Touchscreen - Windows 8 Surface or other touchscreen ?

jonathan_stedman

Any plans to be able to use OS with a Windows 8 touchscreen computer?  Or have I just not found the setting to get it to work.

Regards


Jon

Brian_1

Hey Jon

What doesn't work on Windows 8? You need a browser that supports WebGL ... 

Is Onshape coming up but the 'touch' doesn't work?

Brian

andy_morris

Currently Onshape does not support the view manipulation gestures for touch devices using web browser.
Its a known issue that we are investigating.

Andy

jonathan_stedman

@Brian - i can get the icons to select etc - but as @Andy Morris  says the model manipulation does not function on my touch screen Dells. 

Jon

andy_morris

It would be interesting know how many of you have touchscreens on your browser devices (Surface, Chromebooks or laptops).
Do you use this as your primary device?

Andy

jonathan_stedman

@Andy - all screens are touch on my computers - laptop, stand alone and Lumia phone.  ( Is there a browser on Lumia that works with OS? )

abefeldman

@Jonathan_Stedman we currently do not have an Onshape app for the Windows phone, but I will add your vote to the improvement request.  Additionally, because we don't yet support multi-touch in the browser, and OpenGL is not supported on many phone browsers, we don't recommend it yet.

jonathan_stedman

no problem - many other things to concentrate on first.  

Its bad enough I keep looking at my twitter feed on my phone and now keep looking at (1.17.10914.038fc66) to see if its changed .  If there was Onshape on my phone I think its probably a bad work/life balance :-)

Jon 

mikael_jaakkola

As I wrote on the features request it could be useful to have similar functions available as on the mobile app if you are using windows tablets. Normal version of OS is a little bit tricky to use without keyboard and mouse and in some cases it would be handy to be able to use normal version with touch screen capabilities.

earlier written on product feedback "I was using Onshape with my surface pro windows tablet and I would have appreciated same zooming and rotating capabilities than with the mobile version. Could it be possible to implement same features than on the mobile app then people using windows tablets could use standard Onshape  like the mobile app when no mouse or keyboard are attached. Maybe if you just added a tap somewhere where you could enable or disable zooming and rotating using your fingers on the touchscreen."

mike_wood

I know this thread is not a "poll" but adding my name/count to having it working with Win 8 (Surface Pro 3 & ASUS Transformer). If I am using this device for basic things I've found Sketchup works well (of course it's a native app!) except inference is hard to do.

adrian_vlzkz

+1 I asked about this a while ago in a webinar, I have a Lenovo Yoga and it be really nice to use the touch interface mode on that machine. 

pete_yodis

I think with Windows 10 we'll see more devices in the business realm like these.  They are getting the interface fixed from what was jarring in Windows 8.  It will also be a free upgrade.  These will be important for folks who are coming from SolidWorks and still need to run SolidWorks and will be interested in Onshape.  Of course Onshape currently runs well and will run well on windows machines like these running modern browsers... Chrome, Firefox (current favorite), and the new Edge browser (I'm curious about inking in the browser).  Touch on these devices would be cool, though.  Even better if there doesn't have to be an app to accomplish it...although if you are developing a Windows 10 universal app for mobile, it might almost come free to the full windows 10 desktop realm - that's the cool thing about universal apps.  You've got my vote when other higher priority things are in place.

@adrian_velazquez How do you like the Yoga?

adrian_vlzkz

@pete_yodis  I love it! it's a truly versatile product, I when I'm just on the couch browsing or consuming media I use Tablet Mode, The rest of the time I mainly use Presentation or Tent mode (While at the home desk with bluetooth mouse & keyboard). I only use regular laptop mode 10% of the time.

For work I have the M3800 which is also a nice machine (for SW), It has a touchscreen which I find useless and weird since it doesn't fold back like the Yoga.

burhop

I've got a Samsung i5 Windows 8.1 tablet.  I'm a bit like @adrian_velazquez  in my use.  I hate having to plug in the keyboard and mouse to get Onshape to work :-(

pete_yodis

@burhop Is that the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro?

burhop

pete_yodis said:

@burhop Is that the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro?

Yes, the 700T.  Its my favorite machine (of which I have way too many!)

pete_yodis

burhop said:

pete_yodis said:

@burhop Is that the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro?

Yes, the 700T.  Its my favorite machine (of which I have way too many!)

@burhop Does SolidEdge run well on that?

pete_yodis

I think I am also interested in touch UI for eventually being able to digitally ink on a design to informally markup/review and also to formally initiate clear instructions for ECR/ECO processes.  That could be really awesome in due time.

burhop

pete_yodis said:

@burhop Does SolidEdge run well on that?

I'd guess Solid Edge is probably leading here, judging from how much Microsoft is showing it off.  It has been a couple years since I tried it but graphics seemed pretty good.  I had a Solid Edge subscription until a few months ago but it was on my desktop computer.

eric_hyde

I would love to be able to use the touch interface on my windows 7 touchscreen. You might also market to Wacom tablets.

pete_yodis

I got to play with one yesterday.  Pretty nice device.  It definitely breaks the mold of keeping touch and traditional devices separate.  Onshape ran beautifully on it.  Granted, the touch and pen were useless with it, but it definitely handled the models well on chrome.

robin_mccaffrey

I might be getting the surface book, and running inventor/cfd simulations on it while commuting (1 hour each way) but some sort of touch screen support for Onshape would be much appreciated.

pete_yodis

@robin_mccaffrey I think something like the surface book makes sense for users of what I now call legacy CAD systems and Onshape together.  Of course there may be other software that requires you to run Windows in the manufacturing realm that you are in.  That's definitely the case for me with ERP and other systems at the moment.

develar

Touch doesn't work on Surface Pro 4 as well. Definitely, I am not going to use this device, iPad Pro is much better (not only hardware aspect, but, yeah, software aspect). But while my Apple Pencil is coming, I decided to to test MS attempt to create tablet.

