When Annette and Larry Parrish, co-owners of Parrish Construction, in Boulder, Colo., saw a SMART Board interactive whiteboard at a trade show eight years ago, they knew they had found a new tool for helping clients understand and visualize project design. “You can put up blueprints and take a pen … or your fingers and write on it. You can redo your drawings,” Annette says.
“PAPER” TRAIL
An interactive whiteboard — made by companies such as SMART, Promethean, and PolyVision — lets you interact with your computer on a whiteboard surface so you can erase, write-on, make changes — all of which can be saved. “Your computer’s image is displayed on the whiteboard’s touch-sensitive surface … which allows users to touch the board with a finger or stylus similar to that of a touchpad on a laptop or handheld digital device,” says Jeffrey Thompson, a SMART Certified Master Trainer and Promethean dealer at AV Solutions based in Rochester, N.Y.
Virtual Showroom
The Parrishes use their whiteboard not only for design but as a virtual showroom, for staff meetings, budget and training meetings, and seminars.
Because it’s connected to a computer, any software you have works on the board. And when it’s time for some staff bonding, Annette says, they show movies.
Stacey Freed, senior editor, REMODELING.