Finally ditched the paper scratch pads for digital markups on drawings

For like 7 years I used yellow legal pads to jot down redline notes before entering them into AutoCAD. Took me 3 times as long because I had to decipher my own handwriting half the time. Last month I started marking up directly on the PDFs using a cheap stylus on a 10 inch tablet. It syncs right to cloud storage and I can pull the changes up on my work PC in seconds. Has anyone else found a setup that actually saves time on revisions?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_felix12d ago

Oh man I was totally in the opposite camp for years. I thought paper would always be faster because I could scribble notes without worrying about lag or battery life or whatever. But then my boss forced everyone to use Bluebeam for markups and I was so mad about it at first. After about two weeks though I realized I was actually saving time because I could erase and redo stuff instantly instead of scratching out lines on paper and making a mess. Plus the files are right there on my desktop when I finish instead of me having to walk over to a scanner or retype everything. I still grab a sticky note once in a while but honestly digital markups won me over completely.

dylanward12d ago

Did you @the_felix have to reset your muscle memory at first too?