In almost any business, if you can save time and provide better customer service, you will increase your profits. But you won't pay a consultant to tell you something so obvious--what you need is specific ways to do these things. One way to save time is to avoid doing things more than once, and you can improve customer service by making sure the customer knows in advance what you are going to deliver.

Robert Horn of Into Design Group (Fig. 1) has been able to accomplish both these goals with PowerCAD and a Pocket PC. Into Design Group is a small company in West Jordan, Utah, that creates custom tradeshow booths and display designs for museums and other public exhibits. Because of the premium cost of such custom work, customer service and support are critical to the company's success.

Fig. 1. Robert Horn of Into Design Group (seated) discusses a drawing displayed on his Pocket PC with Joe Birnbach of 3d WorX.

In the past, Horn and his staff would meet with the customer, then lay out the design of the display or booth on a computer-aided design (CAD) computer back at the office. Once the design was completed, a set of blueprints and perspective drawings were taken back to the customer for approval. Most likely, the customer would request changes, and the process would be repeated until everyone was satisfied with the design. While the ability to create and update CAD drawings on-site was very appealing, according to Horn: "Laptop computers were too inconvenient, and the CAD programs he had tried on PDAs were too limited in capability."

Into Design Group provides their customers with what are known in the CAD industry as "fully rendered" three-dimensional views of the proposed displays (Figs. 2–4). Horn says this is an important aspect of ensuring the customer understands the proposal before the physical product exists. "Most of our customers are not used to reading plan-view drawings and may not be able to visualize what the final product will look like from standard engineering drawings alone." Therefore, the rendered 3D drawings are important to ensuring customer satisfaction.

Fig. 2. Tradeshow booth, 3D "wireframe" layout using PowerCAD on the Pocket PC.

Fig. 3. 2D view of tradeshow booth. Using the Pocket PC, the designer can move design elements or add new items such as chairs.

Fig. 4. The tradeshow booth designed on the Pocket PC, after being rendered using a CAD workstation.

3D capability with PowerCAD

When evaluating CAD packages for the Pocket PC, Horn discovered that only PowerCAD, from GiveMePower Corp. in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, included true 3D file capability. While most users would never consider working in 3D except on their large-screen workstations in their office, this was a necessity for Into Design Group because without it, a designer back in the office would have to translate the two-dimensional drawings created in the field into the 3D drawings that are needed to give the rendering a solid look.

I asked Horn if the small screen of the Pocket PC was too limiting for working with such complex drawings. He explained, "I have a library of 3D objects, such as chairs, light fixtures, trusses, and other standard components we use. I import them into a drawing and move them around rather than create most drawings from scratch."