In my office we use OneNote in a similar vein. It's useful to track project notes/issues, it can be shared w/ the project team so others can see & respond to the notes, and if you have a tablet or surface you could write notes like you mention.

I've looked at the ReMarkable a few times, the main detractor for me is everything lives in their own application ecosystem so a little tougher to share and archive notes.

Like RVAmeche, we use OneNote which paired with Office 365 does a great job of storing and sharing notes per project.

On the tablet front:
I use both a Surface Pro and a Wacom drawing tablet. The Wacom can take awhile to get used to the disconnect between what you are drawing showing up on you monitor vs being able to look at your hand and what you are writing/drawing. The surface and others like it have the benefit of being closer to pen on paper feel but obviously at a higher cost.

If you can spare the $70ish the small Wacom tab, Intuos S, is a decent jumping in point to see if that process works for you. I've also seen Huion products used which can be found for much cheaper than the Wacom products but usually come with some driver headaches.

Open Source Structural Applications: https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

Thanks for the recommendations, Celt83.

I really don't fancy the idea of the tracker pad style tablets - I think I would go crazy.

Do you have any suggestions for base model tablets with live screens?

If your just looking for something to do note taking with:

Surface Go + Pen - full windows operating system, specs a little lackluster but if you keep to OneNote and other office tasks will likely only notice in some web browsing

Ipad Pro + Pencil - IOS ecosystem has access to OneNote to sync accross your other computers. Not a bad choice if you just want to be able to jot some things down and if you are already invested in the IOS ecosystem.

Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.0 w/ S Pen - Android ecosystem, OneNote has been noted to have some issues on android so keep that in mind but is likely ok for light note taking.


A used or refurbished Surface Pro 1 or 2 would be OK also, but wouldn't recommend spending more than $200. Battery life isn't great I get about 3 hrs on my Surface Pro 1 but the pen uses Wacom tech vs the newer N-trig so no battery needed in the pen. The pro 1 on paper is slightly better specs than the GO and Pro 2 is another slight step up from the Pro 1, I can actually run some smaller revit models on my Pro 1 without feeling like I want to toss the computer out the window.

Open Source Structural Applications: https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

An major upgrade from scraps of paper would be a $1 bound composition book. I keep one on my desk for taking notes during phone calls.

Smart phones can take voice recognition text notes now, as well. "Okay Google, take a note".

I second the composition book. Keep everything, even if they are scribbles or otherwise gibberish at the time...

The devil is in the details; she also wears prada.

You guys crack me up. "closest you can get to the feel of pen on paper" Actually there is a way to get even closer. Its called pen and paper. It was good enough for humanity until the last 10 years or so. It's one of the tools we used to win World War II and land on the moon! In fact, do you know the story about NASA spending millions of dollars in the Apollo program to develop an ink pen that would write in zero gravity? The Russians used a pencil. The KISS principle still works. Just sayin...

My wife used a Livescribe, pretty cool and the pen also records audio:
https://www.livescribe.com/site/

I just came across Rocketbook (no experience with it), after you digitize your scribes you pop the notebook into a nuke to erase the ink (special type of pen required):
https://www.amazon.com/Rocketbook-WAV-S-Wave/dp/B0...

-AK2DM

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"It's the questions that drive us"
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If you're willing to give paper methods another shot, the pocket sized notepad has been my friend. Portable and cheap and you can clip a pen to the spiral binding to make sure you're never without a writing implement.

As for digital methods, if I'm out somewhere taking a bunch of pictures with my phone I will use the native notes app on my phone to swipe my notes. I've found the swipe input on my Samsung S10e is pretty accurate so I'm not having to peck at each letter. I've seen guys with really big hands use the voice to text on their phones to a decent degree as well.

EDIT: The pen and paper method doesn't require a Class/Div case to make it safe for certain plant environments, that's a couple hundred in savings

I just use a paper and pen to sketch things. Then I take a picture with my cell phone or make a PDF with Neat and throw the paper away. The cell phone has notes, a recorder and a camera. That takes care of most of what I need. It just does not have a good way to sketch.

As funny as the space pen versus space pencil is, I have always heard that was a myth. See the link below.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or...

I'll second Ron247's approach. Though the app I use is OfficeLens. It came standard on my Pixel (Google/Android) and should be available for free if you don't have it. You can take pictures of documents (single or multi-page), business cards, whiteboards, etc. It automatically crops and squares them to produce professional "scans" of whatever you're doing. If you're also using OneNote, the business card scans will automatically load as a contact to be added to your phone.

I just use a small writing pad of traditional paper for limited quick notes and sketches then transcribe into OneNote when appropriate. I can also take notes on my phone and directly upload pics since it has the app linking it directly to the same OneNote notebook as my PCs via the cloud.

Are you ever without your phone? You can get writing apps for your phone, and you can even get a pen-like stylus to do the writing. It can be saved as cursive, or you can allow the app to convert to text.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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I either write notes in an e-mail to myself or I take notes on paper, scan or photo them and then file them in the appropriate project directory.

I have recently been given a surface Pro by my work, I actually quite like writing on it (which surprised me as have been 100% paper based until then). It feels quite natural after a very short while.

Now its good for writing/inking in onenote/word/excel/bluebeam with the surface pen. Some software probably needs to catchup a bit with the technology if you're driving things without a mouse or keyboard attached.

But one limitation I've noted is that you cannot put a ruler on it for sketching as it throws a hissy fit with the touch screen. You can however get a virtual ruler in the windows 10 version of onenote but I haven't bothered using it to be honest.

I also second the use of office lens, integrates well into onenote.

Another downside I've noted is if you are doing quite a bit of intensive stuff on it, and a lot of writing... Then your hand gets super hot and part of the screen almost become unbearable to touch.

The graphics cards in them aren't the best so if you're pushing the inbuilt display plus 2 x 4k displays then it's working pretty hard.

Pen and paper. I write stuff in my bound notebooks all the time. Phone calls, meetings, discussion sketches. When it's worth sharing or keeping for posterity (IE covering my posterior) I scan the relevant pages and save it in the project data files. Simple.

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