2024 - UI Modernization

[Kevin McAllister]

12 hours ago, Christiaan said:

Yes, works great.

you just made my day! 🙂

Kevin

[uglycat]

On 8/22/2023 at 8:07 AM, demetris ktorides said:

I wonder if the UI modernization will be available for both Mac and Windows.. 

Also, will Windows users finally be able to set a dark theme?

 

Looks great, 

D

 

So will anyone answer if windows gets the new UI improvements other than just the dark theme? 

[Kevin McAllister]

4 minutes ago, uglycat said:

So will anyone answer if windows gets the new UI improvements other than just the dark theme? 

I"m sure it does. The Vectorworks interface is the same across both platforms. The only reason why dark theme was different was because on a Mac it's operating system based.

KM

[Tom Klaber]

Just opened it up for the first time.  The UI feels soooo much better.  Like a breath of fresh air.  I am sure I will find occasion to complain soon - but visually it now feels like I am using a grown-up program. 

[Tom W.]

I like the way you can make the preview in the RM much bigger than you could before

 

This is helpful.

 

The new folder icons are really nice too

 

[zoomer]

3 hours ago, Tom W. said:

you can make the preview in the RM much bigger than you could before

 

OMG

 

This is the best VW 2024 feature ever. Finally.

I can estimate my Textures now.

It even helps for PIO Styles.

 

And the other feature is the new Landmark Color Table.

[Dubman]

Can the View Bar be customized?  I like the compact mode & with the PINed items I've turned off there is space available to make each are wider. Also can I rearrange the order of areas so I can move the Layers & Classes towards the left & Views towards the right?

[E|FA]

55 minutes ago, Dubman said:

can I rearrange the order of areas so I can move the Layers & Classes towards the left & Views towards the right?

No, but you can vote on the Wishlist request (up arrow in the top left corner of the page):

 

[Kevin McAllister]

On 8/18/2023 at 7:55 AM, Kevin McAllister said:

This looks awesome. I"m guessing @Stephan Moenninghoff was involved.

 

Can I dock a tool bar across the top yet? I've used horizontal tool bars forever and this has been my biggest wish....

 

Kevin

 

Docking tool bars at the top is still a bit of a dud. Here's my current toolbar and what happens when I dock it. It should be able to dock without changing its aspect ratio or reflowing the tools. I also tried docking more than one palette next to each other but that's not possible either. Tool position is important.

 

How I like my tools organized (undocked to do this)...

 

 

Vs. what you currently get when docking....

 

 

The idea of rearrangeable tiles extends to the mode bar where everything is justifying left instead of being able to be placed where a user wants it across the mode bar.

 

Kevin

 

[fabrica]

@Kevin McAllister I put a few similar tools together (long click to open) to shorten the top bar ...

 

[Kevin McAllister]

Just now, fabrica said:

@Kevin McAllister I put a few similar tools together (long click to open) to shorten the top bar ...

 

 

I actually want to dock my palette as is - two rows aligned as I use them. Its generally organized 3d tools on the top / 2d tools on the bottom. Yes, I could change it to be organized as a single row, but I've used it this way for ten years or more so I know where to find everything easily. The horizontal palette uses up much less space than the vertical palettes at the side of the screen and is better organized.

 

Kevin

 

[mjm]

On 9/22/2023 at 8:04 AM, Kevin McAllister said:

 

I actually want to dock my palette as is - two rows aligned as I use them. Its generally organized 3d tools on the top / 2d tools on the bottom. Yes, I could change it to be organized as a single row, but I've used it this way for ten years or more so I know where to find everything easily. The horizontal palette uses up much less space than the vertical palettes at the side of the screen and is better organized.

 

Kevin

 

Not being able to justify the tools L / C / R makes the horizontal tool bar so much less effective - my goal is to keep as much action screen right as possible, while gaining the most work area (MBP, rarely two screens). For now I'm demoing the tools in 2023 vertically and trying horizontal in 2024.

