Whilst the Atari is capable of excellent graphics displays in modes 7
or 8 there is no denying that it is a laborious task indeed to get a
picture from paper to screen. The traditional way would be to trace the
original drawing and then transfer to graph paper, finally either
numbering the squares on the graph paper or counting along to find the
plot position. Anything that can make this task easier must be worth
looking at. The best answer of course is to use a digitizer. The only
one generally available at the moment is Versa Writer but at £169 you
need to do an awful lot of drawing to make it worth while. The
Victagraph which retails at £7.00 won't take away the chore of finding
all those Plot and Drawto points but it does make the job much easier.
The Victagraph is described as a Plot Window and comes as four sheets of
plastic measuring 17 inches by 12 inches. One is a white base sheet, two
are see-through sheets with scales of 320 horizontally by 200 vertically
and the final sheet is a clear mask with sights at each corner which
enable you to plot and read off points. You may not think that that is a
lot for £7 but there has been no attempt to use cheap materials, the
plastic is of a very heavy gauge and the printed scales very clear and
professionally done. It comes in a protective cardboard sleeve which
even the most heavy handed postman could not damage! There are two pages
of instructions which are written in a friendly way although they do
seem to make the use of the device seem more complicated than it really
is. To use, you merely place a drawing on the base sheet, overlay a plot
window and then use one of the sights on the window mask to go round
your drawing and read the horizontal and vertical co-ordinates for each
point. Once you get used to it, reading off points is very easy and very
fast. You would probably be persuaded to try some fairly complex designs
in Graphics 8 to which the scales are ideally suited. It can cope with
the other Graphics modes with either a smaller drawing or by scaling
down.
The Victagraph certainly makes picture drawing easier. Don't be
mislead, you still have to figure out the Plot and Drawto points but it
definitely beats tracing and counting up graph squares.
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