And, btw, quality of picture is awful compared to iPad / iMac. May be I will managed to somehow fix it, but by default (latest windows, all updates were installed, latest chrome) it is a bit of "blurred".

pete_yodis

develar said:

Touch doesn't work on Surface Pro 4 as well. Definitely, I am not going to use this device, iPad Pro is much better (not only hardware aspect, but, yeah, software aspect). But while my Apple Pencil is coming, I decided to to test MS attempt to create tablet.

And, btw, quality of picture is awful compared to iPad / iMac. May be I will managed to somehow fix it, but by default (latest windows, all updates were installed, latest chrome) it is a bit of "blurred".

@develar Touch is not supported through the use of the browser in Onshape, so any two in one device will not have touch support.  Touch support with Onshape is delivered through the app for ios and Android.  When you go touch, you also loose the mouse input.  The two in one's are blurring this realm and it's why people here in this thread are mentioning it.  Personally, I don't like loosing the productivity of a keyboard and mouse.  I don't see myself using an iPad a lot to be ultra productive with Onshape, or another piece of software - although the edit tools on the touch interface are really unbelievably good.  I have used ipads with Onshape when I want to crawl around things and see the model at the same time.  It's fantastic when you are building something for the first time.  It is the ultimate portability that really comes in handy with them.  As far as tablets go, nothing touches the experience on an ipad.  It's really nice to use.  I was not impressed at all with the keyboard on the ipad Pro.  It was a pretty lousy experience.  I think there are some pretty cool potential uses of the pen/pencil.  With the Surface book, I think they got the blend pretty decent between tablet and ultra book.  The tablet doesn't have great battery life, but that's not people's primary use of it.  It saves people needing to have a tablet AND an ultra book.  Also, it supports all legacy MCAD products without dual booting or running parallels.  As there is no Windows universal app for Onshape, touch is not currently supported.  The support of touch through browser along with the pen is much more tricky I would think.

I find the business models of Google, Apple, and Microsoft interesting.  It's fun to watch them.  I think Apple is unyielding on wanting to blend IOS and MacOS.  My gut tells me this may be a mistake in the longer haul.  The tech press is picking up on it too.  I also think blending them leads to lower revenue for Apple on the device side, so it's not in line with their business model.  They really want to sell more devices.  It will be interesting to see how things play out.  

My experience with picture quality on the surface book was maybe superior to that of an equivalent Mac Book Pros that I looked at in the Apple Store.

ritchie_

+1 on touch device support.

Just picked up a Surface Pro 4 for work. Initial impressions of the hardware and software (Win 10) are quite good, I think they've finally got touch/tablet at a usable version one experience (I've sampled a variety of Windows tablet computers since about 2005 or so, none of which were particularly viable).

Onshape obviously runs in Chrome, although the WebGL rendering is quite fuzzy for some reason as @develar
mentioned. Edge won't load a workspace correctly (seems to 'crash' during loading graphics stage), but I'll keep trying.

I'm new to CAD in general but have been teaching myself via Onshape. I installed the Android version on my phone earlier in the week, and it seems like the basic touchscreen navigation would pair well with pen support to quickly draft things out. I don't have a lot of legacy expertise with keyboard and mouse to compare this to though, and generally I'm looking for whatever tools or features make it easier to accomplish the end goal. I don't see why we'd want to limit ourselves - I can plug a keyboard/mouse into the Surface, but also have touch/pen capability. Use what you like if both are possible. Most of the mechanical guys at work all use displays with pen support hooked up to their workstations, so obviously there's already a precedent set within the CAD world for touch/pen input.

Since most of the CAD work I'm interested in at the moment is modelling existing parts in a vehicle and then making custom accessories or adapters, the more mobile the CAD solution is the better so I can just work in/near the vehicle rather than making endless trips back and forth to measure and sit at a desktop/laptop to model it up. I think the Surface and other "pro" tablets can fit this niche quite well with good software support.

Thanks for considering!

jakeramsley

ritchie_ said:

Onshape obviously runs in Chrome, although the WebGL rendering is quite fuzzy for some reason as @develar
mentioned. Edge won't load a workspace correctly (seems to 'crash' during loading graphics stage), but I'll keep trying.

I believe the fuzziness is due to the pixel density of the surface pro 4.  We've been trying to tweak some stuff to handle this better, although it is difficult with high ppi devices that have underpowered graphics cards.  

Currently Edge has an implementation of WebGL that doesn't handle a couple of things that we do.  If you would like, I can add you to a ticket about handling Edge's WebGL intricacies better.

andrew_bevelhymer

I know this thread is kind of old. But I have an Asus Chromebook flip and being able to use the touch UI would be phenomenal.

craig_18

I really think Onshape for iPad and Android are great, and would love to see similar touch functionality with a Surface Pro in "tablet mode" -- even if I had to have an Onshape touch-friendly app to do it!

Bruce_Buck

Following up on this. Have a Dell Inspiron 2-in-1 on Windows 10. Not supported yet?

NeilCooke

It's not the platform that's the issue, it's the browser - all is explained here: https://www.onshape.com/cad-blog/browser-wars