we were rocking Autocad R12. The Digitizer always drove me nuts until I had everything configured just right. I loved how everything was basically a hotkey. Took for another year in college before switching over to graphic design. I still have an old version of Autocad LT somewhere on one of my computers. This has me wanting to buy a Wacom Bamboo tablet now and start whipping up things to either make on the 3d printer, or cut out with the CNC router. Awesome vid.
I’ve got a couple Of those with my dads Hyundai 286. I also have release 12 on dos and I think the one for windows which came out directly after. Imma go dig. I know the brand I had was summasketch. About 1.5 wider and longer. It was really
Cool cuz when you drop it on the pad it immediately drops to that location on screen
Yasss, I've been interested in old CAD software for the longest time
Note 2: they were used mainly for drawing, as a mouse with tools, not for "scanning" objects. For a circuit diagram, you would turn on the grid function in Acad.
I'm more than 20 years working with AutoCad and I remember this tablet perfectly. Was the best to draw in Cad topographic planes from paper. Vintage tool 🔥
I remember using a mouse and point position calculations. . .and banging my head against the desk. This was super cool.
Man that overlay was an amazing surprise. Usually you hear the word "overlay card" and tech and you think cheap hacky junk, but this one lowkey seems reasonable even today. Especially if you're already looking at the tablet vs a screen having tools there to use saves looking up.
I administered a college CAD lab back in the day. We used Summagraphics tablets, which appear to be pretty similar. The overlay menus were super handy and could be used with some other apps too, as I recall.
Damm I'm a draftsman with 5 years of experience and it's nice watching this video because I got to see what someone had to do once upon a time and I'm in new era and one day I'm going to get old and there ways of drafting.
That thing is so, so cool. I love the way it got applied to the document area instead of screenspace.
Wow this brings back some old memories. I like the excitement for something that you didn't use in the wild back in the day.
The very first CAD program I learned back in my 2003-2004 junior year of high school was AutoCAD. I never got to use this type of hardware but, remember my teacher having some of these style of input devices in the classroom. Your video is very interesting.
This is very cool! Right now one of my projects at college is to figure out a 3D digitizer. It is basically like an articulating desktop crane with a stylus on the end. You can trace over an object to record all the points. It was made in 2007 but is apparently worth a pretty penny. Making peripherals work is always fun!
I used something similar on DOS running AutoCAD v11/12 many... many... years ago :) It made things so much faster because AutoCad for DOS didn't really have a toolbar. Without a tablet you would type all the commands on the keyboard using shortcuts setup in a user defined config file. On the early DOS versions of AutoCAD the config for the tablet was fairly daunting but very configurable. All the config you did was done with co-ordinates in the config file. Later there were AutoLISP configurators written that, at least, helped setup the tablet. Then, ironically, you would use the tablet to draw your own custom template that you would plot on paper and insert under the clear cover.
Yep, V12 was the first that came with both DOS and Windows installations. It was night and day. v10 could do 3D video but a dozen frames with more than 3 primary objects and a curvy camera path could easily take 20min to compile and the rendering was still sketchy looking.
Learned AutoCAD in the 90s. I vaguely remember these.
Something that was drilled in to us in school was to set your Grid, Snap, and Limits first thing starting a new drawing.
We used AutoCAD 12 on DOS in high school, which I had a copy on my 286 notebook. I bought a 287 coprocessor separately for speed up the software. It was a significant speedup after installing it. I met once with AutoCAD 1.0 as well on an XT machine.
Of course, a digitizer was just a dream (actually, a lack of dreams, we didn't know what to use it for). But a plotter really took place on our/my wishlist on my "AutoCAD hardware."
This digitizer in the video could be competitive with today's drawing board (I believe) because of the multiple buttons. With the right software and use case, of course.
"Protocad 3D" in the mid 90s was pretty cool, particularly for fitting on 1 floppy disk, and being shareware from memory.
Looking at that desk gave me a dejavú feeling of 1995. Holy duck.
Oh my goodness. I think my dad (an architect) used one of these at, or maybe just a bit before, this exact era. He got into AutoCAD starting with an 80386 at first, if I recall correctly.
in the osu! community, a few people have put a tennis ball on a wacom pen so they could have a "mouse-like" shape with absolute positioning, but it seems like CalComp had this figured out AND SOME in the 90's.
