Taking stock
Wacom Intuos2 graphics tablet
I’ve had the Intuos2 for a couple of years – I picked it up second-hand on eBay. It’s big – 12×9″ – works perfectly and came wih all the original accessories; all I needed were some new tips for the pen. It’s powered by the USB cable, not serial like some of the older Wacom models, so it doesn’t need an additional power supply.
12×9″ hmm … even my slow brain can see that is a 4:3 ratio; and some quick calculations reveal that a 12×9″ rectangle has a 15″ diagonal. So the tablet is exactly the same size as a 15-inch 4:3 monitor. That should be easy to find! I’ll be able to match the tablet to the screen perfectly and I won’t waste any of the tablet’s real-estate.
Time for a little experimenting: are USB tablets less sensitive than ones with their own power supply? Will the pen still work if it’s not right on the tablet’s surface? How far away will the pen work from the tablet? I decided to use a set-square to draw triangles on the tablet and see how they came out in Paint Shop Pro (yes, of course I have Photoshop, but some things are just easier and quicker in Paint Shop Pro) on the computer – this would allow me to determine whether the tablet lost any accuracy if the pen was raised off the surface.
 drawing triangles with the graphics tablet |
 drawn triangles in Paint Shop Pro |
 measuring the maximum height of the pen |
I raised the height of the set-square using some magazines I had lying around until the pen no longer worked. Measuring the pile of paper showed that the pen worked up to about 15mm from the top of the tablet – there’s probably another 5mm or so of space and plastic to the actual sensor board fo the tablet so I should have about 20mm of space to play with – this should be enough.
Time to start my hunt for a suitable monitor …
Tags: cintiq, graphics tablet, intuos2, project log, wacom, Wapaq
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 8th, 2008 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Wapaq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.