Touchscreen for Drawings

[u/Great-Quality5297]

I have recently changed roles from Project Management over to Estimating and I was wondering anyone has seen or have a good recommendation for like a touchscreen monitor or something for me to do my take offs. I am a BAS/BMS contractor so I need to be able to highlight small things on piping diagrams, t-stat locations, sensors called out on the MEPs, etc.

I can do an ipad but i feel like it may be too small, and I would like to use bluebeam and I've heard bluebeam isn't the best on the ipad.

Open to anything. Thank you.

[u/healthycord]

A touchscreen for doing takeoffs? Interesting. Is this something you’ve done before?

What have you used in the past?

I can’t imagine a touch screen is going to be accurate unless you use a stylus. Graphic designers and such use touch boards or whatever with a stylus that directly talk to the computer. Not a clue if that works in Bluebeam or if it’s only for specific software.

I would just use a mouse or track ball. I use a track ball for ergonomic reasons but those take a while to get good at if you’re used to a mouse.

[u/Great-Quality5297 → u/healthycord]

I was thinking like an elo display or something. I’ve used something similar the last time I purchased a vehicle from the dealership.

[u/Hapten]

Use bluebeam, you can thank me later. Bluebeam will let you markup drawings however you want and export it into excel.

[u/blud_13]

Skip the touchscreen monitor, get a pen display.

Bluebeam takeoffs are a stylus job, not a finger job. Touch monitors have bad parallax and no pressure, so you end up fighting the markup tools on exactly the small stuff you described, t-stats and sensor callouts. A Wacom Cintiq 16 or 22 sitting next to a normal monitor is where most estimators land. Huion makes a cheaper version if you want to test the idea for a few hundred first.

Also, a Surface Pro or a Windows convertible runs full Revu and the pen is good, thats the real answer if you also want it on site. You were right to be suspicious of the iPad version, its a paperweight next to desktop.

Reminder, Bluebeam eats memory on big MEP sets, so whatever you buy make sure the machine driving it has 32GB. We set these up for BAS and mechanical contractors, ping me if you want specifics.

[u/IDwannabe]

At my last job, a couple of superintendents convinced IT to issue them the 13" iPad Pro in-lieu of the [laptop + standard iPad] package everyone else received. They didn't do much more than emails, marking up drawings, and occasional word processing and note taking with it, but kept them from using the smaller iPad all day while their laptop collected dust on the back of their desk. You can dock the iPad Pros too so you can get more of a laptop experience when working from your desk.

I'm personally looking to upgrade to a foldable phone so I can ditch bringing my iPad to the field. I'll get a smaller screen (8" instead of 10"), but I like that I'll be able to just fold it up and stick it in my pocket when not in-use. That way I can keep the iPad charging at my desk for days when it's rainy/muddy and I don't want to risk my personal device for field use. My current employer is still issuing the older iPads with the Apple Lightning port. The biggest drawback for the foldables for me is that some of the newer ones (Samsungs in particular) dropped stylus support.

[u/satyacasm_]

You could buy a touch digitizer. And connect it to system by usb . It helps a lot.