Friday, July 6, 2012

Engineering apps for the iPad

After completing a big project at my previous company, our group was given iPads as a thank-you.  While that was certainly a nice gesture, I'm in no way an Apple fanboy, and at the time I was thinking about getting a Kindle Fire for Christmas.  But I didn't turn it down.

I now use it every day at work.  Of course I have a few games on it (although my kids play the games far more than I do), and I check emails on it frequently, but I was surprised at the number of useful engineering-related apps I found.  So I want to list my most useful ones:

  • Penultimate - I use this app for taking notes all the time.  But be warned, I found the interface somewhat cumbersome until I bought a soft-pin stylus.
  • eDrawings - At least every other week I get a SolidWorks drawing for review, either from in house or a vendor.  This apps is a very handy tool for viewing those models and easily showing them to someone else.  For example, a few months ago I brought it into the lab so I could look at a test chuck model and debug a machining problem.
  • VNC Viewer - I am responsible for multiple test stations, each with a separate IP address.  With this app on my iPad I can check those stations when I'm sitting in a boring meeting and don't have my laptop.
  • NI DAQ Device Pinouts - A handy little app that simply lists all the pinout diagrams for the multitude of NI DAQ appliances, this tool has come in handy several times lately.
  • Mariner Calc - I've used this tool a few times in the lab or in meetings when I didn't have access to a computer.  Not bad for a cheap spreadsheet.
  • Filebrowser - It's a nice app for navigating the internal computers on the company intranet.
  • 2X Client RDP - While my computer screen is a little cramped viewing it through my iPad, working on it when I'm in a boring meeting (see above) can come in handy.


1 comment:

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