How to make drawings of keyboard layouts?

[graywolf]

I see the results here all the time, but have not found out how to do it myself short of going into a full scale CAD program. Goggle searches give me a lot of pages telling me how to do ANSII ART on the keyboard, but the is not what I am looking for.

What I am looking for is something simple and easy to use to do preliminary sketches of layouts before working on a serious "to be built" design of a simple stenotype keyboard. The interesting thing is that it is easier to find out how to do the serious stuff than to do the "lets see what this looks like" preliminary stuff.

[Findecanor]

Pencil pen and graph paper goes a long way. Play around with key caps on the desk, place them over markings that you have made in 1:1 scale on a piece of paper, put them on a board with double-sided sticky tape or stick them into modelling clay, and take pictures that could illustrate your ideas. Keep those sketches and digital pictures around, because maybe you will backtrack to an earlier idea later on in the process.

[graywolf]

Well, I did this with Adobe Illustrator,

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However, I would not call that the best way, even on my dual processor workstation it is slow.

[wcass]

yeah, early layout is hand drawn or cut paper "keys". then i use DeltaCad.

i've been using the demo for years so i really should buy it.

[graywolf]

Well, I think that if I do it, it will be like this.

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I laid out about a half-dozen slightly different layouts, but this seems like it will be the cheapest to build, as it uses all standard keycaps.

[SmallFry]

Don't forget that different layouts have different profiles. Therefore, you may want to order your sets either blank (have sheet with layout next to desk) or from WASD.

[graywolf]

As far as hand drawn goes, my hand/eye coordination is not what it was.

Still, I have seen all kind of fancy 2D and 3D keyboard drawings posted here on GeekHack and was hoping some of the folks who had posted them would chip in with how they did them. I did find one software package Qliner Hotkeys that has a Keyboard Designer program in it. It was free to download, but I have not looked at it too closely. There is Google's Sketchup program the basic version is free, but it seems to be only 3D. I do have a copy of AutoCAD 2005 around here somewhere, but that might be overkill. Also, I have a copy of TurboCAD 3D. Plus of course Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop which I used to do those simple drawings.

But still, I expected that someone knew of a program that was easy to use to design the look of a keyboard. There are free applications online that will let you design things like the printed circuit board, the mounting plate, and the case and have them made to order. That is not what I am looking for at the moment. It seem funny that you can easily design and have the custom parts made, but how to design how to put together the off the shelf parts is difficult. Strange.

[SmallFry]

KiCAD, or some other free CAD. AutoCAD is never over kill. I used it to layout my bedroom...:smile:

[graywolf]

Don't forget that different layouts have different profiles. Therefore, you may want to order your sets either blank (have sheet with layout next to desk) or from WASD.

Yes, if it was ever a production keyboard the keys would have to be custom as steno keyboards are kind of flat with the four vowel keys quite a bit lower than the main keys. That is easily achieved by using high profile keys for the main board and low profile keys for the vowels. Actually it is not the price of the custom keys that get you, it is the minimum order. While I am thinking about this and writing up an article about how I arrived at my design criteria (gotta keep my blog going, you know), I need to look at the teensy controller. It is a lot cheaper than the arcade game controller I was going to use (no problem with all the keys being hit at once).

[graywolf]

KiCad, unless I am missing something is another one of those aplications for designing the guts of the project. The info I find on it does not look like it is much good for that initial design stage, that used to be done on paper napkins at the bar. The thing is I do not have a problem about designing the guts. It is the initial brainstorming stage that I can not find what I need to do on the computer.

Hum? Maybe what I need is an etch-a-sketch program. Excuse me, I am off to google.

[cactux]

You can also try Sketchup from Google