How to build yourself a Cintiq: To case or not to case?

Or, rather, to build a new case, or to modify the case of the tablet, to hold the screen?

It is a matter of personal tastes, and of time: building even the simplest, boxy-style case, ad fitting everything neatly inside takes a couple of days (and some raw material).

Modifying  an Intuos case takes less time, BUT... if for any reason, you fancy changing the tablet in your build (for example, to upgrade to a later model...  I2 -> I3 makes a lot of sense and, if one is lucky enough that his screen does not interfere with the new tablet, the change may be little more than a direct replacement of the main boards and finding a place for the I3 buttons) or you finally abort the project, you cannot re-assemble and re-sell the tablet.  

Personally, I tend to build new cases, even for the A5 sized (probably, that was a mistake... the case is all in folded iron; It is excessively sturdy, to say the least... the kind of small appliance that one does not survive, if his partner throws it at him in anger).

Building your own case takes slightly more time (in reality, with a well thought design, one may assemble it in a couple of hours... then, days go in trimming it to fit everything, the same as with modifying an existing Intuos), but it presents its advantages.

First of all, tablets are made to be placed on a desk.

Unless they have a good IPS monitor, "Cintiqs" can HARDLY be used at all, in that position.

And even if they were... drawing on a tablet, you follow the work on the screen -  the screen is in a perfect position to be viewed with little or no perspective aberrations; over time, your brains learns how to compensate for the large distance between hand and the screen (and for the non-linearities in the tablet position reading... that's why a tablet driver has a 4 points projection set-up, and a Cintiq driver uses 27 - or more - points; on a digitizing monito, you see where it goes off-track).

A Cintiq is going to replace your physical support ... so, it is best thought in terms of how you use a sheet of paper of the same size of the screen.

A5 - it is a notes block, that usually one keeps in hand while drawing - for one of these, keeping it small and compact is a good idea.

A4 - Can go both way (keep in mind that usually a tablet requires a size comparable to the successive din step), though probably the best paradigm is a monitor on a monitor arm.

A3 - Big, they are better served thinking of one of them as a centre-piece in a drawing table.

A2 and beyond (multiple digitizers under the LCD) - these are, really, drawing boards.

With some care, one may design a frame that can be trimmed, relatively easily, for more than one use case.

Stretching out a tablet frame for an use that it was not thought for, may produce strange results and require awkward junctions.

(In fact, an awful number of builds die during the fit-the-case-to-the-screen phase - torn TCON-lcd flexible junctions, cutters that go in the wrong place and short things....)

On the other hand, modifying an existing  plastic case... can take a lot less time.

Both methods can yield good results, depending on what your use scenario is, so it is a matter of personal preferences.