Have blueprints moved into the digital age yet?
I appreciate having a nice big set of plans that I can carry around a jobsite without worry of it falling off a table or getting a little wet but I would also enjoy a digital set of plans that I could refer to on a laptop or tablet. Specifically one that I could be looking at a floor plan and click on or mouse over a door and instantly see all the specs for that door: size, R.O., type, etc. Click on a detail or section reference on an elevation and instantly see the detail or section. Basically something to bring an end to the constant flipping of pages that invariably comes with reading a set of prints.
I think software that allowed me to take a picture of a set of plans then overlay hyperlinks to other pictures or plain text notes would be nice. I wouldn’t mind taking the time to input all the information once. Does anyone know if something like this is out there? If only I could memorize 30 or so pages of drawings and schedules I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this! Oh to be Adrian Monk….
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The engineer or architect who drew those plans did them on his computer. The only question is if he will give you the file and if your tablet has the software to open it
But does any software in use today have the capabilities that I mentioned? If its a choice between looking at a laptop sized image and a full set of plans I'll take the paper copy. If however the digital version can navigate in the ways I mentioned, bringing up pertinent info just by clicking on the area in question without having to find which sheet the door schedule, appropriate elevation/detail, or any other data then I'll happily deal with the smaller size.
Download Eclipse and write your own Android app. 14-year-old kids are doing it.
Maybe If I do that I won't have to read plans anymore. I'll just sit on the beach raking in all the money from my top selling new app! Too bad I'm app-stupid
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I remembered this post http://forums.finehomebuilding.com/breaktime/general-discussion/graphpad-pro-technical-drawing-application-ipad
Not what you are after, but perhaps he's got some information that would point you in the right direction.
best of luck.
You can navigate around and zoom on any phone that knows how to pinch. In a lap top any decent picture program will let you do all sorts of things with an image.
I do understand it would really be cool to have a totally interactive electronic plan but I have not seen that one yet.
Maybe something based on a "book" ap would work if the plan had all the data. I could make it a web page.
If you scan or take a photo of your print and save as a PDF, Adobe Acrobat Pro offers several tools for annotating, linking to other pages, other documents, etc. Maybe not a ready made solution, but I think it would accomodate what you are looking to accomplish.
And PDFs can be viewed on phone, ipad, etc...
Thanks RickGreg that sounds exactly what I was looking for. I'll try messing around with adobe.
I talked to my wife about this. She was a builder for about a decade and her first thought was the company that owns that plan would not want it to be that easily copied and distributed.
Maybe with the right licensing and DRM they could go for it tho.
You could certainly develop a pad app that would only let you access licensed prints, and which would do most of what you want. The main problem is that it would require an infrastructure ("cloud") to "serve" the prints, if licensing must be managed.
DRM is only as good as the worst "cracker" and there are some very good ones.
The "secure" copy of the NEC 2011PDF was only out a few days when a cracked version showed up on the internet.
I would imagine that it wouldn't be done with DRM but with the user "signing on" to the server site. A determined hacker with a user's password and a "jail broken" device could probably access a given print, but the prints could be individually "watermarked" so that the thief would be identified.
Not perfect (nothing is, on the web), but about as secure as one could hope for.
Isn't this concept why Trimble acquired Sketchup from Google, to make plans digital?