What’s New in ST10: Draw, Part 2

There’s some follow-up that needs to be added to what I had to say about the new Draw functionality. I mentioned that it requires an upgrade to at least Windows 10 version 1607. In the course of doing that upgrade, it changed the way the domain saw my computer, and it took some time to troubleshoot that. I’m not sure that everyone will have the same experience as I had with the upgrade, but you should keep an eye open.

That upgrade also adds some things to your Windows interface, and the upgrades are related to the Catchbook product you may have heard of before. Catchbook is a Siemens app that allows you to sketch freehand on a touch display, and those doodles are converted into analytical CAD-like drawing elements that can be edited, and dimensioned. This technology of converting doodles to analytical geometrical elements is called “inking”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNSlnqGv9B0

It’s very cool, and I think when you start using something like that, you find even more uses for it. That’s Catchbook, and some of the functionality added to ST10 might be called Catchbook-like, because it captures doodles into real Solid Edge sketches.

But there’s more…

After you have upgraded to version 1607, your Windows System tray gains the third icon shown in this screen capture. This is the Windows Ink Workspace.

Sticky Notes is functionality that has been in Windows for some time, but it gets more prominence with the Windows Ink Workspace. You can leave stickies on your desktop, use them to collect notes or doodles, or anything you might use physical stickies for. Plus, if you have a touch interface, you can doodle with your stylus, finger, or mouse. Sound familiar?

Next is the Sketchpad, which gives you a full-screen canvas to draw, add color, change pen tips, measure, erase, save to png, crop, copy, move, share with others, etc. As engineers, we often sketch ideas on scratch paper. Now we can keep a record of those, and use more sophisticated editing tools when the ideas change. And ideas always change.

Next we’ve got a Screen Sketcher, which takes a screen capture and allows you to draw over it with the same tools.

If you’re up for a hardware upgrade any time soon, I’d recommend making one of those monitors a touch screen to start taking advantage of some of the new functionality in Solid Edge and Windows itself.