Digitizer Puck.

This opening image in the gallery shows the very first object I modelled in 3D.  It was drawn using a piece of software called MicroSolid; manuals for which were printed in 1985.  It was a unique experience and quickly made a myth of many of the early statements about PC-CAD being used for modelling. For those of you who are fairly observant you will note not only was this a DOS based product it was ICON driven (very farsighted were these developers some would say!).

It also was the software that taught me early on the advantages this type of software may offer and some of the pitfalls.  The lessons I learned back then are as relevant today, but for some reason CAD industry vendors fail to build on lessons learned, constantly reinventing the wheel and in the process slowing development.

The object you see in this image was a Scriptel Digitizer puck. I was using it to drive MicroSolid on a Cambridge Computer Graphics screen running at 1024*768 with 16 colours on an IBM 286 CPU.  The printer was thermal-wax colour printer developed by Calcomp.

As a side note! The digitizer for those interested; remembering this is the mid 80’s, was clear glass and as a result did not destroy diskettes as did others, and still do if your not careful.

R. Paul Waddington
cadWest.