 

Another issue is that on toolbars which hold more than can be displayed at one time, a scroll bar displays when I scroll the tools forward or back & the scrollbar obscures the tools. I don't mind the scrolling, but can we have the scrolling like the MacOS two finger pan/scroll tool - nothing displayed, it just works.

[E|FA]

39 minutes ago, mjm said:

Not being able to justify the tools L / C / R makes the horizontal tool bar so much less effective

Don’t forget to vote on the related Wishlist item: 

 

[mjm]

17 minutes ago, E|FA said:

Don’t forget to vote on the related Wishlist item: 

O -THAT done as soon as the poll came out, AIR

 

[jberlin]

The new UI: to be honest, I cannot see a thing.  I have seeing issues and now that all the icons are black and white, I cannot see them.  Funny how  how my understanding is that it was changed to help those with accessibility issues.    Thanks for making it horrible for my eye site!!!!      The UI was recently updated a few years back to the new icons, which looked great. The were Bigger, Fluffier, and Smartly color coordinated, so that, without really looking at the icons, you could find them in an instant.  Now they are gray, thin, tiny, and many do not even look like they previous icon.  I sometime spend and I mean literally not figuratively, 4 to 5 minutes finding the icon i need.  I am so not happy, I want a big discount on my renewal, because it is take 3 to 4 times longer to draw my plans......SO DISAPPOINTED!  

 

[zoomer]

1 hour ago, jberlin said:

The were Bigger,

 

In VW 2024, for the first time, you can adjust the UI in 3 sizes.

Will not change the Icons - but makes them bigger.

[Christiaan]

19 hours ago, jberlin said:

The new UI: to be honest, I cannot see a thing.  I have seeing issues and now that all the icons are black and white, I cannot see them.  Funny how  how my understanding is that it was changed to help those with accessibility issues.    Thanks for making it horrible for my eye site!!!!      The UI was recently updated a few years back to the new icons, which looked great. The were Bigger, Fluffier, and Smartly color coordinated, so that, without really looking at the icons, you could find them in an instant.  Now they are gray, thin, tiny, and many do not even look like they previous icon.  I sometime spend and I mean literally not figuratively, 4 to 5 minutes finding the icon i need.  I am so not happy, I want a big discount on my renewal, because it is take 3 to 4 times longer to draw my plans......SO DISAPPOINTED!  

I found this to some degree but I also found is that memory of tool positions and the new icons overcame this eventually and I actually appreciate the overall more muted UI.

[kbillings]

Are you able to rearrange it? 

[Shortnort]

On 8/24/2023 at 6:10 PM, TaylorK said:

Are there going to be non monochrome options for the tool Icons? While I love the visual uniformity I know in practice the glance value of icons that are all the same color is troublesome and can increase time finding the correct tool.

I agree completely!!!   Being a self employed actual user of VW, I find it quite troubling that VW, for some reason, keeps messing with UI layouts.  Every year we are required to re-learn different aspects of the UI.  

 

The new monochrome icons are quite troubling to me.  It is very difficult to differentiate the icons, which in turn means slower output in production. The overall appearance of the new UI seems to be that the developers ran out of time and just stopped where they were in developing icons, etc.

 

Additionally, the new icons seem to be a step BACK in history to the Mario Brothers gaming era.  Many of the new icons are very difficult to interpret.  The VW2023 UI updates were great and why the time and effort to fix something that wasn't broken seems a bit counter-productive.  The supposed 3-D icons are quite bulky and cartoonish.  VW should try to emphasize modern, sleek, professional UI. 

 

The new software, however, is fantastic!!!  I have had no bugs or difficulties so far.  The upgrade was quite seamless, quick (which I have been quite apprehensive about in past updates).

 

I want to thank VW for continually updating and improving this tremendous software program.  But please focus on the big picture and settle on a layout and format that can last for at least 2 years. We users must focus on production speed and accuracy.

