2024 - Icons

[HWood]

Please please revert to the 2023 icons! The new ones are barely legible. With their smaller fuzzy shapes and lack of colour - it's so hard to find what we need. This is 'style' over substance! 

[markdd]

You can make them bigger in VWX preferences.  I have been working with the new UI for about 6 months now and once you get used to the new icons you'll wonder what the problem was....

[Mark Aceto]

25 minutes ago, HWood said:

This is 'style' over substance! 

Icons are the new Snapping Pallet.

[E|FA]

6 hours ago, Mark Aceto said:

Icons are the new Snapping Pallet.

 

[Jeff Prince]

Quote

"Please please revert to the 2023 icons!"

No, no, no, a thousand times no!

Old Icons 2020-2023 RIP

Your life was cut short for the betterment of humanity

 

Hmmm.  This looks promising.  Maybe kudos are in order for the development team.

Perhaps I will download 2024 just to look at the interface.

 

Minor opinionated criticism from the icons in this post...

• Symbol insertion still looks too busy.
• I find it odd the Texture Tool looks to have broken the monochromatic look with what looks like a paint roller skidding over some dog poo.
• The Split tool would look much better as Illustrator's Slice icon which is a simple exacto blade looking outline.  Easier to recognized that current.

My only question.... did the hardscape icon get fixed?  I sure hope so.

My commentary from the last redesign...

"Oh, poor hardscape tool, what have they done to you?  You used to be this pretty little field of pavers surrounded by a border presented in plan view, now you look like an isometric version of a shoe from an old Atari game."

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by Jeff Prince

[E|FA]

Quoting myself from 2020: "While I also dislike the aesthetics of the new graphics, the bigger problem I have is that they are harder to tell apart at a glance.  It's more of a functional issue than an aesthetic one.   I find myself having to look around for tools rather than heading straight to them as I did with the more distinctive icons in previous versions.  An unnecessary hiccup to interrupt my workflow. "  

 

I think 2024 is better than 2020-2023, and I can't even remember the 2019 icons anymore.  However, most are still not distinctive and clear enough for my taste.  A notable exception are the 3D tools (e.g. extract surface) that have a splash of red that clearly identifies the tool.  Maybe future iterations can build on this, even using different colors to identify different families of tools.

 

[Mark Aceto]

Take a look at the Quick Prefs icons. Use Layer Colors is my favorite.

[Jeff Prince]

1 hour ago, Mark Aceto said:

Take a look at the Quick Prefs icons. Use Layer Colors is my favorite.

 

Oh man, I spoke too soon.

The basic tools look okay, but those tool set icons actually look worse and are harder to read.

It's like someone over there is intentionally sabotaging things.

 

Why do they make these changes in a vacuum and force them upon us?

This UI would be better served by a command line like AutoCAD.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Jeff Prince

[Mark Aceto]

22 minutes ago, Jeff Prince said:

Why do they make these changes in a vacuum and force them upon us?

Definitely wasn’t in a vacuum but now that it hit the public release, constructive criticism and positive feedback are definitely being heard.

[E|FA]

17 hours ago, Mark Aceto said:

Take a look at the Quick Prefs icons. Use Layer Colors is my favorite.

It took me a bit but I eventually decoded what it's meant to signify. A paintbrush, rainbow, or painter's palette shape might have been a little - but not much - better.

Edited September 21, 2023 by E|FA

[Mark Aceto]

9 minutes ago, E|FA said:

It took me a bit but I eventually decoded what it's meant to signify.

 

Accurate description of the UX with the new icons.

[JMR]

Option to choose colourful or b/w icons? Or some "Icon styles" settings...

 

Personally find the new b/w ones much, much more difficult to decipher.

[LCarm]

I keep looking for a setting that is making the whole interface in black and white but after reading this, HELP!!  It is not just the icons but everything is in black and white.  Is there no way to add the color back in via settings?

[Mark Aceto]

On 1/29/2024 at 3:34 PM, LCarm said:

I keep looking for a setting that is making the whole interface in black and white but after reading this, HELP!!  It is not just the icons but everything is in black and white.  Is there no way to add the color back in via settings?

