Is iPad Mini screen size usable for occasional Onshape use?

nick_papageorge073

I haven't had an iPad since 2010. I'd like to give it a try again, as a general note taking and hand sketching device to replace a note pad and pencil. If I buy it, I will get the pencil with it for sure. How is it with onshape? Can you do light duty modelling work on it, or is the screen simply too small? I attempted to download it at the apple store to try, but was not able to download any apps there. I do have the OS app on my iPhone 12 Mini, but literally only use it for spinning models around with my finger. This would just be something to frequently have with me in my backpack, rather than carrying my MacBook Air with me. It would not be for when I do primary CAD work.

Thanks for any comments.

wayne_sauder

 I use the 4th gen 12 in. Ipad. Mostly for showing clients projects, however, I have done some modeling on it and find it totally acceptable in fact quite slick at times, be prepared to wait on it a bit (compared to a computer). I have the pencil which I think is a must, I'm sure there are folks out there that will say they can do everything that a pencil will just as easily with their finger, however, I find the level of precision on the pencil very beneficial. I think it's a tool that can serve engineers on the go very well. Buy the largest one you can justify.  

mahir

I came here to say that I'd expect OS to be decent to use on an iPad mini since it's "ok" on my iPhone 12 mini, but turns out you already know what that feels like firsthand. I can do most modeling tasks just fine on my iPhone, but it's cumbersome having to hide/show dialogs and menus that take up the whole screen. That said, the phone is literally called a "mini", so I don't expect much when it comes to screen real estate. Since the iPad mini is ~2.3x more screen area than the iPhone mini it's probably much more user friendly.

steve_shubin

@nick_papageorge073

For sketching as the type you would do when doodling with pencil and paper, you might find Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer to work well. I got them on sale. Paid $50 total ($25 each). As I understand it, sales come around periodically

I use the Notes app a tremendous amount. Probably my most used application other than Safari. 

Anyway, when in NOTES, I typically use voice input. Then I go back and make typo corrections using the on-screen keyboard, using my finger to set the insertion points for the corrections. And that’s where I think the Apple pen would shine. Because some days, I have a harder time getting that cursor to go where I want using my finger.

I have a generic type pen that works with my iPhone and I just tried it and it does work better than my finger does with regards to making the cursor jump from point to point

I’m curious to know if the Apple pen will work with Onshape’s way of  navigating . Can you use that pen to zoom in and out or pan WHEN IN ONSHAPE ?

Can you use it to simulate a two finger tap for contextual menus ?

If I can’t zoom in and out with that pen or pan or bring up contextual menus, then it sounds like I might have to hold the pen and then use two fingers to do most navigation and contextual menus.

Rotation only requires one finger on the mobile app. So that should work with the pen regardless of anything else

As far as using the pen with Onshape — I’d first have to see if the pen will do Onshape mobile navigation as mentioned above. The program already works great without it. And getting a pen — well it’s just one other thing you have to remember not to leave behind when you go out in the field

If you did get the pen, I’m quite sure it’s set up to work with the Affinity programs and I believe that’s where you would find the power of that pen

Onshape already has a precision cursor built into the mobile app. And it works great.

I could press down with my single finger to do a momentary zoom in, and this zoom in could be incremental — a little at a time, or if I want, a lot at a time — and then use the precision cursor to select a point, then lift my finger to instantly zoom back out to where I was before. Just remember to place the crosshairs over the point you want to zoom in on. Don’t put the crosshairs off to the side. I think this works as good or better then Onshape on the desktop. I would take a guess here to figure that all the iPads have that same pressure sensitivity that allows Onshape to quickly zoom in and out as I can do on my iPhone

I have one of the bigger iPhones. With this screen size, I can model a lot of different things. But the larger screen of an iPad would certainly make it faster as the feature list would be off to the side more

I do differ with one thing said. And that is that my iPhone actually works faster than my four year old entry level MacBook Pro. I can spin around models without any hesitation on my iPhone. The tool menus pop down fast. The features list pops out and retracts fast.

My mobile app does not do drafting, setting up configurations, featurescript programming, curvature, or implicit mates. Not sure if you could do any of these on the iPad versions. Other than these things, the mobile app has a very significant portion of the rest of the program.

There is something the mobile app has that I like more than the desktop version. More than just a momentary keyboard command  to suppress inferencing, the mobile app has a command you can access from a contextual menu to suppress inferencing. And this remains on until you turn it off. I actually found it gave me the ability to do something that others were having a bit of a time with on the desktop version.  Implementing this can help things from becoming overconstrained when sketching in busier sketches. But most of the time it’s not  necessary to use

Myself, it’s kind of hard to understand why anyone would not like using Onshape on an iPad. It doesn’t have to be your exclusive implement for working with Onshape. And there is definitely something to be said for the convenience of using a fully mobile Apple touchscreen with a program like Onshape. Full on parametric CAD where you could start projects from scratch, develop them, and finish them on something as small as your hand.

I’d say go for it. Get yourself an iPad. Get one as big as is reasonable to you. Spend some time getting use to the mobile app. And when you’re tired of sitting at that stinking desk all day long, then let me know how nice it is to sit in your La-Z-Boy, slightly reclined, with your feet up, being able to comfortably work on your Onshape project

steve_shubin

@nick_papageorge073

Everything you see here is real time.

On some of these GIF’s I was able to use a higher frame rate. But even with that, none of these are showing the actual frame rate when working in Onshape.

I did see the frame rate for the one where I was spinning the little shed around. I saw that in my video editor, and that was 46.15 FPS according to the screen capture

so when you’re working in Onshape using the mobile app, things are gonna look quite smooth

nick_papageorge073

Hi all,

Thanks very much for all the detailed comments. I think I'm going to give the mini a try. Unfortunately, its back ordered. I guess the shortages are affecting Apple now too.

nick_papageorge073

Oh I wanted to add a lot of the time my workflow is to brainstorm multiple design ideas with paper and pencil, then down select and draw the best couple in CAD. Once roughly in CAD, I often take a screenshot, move the screenshot to a cheap xp-pen screen that I can draw on, and make hand sketches on top of the CAD. I find for me I can conceptualize rough ideas much quicker and easier with pencil drawings than in CAD.

This is especially useful when working in a team its very quick to communicate what changes to make with coworkers. (I have tried this using onshape built in tools, and found it way, way, way, easier, to do it the screenshot way and then have a team page in microsoft onenote where I paste the picture). Anyway, I was hoping using onshape on an ipad might make the sketching on top of cad even easier.

When I'm at a computer without that extra XP-Pen screen, to do the same workflow I print out the screenshot on a piece of paper, then hand sketch on top of it. Not graceful.

tim_hess427

@nick_papageorge073 - I've used a similar workflow with a 2-in-1 laptop with a stylus (samsung notebook 9 pro). I can sketch out concepts with the stylus, then make simple models of my favorite. Then, I screenshot the model and draw over it to flesh out details and explore different ideas. 

For this, I like concepts app because it's cross platform and reasonably priced. 

The laptop I use for this is on the large size, so I'm also looking at an iPad as a way to take this workflow on the road. I was looking at the base model, standard iPad, but I'll be curious to see how you like using the mini.