Hi! I wrote the following in a post regarding wacom/tablet ussage with fussion 360. As requested by Kat, I'm pasting it here so you can have a look at it and maybe consider some of the ideas i write down. Here the original post: Hi! Let me express my ideas on what I can see in the pen/touch world. I use a variety of software for my work, ranging from Illustrator/photoshop/painter 2D programs to Rhino and Blender for 3D or Premiere/AE for video. I use a wacom intuos 5 touch and a trackball mouse in my desktop environment depending on the software I'm using. The point is, right now I'm looking to the new laptops like the Sony Vaio Fit&Flip which are appearing lately and whose specs make them look as a good workstation (15" super HD screen, i7, 16GB ram, dedicated 2GB video card, 1TB HDD + 16GB SD). I believe this are sort of dream machines in the sense that might be the perfect replacement for my desktop. But then it comes the real dealbreaker. In the case of the Fit&Flip, the digitizer is not wacom but Ntrig, and that gives lots of compatibility issues with some of the software (actually most of it ...) to a point in which it becomes useless. So, here my first thought, think on that kind of devices, there are going to be plenty of them very soon as Ntrig is getting more and more popular in between manufacturers (price is a factor in that I believe). That being said, from a users point of view, that is what I would love to see in pen/touch enabled software. Full support for multitouch. That is an obvious advantage of that sort of devices, all your navigation can be made by touch, thus improving greatly the feeling of the space. Something like pinch to zoom, twist fingers to rotate view and so on. Although there is a right mouse button on most the pens themselves, it is not very comfortable to use (at least for me) so minimizing/optimizing it would be great. As for the center button, I believe touch will be the right substitution. Then for the keyboard. When you use such a device in tablet mode you have no access to a keyboard which makes it almost useless. I believe some sort of onscreen quick access to modifiers keys (ctrl, alt, shift, space and so) would be all that is needed and would be an easy solution for that which most software is missing. Sort of the wacom on-screen menu but software based (instead of hardware based as is their case). Right now it comes to mind something like a hot corner with a button you can put your finger which will open a graphic menu with the (customizable) modifiers. You then just slide your finger to the one you want and apply the command. Or a radial menu of some sort ... just thinking out loud. The UI should be updated for pen input. I can think of just different custom workspaces for different configurations. One for pure pen input, one for trackpad + kybd, one regular ... The idea being to make commands easily accessible by pen/finger input. For numerical inputs I think some sort of calculator 'gadget' that can be used for both calculations and input, that would be of great help. Something you can have onscreen and move/resize/minimize where you need it. You can make any calculations needed at the moment and then send it to the comand requiring it by pussing a button. To me, that will make for the perfect combination of convenience and power as I would be able to work in perfect conditions on most places, ranging form my formal desktop to the train, a cafe and even the couch. I've been dreaming on that day for close to 30 years now ... and I hope the moment is arriving Just my two cents ... Pedro
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