 

Check the yin & yang circle that's black & white in the screenshot (on mouse hover) but will be blue & white if it's selected:

 

[jmcewen]

51 minutes ago, Mark Aceto said:

 

Check the yin & yang circle that's black & white in the screenshot (on mouse hover) but will be blue & white if it's selected:

 

It is actually the global accent color of Windows set outside of Vectorworks at Personaization>Colours>Accent Colour.  Thank you, because trying to figure out what you were talking about with the blue made me realize that i could change this from the super electric red that buzzed my eyes every time I looked at it!  

 

Also I just realized that my Windows preferences menus use British spellings?  Was it always like that?  Is it just me?

 

Edit: typos

Edited January 31 by jmcewen

[Asemblance]

Yeah the whole UI seems to be worse frankly. Its not too bad on my desktop, but on laptop (16:10 ratio 2.8k screen), the UI menu is significantly harder to use than vwx 2023.

 

For instance look at the attached. Things that used to be the right size have got bigger or smaller, and I'm unable to find any customisability for icon sizes in order to get them to work well with varying display resolutions / sizes / ratios. I can't be bothered to do a side by side with 2023, but please take my word the scaling and UI was better in every way I've highlighted as problematic in 2024.

 

 

[Tom W.]

3 minutes ago, Asemblance said:

Yeah the whole UI seems to be worse frankly. Its not too bad on my desktop, but on laptop (16:10 ratio 2.8k screen), the UI menu is significantly harder to use than vwx 2023.

 

For instance look at the attached. Things that used to be the right size have got bigger or smaller, and I'm unable to find any customisability for icon sizes in order to get them to work well with varying display resolutions / sizes / ratios. I can't be bothered to do a side by side with 2023, but please take my word the scaling and UI was better in every way I've highlighted as problematic in 2024.

 

 

 

Have you tried with Control Size set to Small + View Bar in compact mode? VW Prefs General tab.

[Asemblance]

@Tom W. thanks for the suggestion; but yes have tried, it only affects the view bar at the top, which is not really the problem area. No impact on the icon sizes noted, or the attributes, etc.

[Tom W.]

9 minutes ago, Asemblance said:

it only affects the view bar at the top

 

Control Size affects the tool icons etc:

 

[MGuilfoile]

As an industrial designer, I find this change in icons an egregious waste of time when there are real areas that need real work. There is absolutely zero upside to changing the icons from a UI/UX point of view. Zero. There is 100% downside. I expect to see the same icons back until there is a compelling reason to change them from an anthropometric, data-driven, real-science-at-work-here reason. For an example, see The Measurement of Man (and Women) By Henry Dreyfuss. THIS is how you research. This is how you determine if you are creating a solution to a problem that does not exist, thus, creating a new problem via your lack of scientific rigor before starting. Learn a lesson here, but fix your mistake, too. This is not a crayon drawing to hang on your refrigerator. You are creating an interface for people you will never meet and be able to personally explain your purpose. People depend on your software to make a living. Don't make it harder for them; they depend on you, VW designers, to remember that.

 

MH Brown

[Asemblance]

@Tom W. I wonder if this is a Mac functionality we don't have on Vectorworks for PC...

 

This is the options menu I have:

 

 

Vectorworks - if this is the case, please give us the same functionality for PC!

[Tom W.]

6 minutes ago, Asemblance said:

@Tom W. I wonder if this is a Mac functionality we don't have on Vectorworks for PC...

 

This is the options menu I have:

 

 

Vectorworks - if this is the case, please give us the same functionality for PC!

Apologies you’re absolutely right it’s Mac only! I vaguely remember learning this at the time but obviously completely forgot… That’s a bit crap. I am very fond of the small size option + would be unhappy not to have it.

[Asemblance]

Thanks for clearning that up! Interesting to know its a Mac function, hopefully somebody at Vectorworks is listening and will give us a similar option on the PC soon..

[Tom W.]

1 hour ago, Asemblance said:

hopefully somebody at Vectorworks is listening and will give us a similar option on the PC soon..

 

@Stephan Moenninghoff might be able to advise