01. GraphGrid – Shape and function

The GraphGrid is one of the smart accessories for the TactiPad drawing board. Besides drawing freehand this accessory allows you to draw rows, columns, squares or a coordinate system in two or three dimensions. Rubber bands fixed inside and around the GraphGrid allow you to place flexible ‘graph paper’ and ‘coordinate systems’ on the TactiPad. When making creative drawings, playing games or doing school assignments, this allows you to work easily with cross-connections in tables, differences between fore- and background or spatial proportions.

Figure 1. The GraphGrid is placed on the TactiPad’s buttons.

Details of the GraphGrid

The GraphGrid is a framework that is placed on the TactiPad like a picture frame. Rubber bands, placed inside and around this framework from left to right and from top to bottom, form the axes and lines of the graph paper.

Along the inner edge, small “hooks” are placed at a regular interval of 1 centimeter. Along the outer edge of the GraphGrid, indentations are made with a spacing of 1 centimeter as well. Slightly wider indications mark 5 centimeter intervals. The locations of the hooks and indentations both exactly match with the centimeter scale along the edges of the TactiPad. This way the measurements of the drawing board become tangible on the entire drawing surface. The frame overlaps the drawing surface along the edges by one centimeter.

Because of the A4 dimensions of the drawing surface (21.0 by 29.7 cm), the centimeter scale is not symmetrical along the TactiPad. Therefore the starting point for horizontal and vertical distances is at the upper left corner of the drawing board, when it is in landscape orientation with the hinge facing backwards. To position the GraphGrid in its correct position, place it with the flat corner in the upper right corner on the TactiPad.

The eight holes in the GraphGrid fit around the knobs on the TactiPad. For this, you place the knobs at five centimeters from the corners of the drawing surface.