Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Working from Home without a Home Office? Think Big!

I've been WFH for nearly a month, with less than two days total at the office.  My home office has been unused for over a decade, and is totally unable to support anything close to the three 24" 1080p monitors I use at work.

The only suitable surface at home was the large table presently occupied by my 3D printers, and the laptop I use to run Cura to prepare the models for printing.

I first planned to duplicate my work setup and buy three 24" 1080p monitors for under $100 each.  But what about after Personal Isolation and Social Distancing are over?  Will I still want those three monitors?

I dashed into work (which was nearly deserted), grabbed the monitors from my desk, and gave it a try at home.  It was totally impractical: I'd need to take my desk and chair too  Cloning work wouldn't even work for work!

I had been wanting to learn 3D CAD, but it was an exercise in frustration on my laptop screen, even though it is a large 15.6" display.  And it wasn't any better on three 24" screens.

So I bought a 4K monitor, which is equivalent to four 1080p screens.  I actually got a curved 55" 4K TV, since I normally angled my smaller monitors into an arc.

My first test was to get some information from each of nearly two dozen schematic drawings.  At my desk, I had been continuously panning, scrolling and zooming to find the information needed.  On the big TV, with the schematic filling the screen, I could easily read all if it directly, with no movements or adjustments required.  Win!

That evening I went through a beginner tutorial for Fusion 360.  Having a massive screen gave me tons of work area in the center for the model, while having all the menus and lists I needed conveniently displayed around the edges.  By the end of that one video I understood the basic Fusion 360 workflow, something that had eluded me with all prior attempts, including other programs such as TinkerCAD, SketchUp, 3D Builder and more.

I suppose I may look weird sitting 4 feet away from a 55" TV, but it is one heck of a productivity device.