Old Digitizer

Fax machines were definitely around.  These with a 9 key digitizer as the bomb.  As I recall, we had a much bigger digitizer pad.  I think AutoCAD/DCA going to Windows was their demise.

When I got into this business, our in-house photogrammetrist used a smaller digitizer with his AutoCAD software. That was in the early 2000s.

I used a 12x12 digitizer (Calcomp, I think) for years before the move to Windows.  I wasn't very happy going from a digitizer to a mouse, as the latter doesn't offer the same level of cursor control, but I got used to it.  I only used the digitizer for drawing cursor movement, as it was faster for me to use the keyboard for AutoCAD commands.

Posted by: @jim-frame

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it was faster for me to use the keyboard for AutoCAD commands.

I'm still very much a keyboard user for AutoCAD commands. These kids nowadays use those new fangled dynamin input crap...give me my aliaseditor and leave me be. LOL

Totally remember those! Had one in the drafting lab at my tech school. They were game changers back then - precision was everything. Keyboard shortcuts were king, but there was something satisfying about tracing lines directly on that pad.👍📐

I used one for many years and loved them. Once the location of all of the items on the tablet became "muscle memory" I could fly through a CAD file quickly. Great memories of those Calcomp Digitizer tablets.

Had a Calcomp one and think it's still buried somewhere around here!  LOL

@john-putnam How was it their demise?

Posted by: @jim-in-az

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@john-putnam How was it their demise?

It got to be difficult to get the drivers to work properly in the windows environment.

I was thinking more along the lines of pull-down menus and mice.  After that, unless you were actually digitizing something the mouse was king.