I ran Autocad 9 through 11 in the early 90s. IBM 386 computer with 1 meg of ram and 20meg hard drive. What I miss most doing cad now is the Calcomp digitizer! I want one for modern cad. Also, mine used a pen - which was very intuitive
Lovely ViewSonic monitor. I grew up with the exact same one.
I worked for a small GIS company in the early 90's. Serial digitizers were very expensive. The "puck" should track nicely across the surface. There was a "universal" driver WINTAB at one time for windows 95 that allowed for mouse input. There were many output formats the data packets from the tablet, but some where widely supported. I suspect if you had the manual you could use the tablet menu to select these.
One of the products the company i worked for had was SAMI, Semi-Automatic Map Input. Basically it digitized a scanned maps by following the lines. You could still use the puck to select lines, type and objects. I saw a guy use it to digitize a map of a fjord in Alaska in one day. Normally it wa a 3 day operation.
Awesome throwback comments and very interesting video
The big advantage to the tool buttons on the digitizer is that you could keep one hand on the cursor and the other on the keyboard to fill in quick commands. I used the Summasketch equivalent to yours in my AutoCAD classes in 1995-99. A few years ago, I ended up with a box of several Summasketch I, II, and III digitizers.
I use my gtco calcomp tablet a lot. I run a cnc plasma and laser cutting shop and some customers does not have CAD files for his parts. This tablets are amazing for digitize templates and cut very accurate parts.
You need to check out 3D mice for orbiting in 3D CAD environments. They are so cool and basically necessary once you know how to use it lol. I’m sure there are some old vintage ones designed for older windows releases.
This reminds me of my undergraduate classes at Cal-Poly Pomona (circa 95-96). Unfortunately at the time there was no Computer Engineering specific studies, so we got lumped in with the Electrical Engineering tracks all the time. I had 4 semesters of Design classes, and only two of those were using CAD. We were using AutoCAD 12 (DOS Version) at the time, and had a few stations that had similar drawing boards (although they were very large!). One of my professors did not enjoy anything computer related, and made us draft out our designs on paper first... then grade them, then finally transfer to CAD. What a Nightmare! I seem to remember using the Pen a LOT instead of the mouse looking thing. The pen seem to make life a lot easer when transferring schematics over to AutoCAD. So glad I don't have to do that anymore!
2008 is when eInstruction bought GTCO CalComp. Speaking of eInstruction is a name I haven't seen in years. Worked for them in 2009. Wild to think that so many companies I have worked for have been bought out or gone out of business that I have worked for.
A blast from the past...
I had that exact model. Wow, such a walk through memory lane. I now use a Wacom One Pen Display.
I remember ITT Tech using B-roll footage in their commercials of this digitizer/puck
AutoCAD LT was the bane of a drafter’s existence BITD; it was cheap enough that engineers could buy it as an office expense, and if they found where the drawings were kept in the server, they could do some real damage.
I still have my Digi-Tab II, as well as a 36"x36" version hanging on my office wall. It's pretty cool. Started with Autocad and DCA in 1988.
I remember as a kid seeing a lot of 90's AutoCAD. And those digitizers! And then in the 2010's I got a job running 90's CATIA. Good times.
I'm 45 years old and I didn't believe this stuff was really real. It was sci-fi stuff till now!! :)
I saw someone using this with modern windows, and they only NOW switched, because they wanted rubber buttons because they didn't flare up their RSI, and they swapped to the 8bitdo NES mouse. good for them.
That is cool
My father used to use this tablet for AutoCAD. Well, it was the DrawingBoard III.
autocad is still stuck in the 90s to this day
In my drafting Vo-Tech class, I started with AutoCAD r10 in 1994 on a Summagraphics digitizer. Being a younger student, I was envious of the older kids on r12. I’ve used r14, 2000i, 2002, 2004, 2006 arch desktop, 2008, 2012 and finally got on the subscription plan two years ago. I still type out commands like using r10. I could set world records typing “qsave” with my left hand without looking. My “esc” buttons are always worn smooth from using it that much. Most of the new features I’ve learned the commands for as well, as I like tying them more than hunting for them in the toolbars. Yes, I know I can make my own but I’m a curmudgeon and I’ve been doing it that way for 28 years.
AutoCAD LT 97? Now that sounds very familiar. My mum used it in her job back in the '90s/very early 2000s (before upgrading to 2000 or 2003). She was an engineer working for ABB, designing the mechanical and hydraulic aspects of high power transformers for electrical grids all over the world. She had so much work at some point that she had to do part of it at home, so she borrowed the CD and we installed AutoCAD on our PC. It took a lot more time, but then no one heard about SSDs back then, and who cared about licences? It was all about getting things done, haha. I even tried my hand at designing something but got frustrated pretty quickly.
