If you can tell me what features you’re needing on it, maybe I can test it out and see if they’re available. 👍🏻. I take it that color tables and the addition of fonts would be a couple of them?
Have you not tried Shapr3D? I use it for 2D draughting, Laser dxf drawing and slicing background noise from LiDAR STLs all the time. It works incredibly well with the Pencil. If you can add the free app to your purchase list somehow you should be able to access the older version on your Air 2. It runs pretty well even on low spec hardware if you're just doing 2D work.
That’s interesting. I’ve tried Shapr3D for 3D purposes, but I ended up dropping it because the free version was too limited on the export options for me (for the 3D stuff), and there isn’t a pricing tier for hobbyists/small businesses. I just couldn’t afford over $300 a year for it. Now I use Valence 3D instead. While not a CAD software, I can use it to create precise 3D parts and do everything I used Shapr3D for. Shapr3D was great, but it’s just hard because there isn’t any kind of middle-ground pricing tier. And for my purposes, now that I’ve discovered Valence 3D, I probably wouldn’t go back to Shapr3D, even thought Shapr3D is a good app. 👍🏻. Interesting to hear that it works well for 2D though, never thought of using it for that. 👍🏻
Those two features, which are available in the browser based version, and the ability to plot, so I can create PDFs of the set of building plans.
Unfortunately as I am a draughtsman for other building designers, I need to use AutoCAD to work with their systems and set ups.
Awesome! I just installed AutoCAD, and I can set up a 30-day free trial. 👍🏻 This will be interesting, but I enjoy testing new apps, so it will be fun as well. Hopefully I can figure those things out for you. 👍🏻
A few quick questions. By color tables, do you mean changing the background color of a table? Or is that some other feature? And by addition of fonts do you mean adding fonts into the app like for missing fonts? I was already able to confirm that it does in fact support plotting to PDF, and I’m pretty sure that it supports the other two, as long as I’m understanding correctly, but I want to make sure I’m understanding what you’re talking about correctly. 👍🏻. I can get together some screenshots to show the features and how they work. 👍🏻
You’re right about fonts, I need to install the font my designers use.
Ok, that makes sense! 👍🏻. Yeah, I was just looking up tutorials for color tables in AutoCAD and realized you were probably talking about Plot Styles, which I think some called color style tables as well. 👍🏻. Do you know of a good source for SHX fonts I can try adding? For my graphic design, I don’t think I have a single SHX font. I can try looking some up to download and test. But I did read an official support tutorial from AutoDesk describing how to import SHX fonts into AutoCAD on the iPad, so it should work. I got a screenshot of the the “Plot to PDF” button as well as the “Plot Styles” interface that pops up for it. 👍🏻.
This is excellent! It’s looking like the iPad might now be a viable platform for my CAD work!
Ugggh. And, of course, that’s the one thing AutoDesk doesn’t support yet on the AutoCAD iPad app… 🙁. The only current supported font format is SHX, I tried loading in my TTF files and those didn’t work. And AutoDesk’s official support page says that TTF isn’t supported on the mobile app yet. I wonder if it would work in the browser web version though? I guess I think the Android version doesn’t even have the ability to import SHX fonts, so the iPad version is at least better in that regard. I can see if the web version supports TTF, but the native iPad version doesn’t appear to unfortunately. 🙁
Haha, there had to be just one thing. Still, it’s come a long way and it’s still pretty useful, I just need to keep the desktop version until they add that.
You’re welcome, no problem! It stinks that they haven’t added that yet, but hopefully they will eventually. 👍🏻
There are actually two different ways to add fonts at the system level. And fonts installed these ways appear in most apps, just some apps like AutoCAD do not use the system-level font system. One of the ways is font apps from the App Store, and the other is another way that I’ve documented on my SubStack:
kalebcadle.substack.com
Even Font management apps install them all as if they were network profiles. An Apple Fonts manager app would be most welcome and surely quite easy to implement? They could even open a built-in store for letting developers sell them.
Nice, I think of all the Mac models to use as a companion device alongside the iPad, the Mac Mini is probably the best. I have a Mac Mini at my desk that I use for exactly the same thing you’re talking about doing: as a sort of NAS storage solution. 👍🏻. It works out pretty well for accessing storage remotely, though I want to tweak my software setup a bit, because currently I’m using a VNC app to access the drives, where I would like to set it up to directly access the storage drives more streamlined. As I’ve mentioned before, my Mac Mini is mostly used for remote storage access and trying out softwares and features to compare with the iPad for the pieces I write for my SubStack. But I think the Mac Mini is a good choice for what you’re looking for.
The configuration profile option is one of two options. Apple actually does have a font manager built-in in the Settings app. There are tons of font apps available in the App Store that are exactly what you’re talking about. It’s a very easy system, it’s a little more complicated to install fonts from internet sources, but it still works with the aforementioned configuration profile method.
Interesting. I just went to Amazon.com with Safari on my M1 iPad Pro 11 to open one of my orders. I opened the invoice, hit the print button and found my printer (HP OfficeJet 8020), and it printed the invoice with no problem.
Yeah, that’s been my experience with every other website as well. I’ve never had any problems with printing things from websites. Maybe it’s something wrong with QuickBook’s website?
