Generally, I find the iPad to be clumsy and unsuited for use out in the field. It’s just too big and awkward to carry around in my opinion. When I do bring my iPad out of my truck, I am constantly laying it down and sure to leave it behind. Even when I have it nearby, my first instinct is always to reach in my pocket for my iPhone when I have a need to be connected. This doesn’t mean the iPad is not a valuable tool for me, I find many ways that it can enhance my productivity in the course of the work week while out in the field.

What inspired me to write this post is my recent foray into creating a crane lift diagram for a crane lift plan on a jobsite last week. Using a drawing app (I can recommend iDraw which is what I used) I imported a photo of the site plan encompassing the area that we’d be working in. I used that photo as a background, added another for the crane placement. Whipped up some representations of the materials we were lifting and copy/pasted a table of the sequence of lift operations with weights and capacities.

You can see the result here- Example Lift Diagram.

This whole process took me very little time and I was still learning to use the tools. Once I have saved a few reusable shapes and refined my technique, I can see turning these out regularly in just a few moments prior to any lift. Now that is something I would not want to do on a smaller screen, but I still think the iPad stays in the truck for the most part.