If it’s anything like me, he basically uses a Mac for the heavy lifting and the iPad is for viewing out in the field, plus light edits here and there. It’s like what I do with my iPad. My iMac is to prepare the bulk of the resources I use for my daily teaching which I then access on my iPad when I am in the classroom.
This is true, however, recent events are probably going to put the brakes on my iPad use a little bit.
Brammy in 2017
My main personal computing use is writing, drawing, and photo editing. For writing I can do 100% of it on the iPad. Same with drawing. Procreate and Adobe Draw are perfect for my needs. For photo editing, I'm about 95% there on the iPad. Affinity Photo can do what I need, with the exception of use some Topaz filters I like. I also used the iPad to do coursework and submit it. I felt comfortable that I could do 95% of what I need to on the iPad.
Brammy in 2018
I went to architecture school in the mid-90s, right around the time AutoCad came on the market. I worked as a cad jockey for a while. Recently, I decided to get those skills back and do architectural drawings again. Unfortunately, for me, this is where the wheels come off the iPad bus. AutoCad just stinks on mobile. The best I can do -- and this isn't really the best -- is start a drawing or template on my Mac with the blocks I like to use, set up the layers with the line styles I like, and then continue it on the iPad. Autodesk Graphic does let me do some scale drawings, but it's not as quick and easy as on the Mac. For the cad jockeys, I don't have things like trim, chamfer and extend that just make line work easier.
Now, for some of what I want to do, the iPad is still good at. I don't care (for now) that I can't create a 3d model with textures and lighting on my iPad. Back when I was in school and needed to create a perspective, rather than map out the vanishing points and geometry, I'd rough out the view in a 3d program (MacPerspective, I think), print it out, and put my velum over it. I can use Formit on the iPad to do this and bring it into Procreate.
However, this now skews the ratio enough that I am taking a harder look at my "iPad Primary" lifestyle. Because I like pushing boundaries, I'm still gong to continue to try and do as much as I can on the iPad, realizing there will be some frustrations on the way. For sketching out ideas, I think the iPad is still aces. Formit is good for at least roughing out how I think a building or space could look. Similar to the rough chipboard models I made back in the day.