e-mail a hand-drawn sketch

Sounds good, but my desk space is *very* precious. That thing looks big, what's this "sits on edge" bit? How does that work?

--
 Thanks,
    - Win

hp makes a similar "vertical standing" scanner, but I don't recall it's number right now. I wasn't impressed by its physical staunchness so I bought a conventional 3970 (around $90) when my ancient 5100C started making grinding noises.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I just snap a pic with my trusty old Sony Mavica camera and send them a jpeg. It helps to do the sketch with a fat pen, but not mandatory.

I'll do one right now... a sketch that's just now on my desktop (my physical desk, the one made out of wood.)

OK, see abse. Maybe 1 minute or so total..

John

We've got a smart Xerox copier at the office with a very handy mail-me-a-PDF feature. I use it for exactly that.

At home, scanner to JPEG e-mail attachment. Just watch the resolution to keep from sending a giant file. Most scanners seem to have a one-button feature that pops up a PC utility, with this as one of the options.

Richard

There was a patent attorney (Tendler was his last name, can't remember his first now) at Motorola who audio taped my description of a design and took photos of my white board as I talked.

Best attorney I've ever known. So he quit Motorola, went back to New Hampshire, converted a barn into a home, and does a casual law practice from there ;-)

Saved his wife with a Heimlich maneuver one night. A bunch of us sitting around their dining room table one evening gabbing away, and I was the only one who noticed her distress.

Amazing how that sort of thing goes unnoticed. One time in the Honeywell Space Division cafeteria I choked on a napkin that was so cheap it fragmented as I wiped my mouth and I breathed in some of it. I stood up trying to free myself and finally forced a barf to get it loose. THEN people noticed ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Wow, Jim, thanks for the sharp answer, you really nailed that one!

--
 Thanks,
    - Win

I beleive you did.

Draw it directly on a flatbed scanner with a felt pen, and flip the image before emailing it? (Drawing on the overhead projector used to work for one of my old professors.)

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Take your drawing, shove it in a Canon LiDE 80 USB scanner (which sits on edge right on your desk).

Press the "file" button on the front of the scanner. Sit back very briefly while it opens the toolbox applet, scans the document in maybe

10 seconds, creates a single-page PDF file and opens an explorer window showing the file name.

Double click on the file and assure yourself it's okay. Close the file in Acrobat reader, drag it from the explorer window onto the the e-mail program and send it.

Fast & easy. About as fast as faxing it.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

If it's a schematic, I can draw it faster in Visio (with my own extensive symbol set, but I understand Visio itself now gives you a decent one) faster than I can draw it by hand. Then save as GIF and you're done.

Alternatively, draw on paper, scan to PDF using Adobe Acrobat and a scanner, and e-mail it.

Take a high resolution picture of the hand drawn sketch with appropriate lighting and the camera set in closeup mode. Send in a image format that is widely supported.

There is an included little plastic stand that clips onto the side of it, which reduces the frontage to about 5" or 6" (it sits almost vertical). Since the foot can go under the edge of an LCD or CRT monitor, it really only uses a few inches horizontally of desk space.

Canon claims you can operate it in that position, but I always pull it out, lay it horizontal, then return it when done (clipping and unclipping the stand). Otherwise the sheet has a tendency to get off-square, which is really irritating.

The other great thing it does is copying- saves going to a copy machine (for me, that's another location, for someone else it might be across the room). You just put the sheet in, hit the copy button, and a digital laser copy comes out of your laser printer. About 35 seconds button to tray for a super-quality 600 dpi b&w "bitmap" copy. Great for tax records and that sort of mundane thing. I keep the scanner to the left of my computer displays along with whatever emulators, programmers and so on that I'm working on, and the printer to the right, both within arm's reach. Another entire computer setup (two CPU boxes actually, and one of everything else) is to the left of the whole mess for communication with target systems, test program installation and other risky work.

I used to have a huge and fat SCSI scanner that required its own power supply and had to be on another shelf to keep it out of the way. The software never worked all that well, and I dreaded having to send anyone anything using it. So far, this compact and inexpensive device does all the casual scanning I need to do (for the pro stuff, I've got a buddy with access to a serious $x00K drum scanner roughly the size of an Miata. ;-) ).

They've really improved a lot (hardware and software) over the last few years. Andd its USB powered, so just *one* thin cable and no wall*wart. The only negative thing I can think of is that its a little flimsy and if you press too hard (for example to get the part near the binding of a databook without breaking the binding) it can actually jam the innards.

BTW, you can get little drawers at places like Ikea that screw onto the bottom of desks. I use that for some other miscellaneous equipment that I have to access a few times a week.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Sno-o-o-o-ort!

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

On 25 Aug 2005 16:29:51 -0700, Winfield Hill wroth:

If desk space is important to you, you could do what I have done. I soldered five 2" long finishing nails to the pins of a PC mount USB socket. Then I used a mallet to drive the nails through my skull into my visual cortex. I now plug my brain directly into my computer.

This, together with a couple of driver files, allows me to dispense with my keyboard, mouse, scanner, speakers, and monitor. I see e-mails directly and can simply think of anything I want to send. I visualized this message in 10pt Courier New and I think I did a pretty good job too.

Surfing the p*rn sites is a whole new experience.

Jim "I think, therefore I communicate." Meyer

Well when I got my scanner last year, my computer ceased to be a desktop system. I put it on the floor, clearing up space on the desk.

But, it happened to be a LiDE 20 USB scanner, and it came with a plastic gizmo so you can put the scanner on it's side (so the scanning surface is vertical or nearly so), providing for more desk space. I've not used it, mainly because I'm not scanning just sheets of paper.

Michael

And you can get different color Sharpies, for that all important color coding.

It certainly makes more sense to sketch something with a pen and scan it (or digital photograph it), than to spend time doing ascii drawings, or even fiddle with a drawing program.

Michael

Amen! For simple stuff, I have not yet found the CAD or drawing program that is faster than a pen and paper. But then you have to get it into the computer.

Have you ever tried using a pen input tablet? Wacom is a popular brand but there are others. You can get them in various sizes; I think the smallest one has about a 4"x5" (10x12 cm) active area. You "draw" on it with a plastic stylus similar to the ones used with PDAs. On the fancier models, you can flip the stylus around and use the blunt end to "erase". You can also set it up with some graphics programs (Photoshop, possibly others) to make fatter lines if you push harder. Note: Never lose the stylus. When you buy one of these, you are essentially buying a stylus with a free tablet included. In other words, stylus+tablet is maybe $100, while replacement stylus is $80. These are moderately popular in art and graphic design circles, so you may be able to find one on campus to test drive. I supported them for a couple of years and they seemed fairly durable, so a cheap used one from Ebarf may also be useful. Beyond that, I know there are whiteboards that digitize, but these are spendy.

Matt Roberds

PS I sent you $2.50 and a reminder email as you requested and I still haven't heard back. Did the price go up or did my order get lost? :)

[snip]

Highly recommended... based on the old Kurta designs which, of course, were committed to microchips by yours truly ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Scan the sketch, print to PDF and you are done.