Maide CAD Control Developments (New Menu for the iPad coming soon!)
We've been really busy working on the new menu system for the iPad app. After we developed the first iteration, we realized that we shouldn’t be limiting ourselves to getting rid of the mouse in the CAD process. The mouse is great at point-to-point actions - especially when you need to do many of them in sequence - which is why it’s so good for things like Autocad.
Once we began going down this road of thought, we stumbled upon a goldmine of HCI research (Human Computer Interaction) into two handed input systems for design software here in Toronto. The old Alias office here in Toronto, which was once bought by Autodesk for some 197 million in cash in 2006, produced much of this, and many of those individuals now find themselves now with Autodesk Research. To summarize the findings, if you can successfully split control of CAD software into a 2-handed (bi-manual) input method, you can increase modelling speed by an average of 20%. This has been shown in white paper studies of the 3D connexion mouse, and we believe it will be proven again using multi-touch input. I like to think of the analogy of something simple, such as how you go about peeling an apple. You use one hand to orient the apple, and the other hand holds your tool for more precise actions.
We bought a 3D Connexion SpaceExplorer and played with it for a while. It’s a great tool (a little expensive), but interesting none-the-less. With this in mind, we decided to further develop the left handed system, and allow users to replace the one finger mouse control in our app, with command selection. We'll soon have a toggle that allows the app to be used on both the right and left handed setup on the desktop.
In the new version, we'll eliminate the need to tap to activate the command selection, which will speed up command activation. Now, when you put one finger down, a menu will appear around your finger right away. If you move your finger towards an action on the ring, it will highlight. Once you let go of it, it will select that command. Commands such as Shift, Control, or Space will be activate when you hover over the command - so you can hold them down while using the mouse. This will be especially cool in Maya where space is used to pull up a menu system for the mouse, or while holding shift to lock to ortho, all of which will now be possible using the iPad.
This menu will be visible on your main screen so you won’t have to look at the iPad while you’re working, and you can start using quick gestures to activate commands once you know where they are on a ring.
Let us know what you think, or if you have any further ideas about how to improve our system on the iPad. The initial ring update may not make it into the app before Christmas, as Apple may slow down update approvals as the holidays come around. But you guys should have it in the new year! Customization will be in the second update to come after that.
Cheers!
Oleg.
Oleg.
