EDDY stands for Electronic Drawings Display and forms a great part of Australian designer’s Austin Inglis’ goal to assist in the worldwide environmental pursuit of the paperless office.
At the moment EDDY is currently a concept but it has the potential to improve the way that CAD professionals operate as it will save them from drowning in paper drawings.
It is designed with architects, interior designers and building professionals in mind, the sort of people who have to rely on tons of paper for their work such as sketching to design execution. EDDY solves this problem; its e-paper mimics the qualities of paper as much as possible while still maintaining the powerful touch screen efficiency of a digital device. The digital hardware also allows a single EDDY device to store up to hundreds of CAD sketches and designs, replacing the mountains of paper previously used.
Inglis explains, “It stores and displays electronic drawings such as CAD and PDF files, over which the user can digitally sketch and mark-up with its touch screen capability and stylus. It is portable, durable and legible in sunlight for use in transit and on outdoor construction sites.”
The e-paper is attached to a console and is rolled up and stored in the console when not in use. This allows the EDDY to be easily portable and thanks to the durable PC/ABS plastic of the e-paper makes it ideal to use outdoor at construction sites. The console also features a USB port and is Bluetooth device allowing connectivity to a computer so CAD designs are able to be transferred to the EDDY and vice versa.
The device can be operated from the buttons on the console in order to select sketches to work on or to create new ones. EDDY comes equipped with a stylus drawing tool in order to compose sketches on the digital touch screen surface, in the same way that a pencil would be used on normal paper.
In an increasingly digitized future, paper will be seen as redundant and CAD professionals will want to keep pace and devices such as EDDY and together with Scan2CAD software will ensure this.
What do you think of EDDY? Is the future going paperless or do you prefer a hard copy of your drawings? Let us know if the comments below.
