Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

[jstoddard]

I've had a lot of questions lately about CAD on the iPad or tablets in general - still no great stand-alone CAD apps that run on those platforms, but Craig Savage did send me a link to PlanGrid -

http://www.plangrid.com/

Basically cloud-based plan room - not uncommon except it's specifically for the iPad and thus really handy in real time on a jobsite. Allows mark-up/redlines etc. Savage always sends me good stuff - he's using it with something BMI is doing and says it's really great - so check it out.

JLS

[Lavrans]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

Joe- there will never be good CAD for the current iteration of "Tablet" computers. The interface is not precise enough to be useful for anything but viewing. For any "decent" CAD there would have to be a separate 10 key and/or keyboard, or a good touch screen. And there doesn't appear to be any good touch screen on the horizon. At least, none that I have heard of.

[Ohiobuilder]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

Looks like a good one - within a few minutes I was set up with plans on the web.

I quickly was able to mark up a plan area and email only that section - it also gives the option of adding a photo to that marked up area as an attachment.

I could see lots of use with this - thanks.

[Allan Edwards]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

Looks like a good one - within a few minutes I was set up with plans on the web.

I quickly was able to mark up a plan area and email only that section - it also gives the option of adding a photo to that marked up area as an attachment.

I could see lots of use with this - thanks.

Dan

Were you able to do this on your iPad? How did you access the digital plan.

[Ohiobuilder]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

I created a login on the web then created a New Project - uploaded the PDF's and labeled them.

Then installed the app on my iPad and it all synced up - this particular set was hand drawn.

[Allan Edwards]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

Thanks Dan. I did everything you did except download the App, I will try that. I went to the site via URL on the iPad and could not make it work.

Thanks

[Ohiobuilder]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

Also - the app is Free which is unusual for Apple and the first 50 plan sheets are free with Plangrid.

[philthegreek]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

Great App Joe, thanks as always for having your finger on the pulse. I am in a situation right now in which I am dealing with a few iPad users on a particular project and this will help immensely. You Da Man! ;-)

Phil

[jstoddard]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

Never say never - and it's closer than you think. I'm under NDAs and can't discuss other than to say there are lots of developers who have a very different take on this than you do and are a lot more optimistic ;-)

I do agree that there's only so much that can be done with the current hardware - there are a ton of technical limitations . But time marches on . I don't think you need full-blown plan creation capability necessarily - but being able to isolate a section of a plan and modify it - have that update the larger plan stored in the cloud .... and do it from a tablet would be helpful. You can control a desktop PC via remote desktop or similar today - so a combination of technology could be used.
JLS

[rpadgett]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

I recently purchased an app called redstick for my android tablet (also available for the ipad) which looks interesting. I hope to be using it more on my next remodel project to do as-built plans.
http://www.redstickcad.com/

[Ted S.]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

Pretty interesting app, Robert. Thanks for posting. I don't know if I'd pay $54 for an app but I have a need for this. Does it work well?

[rpadgett]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

I haven't used it for a job yet, just played around with it, I think it has some interesting possibilities.

[swbuilder]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

Joe or Dan,
How quickly do the pdfs render on the Ipad from the plangrid site? A long while back I saved some full size drawing pdfs on my ipad for use at the job. It took so long for the image to render back and forth from "zoom" to "fit screen" that I quickly got tired and gave up. Do you have this problem? Perhaps the file size could have been compressed if that can be done on pdfs?

[philthegreek]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

Randy, what kind of file was it before you converted it to a pdf? If you have multiple layers and photos incorporated into the file, even if they are not visible in the background, they create a huge file.

Phil

[swbuilder]

Re: Plangrid - Cloud-Based Plan Room for iPad

Phil,
I didn't convert it to .pdf, it came from the designer or plan room that way. I think I had it saved on my ipad using dropbox but its been a while so im not sure. I have the 1 gen 16GB so that might be the problem too.