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Microsoft’s newest PC release, the “Surface Studio”, may well be the greatest hardware innovation ever created for the architectural industry.
For many years now, and especially in the wake of the astonishing growth in mobile technology, many have felt that the PCs best days are long gone. Some have even gone so far has calling this a “post PC era”; one in which users’ needs are being met with the pocket-sized super-computers we call “mobile phones”. It may be true that for many consumers, whose entire computing experience consists of internet browsing, social networks and photo sharing, that the need for full-sized desktop PCs may be a thing of past. The fact remains that tens of millions of people, including students and professionals, rely on PCs for the more demanding tasks that a mobile device simply can’t accommodate.
Microsoft has managed to “hedge their bets” by unifying their desktop and mobile offerings into a single operating system – Windows 10. In response to the popularity of mobile devices, like the tablets offered by Apple and various Android-based products, Microsoft released their “Surface” products. Until recently, the product line consisted of a tablet and “convertible” notebook with a screen that can be removed and used as a tablet. The huge advantage Microsoft’s solution offer is in their operating system. Unlike Apple and Android devices that are limited to extremely scaled-down mobile versions of popular applications (ie: Office, Photoshop, etc.), Windows 10 based tablets run the full application – just as it appears on a desktop PC. This is a massive difference given that mobile versions of these applications usually contain a small fraction of the features offered by their desktop counterparts.
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Just last month, Microsoft released one of the most innovative desktop PCs ever – the ‘Surface Studio”. Targeted directly at the people they refer to as “creators”, Microsoft launched the stunning new machine to a beautiful remake of the song “Pure Imagination”, made famous by Gene Wilder in the 1971 release “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”.
There are several things that make this machine extremely special, and particularly useful for people in the architectural industry. To begin with, the “Studio” features a gorgeous 30” monitor offering 4K resolution in a 3:2 viewing ratio. It was sized and scaled to perfectly accommodate two 8 1/2”x11” sheets of paper – perfect for publishers to preview their work in actual size.
Needless to say, running AVAproject on this monitor is an experience unlike any other. The large size allows users to fully take advantage of the enhanced resolution to display virtually any schedule they could ever imagine – without ever having to scroll. Even more breathtaking, is the ability to preview ‘Submittal Packages’ – perfectly rendered using AVAproject’s built-in CAD engine, at 100% actual size (up to 11”x17”).
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The Surface Pro screen “tilts” at any angle down to 20 degrees – making the Surface Studio look and feel like a digital drafting table.
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It’s also important to mention that AVAproject natively supports ‘interface scaling’, meaning that the software can be scaled so that its menus and toolbars remain perfectly legible at the insanely high resolution offered by the “Studio”.
The most innovative part of the new screen surprisingly isn’t its resolution, size or scale however. It’s the brilliant mechanism that allows the screen to “tilt” at any angle down to 20 degrees – making the Surface Studio look and feel like a digital drafting table. Users doing take-offs can now do so using electronic version of blueprints, with the same ease and comfort they’re used to with traditional paper documents. Using the Studio’s stylus, one can even emulate the use of a highlighter to mark and count openings on a set of blueprints.
If a PC manufacturer were to design a machine specifically for the architectural openings industry, or for AVAproject users – it would definitely look just like Microsoft’s new “Surface Studio”.
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Interested in a look at Surface Studio? Check out Microsoft’s gorgeous promotional video:
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