RTFM can be misleading, haha! Cool device anyway :)
Some digi-pads could be mounted under the desk surface giving a cleaner appearance for your workspace.
After several weeks (on and off) I finally stumbled on the solution to the same issue you were having regarding the Fixed Screen Pointing Area. Go back to the GTCO Tabletworks Control Panel. I only have "enable" and "mouse" checked across the top. Open the cursor TAB and make sure "absolute" and "enable mapping" are checked. "Apply". Go back to AutoCad and CFG the menu again (not CAL.). If that doesn't work, you'll have to wait for my upload. Cheers!
I used to create my own custom menus for those tablets. AutoCad has menu files that you can manipulate with a text editor. It was handy for making macros. Also, I was always a fan of the Kurta tablets. I miss those.
i learned cad on AutoCAD 12 in 11th grade for DOS, ironically my father was learning it too in college classes for building houses, i still have the text book with disk for release 12 he was using
Oh God I love super specific weird technology!
Great video.thank you so much!
/Bo
- The "cursor" is called a "puck".
- Now get a drum/flatbed plotter to make the most of your CAD setup…
- I have an old pen-tablet but the Wintab drivers are only 32-bit so it won't work on current systems. 😒
- Did others use a train as a standard training image or was that just us? 🤔
Back in 1992, I learnt to draw electronic schematics with AutoCAD 12. (at TAFE = US Community College?) I don't think there were many programs around at the time that drew schematics.
Anyway, there was a library of components that you could place on the drawing.
Lol we had one of those in my Vocational CAD class back 15 years ago. It was in the legacy equipment area.
Autocad 97LT takes me back to highschool.
Impressive , I could only see it in magazines, since it was impossible to buy it
Oh wow, this brings back memories! I had one of these with the stylus and ADB option. I used it on my Macintosh Performa 6400. You can use it with a projector on the computer and project the video down onto the tablet. I think I paid $20 because it was missing the power supply.
Cool stuff. Thanks for the content.
I definitely remember seeing a device like this as a kid. I think it was some Sesame Street segment about plotting city maps from helicopter photos.
Coulda been Mister Rogers too, or basically anything lol
It's the difference between "Relative" and "Absolute" location. Mice use "Relative" location and a "Puck"(the device that looks like a Mouse). "Relative" location depends on the movement of the Mouse. It counts how many dots it has moved. "Absolute" location requires a grid of wires embedded in the tablet so that when you put the "Puck" down it is always in the place you put it.
Side note multiple monitors were more of a thing you might think in the CAD world even in the 80's/90's
FYI, AFAIK the "mouse" is named actually as "puck".
In fairness to the accuracy this isn't designed to have a circuit board below it. It is design for a sheet of paper.
Played on the first autocad as a kid. My father worked for the army corps of engineers, originally as a drafter. Was the only kid on the block with a digitizer and autocad at home. I remember guys at his work making fun of autocad and how it was a toy. Before that I would go to work with him on saturdays to play with the cad workstations and the xenix terminals.
This will sound weird, but I'd love to see you write programs in AutoLISP and add functionality to that version of AutoCAD to match what more modern versions do.
I remember this tablet (maybe not the exact model, but very similar). I used it back in 1992.
All this is old hat to us that were around in industry in the 1990s and before. I learned Acad v.10 (DOS) and had a SummaSketch II tablet myself. Very useful little instrument prior to Acad for Windows coming out with the GUI format.
You'd think this was like discovering dinosaur DNA :(
Next time, turn on the ortho function :D straight lines will be much easier
In the 80s and 90s, you were more likely to use something like P-Cad for PCB capture and design than AutoCAD. However, for a while, the two companies seemed to be trying to outdo each other with the complexity of dongle attachments required to run the software, and it got to the stage where it was almost impossible to run the two on the same machine! 🤣
I started out using Superdraft on an IBM AT in 89, maybe 90. One huge black and white screen for drawing and a Hercules monitor for commands.
Progressed onto AUTOCAD 2D, then the 3D version. Then Pro Engineer on SG Indys and a retro grade step to Medusa and CATIA
Yeah, I did work as a civil engineer a decade in the 90's. Those memories. 😀