Freehand Diagrams on Windows, Android, and iOS with MetaMoji Note & the WACOM pen tablet.

Updated: 2014-11-23
MetaMoji Note: A worthy digital replacement to Pencil & Notebook for creating freehand diagrams on Windows and Android.

Pencil & Notebook are hard to beat when diagrams, equations, and words are desired in roughly equal measure, which is common when working as an engineer, mathematician, or product designer. To be sure, there are good digital tools for subsets of these (example LaTeX), but not when all three are combined. But now there’s a new suite of digital freehand tools that are almost good enough to set aside the notebook and pencil permanently.  The core of this toolkit is a vector-based graphics canvas (software) and an ultra-precise stylus (hardware).

If you use Apple iOS, you may already be using Adobe Ideas, which does the job brilliantly and is free (see this excellent article by Simon Raper). [1]  But Adobe has no plans to release this to either Windows RT or Android, so for the rest of us, that’s a show-stopper, until now, with MetaMoji…

MetaMoJi has much to offer. 

For cross-platform Windows, Android, and iOS, consider MetaMoji Note is a comparable vector-graphic app that works seamlessly across all three major platforms (iOS, Windows RT, and Android) with its free cloud sync feature.  There are several attractions.  First, Note has that simple, intuitive, easy-to-use interface that starts to rival the simplicity of pen & paper.  Additionally, it has virtual whiteboard technology for collaborative work (Share Anytime), and exceptional hand-writing recognition with the mazec3 add-on.

Initial drafts are a snap.  Refined editing / re-work is easy.  And sprucing up for discovery sessions / presentations is not much more work.  I now use Note as my primary digital notepad.

For usability, I combine finger motions on my touchscreen laptop with a precise stylus from Wacom which can also be fitted with a wireless module to go cable free.

The results have been good enough to set aside my notebook & pencil for diagrams I want to re-use.

An excellent starting point to freehand diagramming, with tips and examples, is Simon Raper’s article [1] available from Drunks & Lampposts.

Kit List:
  + MetaMoji Note (£5, outstanding)   Note Lite (Free, still very good)
  + Wacom Intuos Pen (small)
  + Wacom Wireless Accessory (optional)
  + Touchscreen Laptop with adequate processing power (Intel Core i5 with 6GB RAM is plenty)  
  + Windows 8.1 or better

Tips & Tricks

1. How should the 4 buttons on your Pen Tablet be configured? I use the left buttons for Undo (Left Top) and Redo (Left Bottom), and I use the right buttons for Delete (Right Top) and Right Click (Right Bottom).
2. Should I pay for Metamoji Note or stick with the free Metamoji Note Lite? 
   In casual use, the differences are not noticeable, but with heavy use, the improvements are good enough that I couldn’t get along without the paid version and its features (below)

3. Cloud synch – free storage.  Use it. It means you have data safety and accessibility from any device on any platform. They do indeed keep your documents forever. (In 2024, I can see diagrams I sketched in 2014.)
4. Pen selection: each pen style has particular characteristics. Get familiar with one that give you the best handwriting and stick with it.
5. The fountain pen assists with neater handwriting for those with a scrawl. 
6. The brush improves annotations. 
7. Colours enliven sketches & diagrams.
8. Paper selection: lined, graph, boxes, grids, and a variety of others
9. Pen Tip size affects your handwriting at different zoom settings. For better handwriting, I zoom way in. Then I can zoom out and scale it.
10. I typically use 5pt for primary writing, one line per ruled line (this keeps the right size for legible print-outs);  3pt for fine annotations / commentary; 10pt for brush annotations (large, e.g. numbering)
11. Lasso for partial selection: There are two choices of lasso’s – complete selection and partial selection.  With a bit of practice, you’ll find partial selection is exactly what you need to grab whatever bits you want.
12. Rotation, reflection, resize with dynamic thickness, resize without changing thickness
13. Text should be resized dynamically, so when you shrink, the stroke thins and retains legibility, and when you enlarge again, the stroke thickens restoring printability & aesthetics.
14. Handwriting recognition (mazec): this is an add-on.  Its recognition algorithms are exceptional.  So on smaller devices, mazec offers a pretty good alternate input device, comparable to Swype on-screen keyboards. Is it worth getting the mazec add-on? Here my feelings are mixed: From my own perspective, I can type much faster than I can write, so when I choose to write it is because I want the deliberateness & the time that writing gives to reflect, and I want to preserve the handwritten character and visual arrangement that writing/sketching permit. So for me, I don’t want or need the handwriting converted. But your mileage my vary. And if you can write faster than you type, then it’s probably worth having at least a type converter.

See here for more Pro tips. Express Keys

Happy exploring!

References:

[1] Freehand Diagrams with Adobe Ideas, Jan 2014, Simon Raper, Drunks & Lampposts

[2] MetaMoji Note (iOS, Windows RT, & Android)  (£5)

[3] Wacom Intuos Pen Small (CTL-480/S)  (£49)

[4] Adobe Ideas (iOS only)  (Free)

[5]Lenovo Flex 2 laptop, with touchscreen display (1920×1080), Intel Core i5-4210P processor with 6GB RAM, 1.7 GHz and 3MB Cache  (£429)

[6] Drivers for WACOM graphics tablet can be downloaded here: 
http://us.wacom.com/en/support/drivers/

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Updated for 2024

10 years from when I first posted this article, technology has progressed.
Here are some more options and products:

By far the most economical, and reasonably functional is RocketBook paired with Smartphone camera, the RocketBook App, and Google Drive setup with a RocketBook folder, with a bookmark on the laptop to that GDrive folder. And carrying 4 colors of FriXion pens (black, blue, green, red) with refillable ink. Advantages: it’s actual pen and ink. It’s friction eraseable. You get real drawings. Wipe clean and start over when finished. Disadvantages: Don’t go near the borders as the camera cuts off edges. 3 clicks on the phone (but need to preview first), followed by 3 clicks on the laptop and you have a PDF in front of you to edit, photoshop, screenshot, insert where you need. Compared to MetaMoji Note, it’s faster, less finicky (choose pen color, etc.). Would it be better with an e-ink tablet? No doubt. So start with the frugal solution and perfect your use of pen/ink in your work to justify the 10x investment (£30 vs. £380) in the expensive solution. By then the prices will likely have dropped further.

1. Rocketbook Flip for £25 (for A4), and £20 (for Executive A5). Tagline: “endlessly reusable smart notebook” Can be used with any pen from the Pilot FriXion line (£6.60 for 3, or £2.20 ea)
2. E-ink tablets
3. Remarkable – Taglines: “as close to paper as it gets”, “for work that needs deep focus”. £380
4. Kindle Scribe: £380, eReader and Digital Notebook (10.3″)
5. Kobo, 10.2″ £340, 8″ £242, 7″ £170
6. Lenovo Digital eNotebook, £350
7. BigMe – Notetaking+eReader+ChatGPT, 7.8″, £320