 

[Christiaan]

23 hours ago, Shortnort said:

... I find it quite troubling that VW, for some reason, keeps messing with UI layouts.  Every year we are required to re-learn different aspects of the UI.

I wouldn't characterise VW development over the years like this by any stretch. The opposite is true I think. This was a major update and long overdue.

 

23 hours ago, Shortnort said:

...please focus on the big picture and settle on a layout and format that can last for at least 2 years. We users must focus on production speed and accuracy.

Personally I don't want them to wait, especially after such a major update. I want them to take on board user feedback and make refinements as soon as possible. I want VW to be easy and powerful for new users. And if that means learning an updated UI I'm happy to do it, because if it's easier for new users then it's easier for me in the long run too.

[Tom W.]

On 10/28/2023 at 3:08 PM, Shortnort said:

Many of the new icons are very difficult to interpret. 

 

For me, this is the case for the Quick Pref icons only. I am happy with all the other icons but the Quick Prefs even now I continue to struggle with... This is my only issue. Very happy otherwise.

[Shortnort]

26 minutes ago, Christiaan said:

I wouldn't characterise VW development over the years like this by any stretch. The opposite is true I think. This was a major update and long overdue.

 

Personally I don't want them to wait, especially after such a major update. I want them to take on board user feedback and make refinements as soon as possible. I want VW to be easy and powerful for new users. And if that means learning an updated UI I'm happy to do it, because if it's easier for new users then it's easier for me in the long run too.

I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.   I recommend that VW take a poll from USERS that depend on the software to make a living to determine if this leap of no color and 1980s icons looks is in our best interest.  Updating software is great, as I had stated previously. 

 

UI is extremely important and should be created to allow users to quickly find and use the necessary tools.  VW2023 I found quite easy to navigate.  VW2024 is a strain on the eyes to figure out what the icon "means" and there is such a lack of consistency in icon colors.  As a compromise, why not allow the users to use the old icons and be done with it? In my opinion it is not debatable as to the readability difference in 2023 vs 2024.  Even the smaller 2023 below is easier to comprehend.

 

[Jesse Cogswell]

I think this is a really tough topic that Vectorworks has to deal with.  Every user has an opinion about it, and none of them match.  Any change made in any direction is going to upset a number of users.  There was a massive thread that got started back in 2017 that sparked a huge discussion of what the GUI of Vectorworks should and should not be, with the original post being about how Vectorworks should not have any color in it's interface since it distracted from the design being worked on:

 

This is a terrific thread to look through since it shows what users have been interested in over the past six years.  Even back then, we were discussing how old VW feels in terms of UI, and not just icons.  A lot of operations take more clicks than they really should, and the modal nature of VW means that if a dialog box is open, nothing can be done until that dialog is closed, which makes VW feel really dated.

 

Personally, I like a lot of the new interface and it feels like a move in the right direction.  I have some nitpicks about the new View Bar (compact view makes the class and layer drop-down menus too small, so you can't see what the active class and layer are, the Organization menu is now buried so that it takes two clicks to get to), and while I agree that they might have gone a touch too far in removing tool icon colors, the move to using SVG icon files is a really smart one.  I also agree with @Tom W. that some of the new Quick Preference icons don't make a lick of sense and it forced me to change my Windows accent color just to even be able to see them.

[Tom W.]

14 minutes ago, Jesse Cogswell said:

compact view makes the class and layer drop-down menus too small, so you can't see what the active class and layer are

 

Hmm I don't have this - does it depend on your screen size or something?

 

This is compact mode + small control sizes but changing control sizes to medium I can see just the same.

 

I got rid of Saved Views on the view bar because I didn't need it but reinstating it only narrows the drop-downs fractionally.

[Jesse Cogswell]

It might be something tied to Windows.  Here's what my view bar looks like in Regular Mode:

 

 

And here's in Compact Mode:

 

All of the drop-down menus are extremely short and can't currently be resized.  This makes compact mode next to useless for me.