VW 2024 interface

[DMcD]

Quote

"Find upgrades designed to give you faster workflows from start to finish."

 

Am I the only one to find that the changes to the 2024 interface compared with 2023 are… daft, unnecessary, pointless and measurably slow down workflow to a large extent, especially if you've used VW before?

 

Moving the classes, layers, views drop downs and reducing the drawing space does not seem to achieve anything in usability… or am I missing something? There's now some odd icons between the tool palette and the tool options which used to be on the right side and could largely be ignored. They're now on the left side. Why??

 

It looks like change for change's sake when you've run out of ideas to add properly usable features. Or am I missing the bigger picture?

 

There's another thread on the View Bar Sort Order requesting customisation of the view bar or whatever the top of the window is called. I'd certainly vote for anything which allowed see to revert to the functional top bar of the previous decade or more!

D

[line-weight]

I think you have to give it a bit of time to get used to the new layout before deciding whether it's an improvement or not.

 

For me, the VW2024 "user interface improvements" are slightly disappointing in that they don't really seem to have addressed the bigger issues such as confusing dialogue boxes and inconsistent or unintuitive terminology. The VW UI is at its worst once you enter "dialogue box world". That part is, I imagine, the harder part to fix, which is why it's not happened.

[_James]

Not saying you're the only one but I think it's an improvement. Totally agree with @line-weight on dialogue boxes but it seem that VW are at least thinking about UI and how to improve which is good. I've been using VW for around 8 years and haven't noticed much effort directed to UI before this.

 

I think there will also be many hidden improvements that I haven't really noticed yet - in the early stages there were lots of things that had to be pointed out to me for me to notice, but once they had I realised the benefit.

[Tom W.]

It's surprising how big + cartoony the VW2023 icons look when you're flitting between the two versions. I have View Bar in Compact Mode + control size set to small + feels very neat + precise. I like it.

[line-weight]

I posted this a while ago because it reminded me so much of VW. That looks at stuff like what happens in the top toolbar and how it's grouped and so on - as well as going into all the dialogue box type stuff. Some of the changes we've seen in VW2024 seem to be doing a bit of that. So it's a start at least.

Edited September 26, 2023 by line-weight

[Christiaan]

The litmus test for me was when I had to go back to using v2023. Ugh, I much prefer 2024 and have gladly converted all of our projects.

[GregB]

I absolutely agree with @DMcD. I have used VW since 2017 version. For me the biggest improvement to UI was adding search engines in all drop down lists for classes , layers etc. VW 2024 interface is just pushing me off so badly, that I prefer to export all my client files back to 2023 🤣 . I wish there was at least an option to go back to 'classic' Interface, unless there is one and I missed it?

Big waste of resources in my opinion. Same team could spend some extra time on testing and polishing off all standard baby teething issues (every single year!), so we can actually use new release stress free from version 1.0 rather then wait for service pack 5+ .

[line-weight]

So, am currently moving from 2023 to 2025 (skipping 2024) so am starting to use the "new" interface for the first time in real life.

 

The main thing that's bothering me so far is:

 

It's long been my habit, if i want to do stuff within layer or class settings, that I get to the relevant tab of the "organisation" dialogue with a single button press here or here:

 

 

But now this seems to require two clicks - one on the button, then another on the top item in the dropdown menu that now appears.

 

 

Maybe I'll just get used to it but this feels like it adds a lot of friction to a process that I used to do without even thinking about it. Especially with classes, I am quite frequently wanting to go in there and adjust things.

 

Is there some other one-click method of getting to that dialogue that I'm missing?

[Tom W.]

The way I get to the Organisation palette these days is to double click the relevant tab in the Navigation palette. Does that work better for you?

[line-weight]

38 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

The way I get to the Organisation palette these days is to double click the relevant tab in the Navigation palette. Does that work better for you?

 

It's not really ideal because most of the time I have the Navigation palette showing "saved views", which I use all the time. Double clicking the classes or layers tabs means that I then have to switch it back to saved views.

[Tom W.]

Aha. I have Saved Views as a detached palette at the top of the screen set to auto-collapse so for me it works pretty well (I also wasn't happy to loose the previous functionality).

[line-weight]

16 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

Aha. I have Saved Views as a detached palette at the top of the screen set to auto-collapse so for me it works pretty well (I also wasn't happy to loose the previous functionality).

I don't really like detached palettes but I could give Saved Views its own section in one of my sidebars I guess, separate from the rest of "Navigation". Not very efficient use of space though.

[rDesign]

2 hours ago, line-weight said:

Maybe I'll just get used to it but this feels like it adds a lot of friction to a process that I used to do without even thinking about it. Especially with classes, I am quite frequently wanting to go in there and adjust things.

 

Is there some other one-click method of getting to that dialogue that I'm missing?

I agree completely — this was the first point of friction that I had with the ‘new’ 2024/2025 interface. Two-clicks are always worse than one.

[line-weight]

1 hour ago, rDesign said:

I agree completely — this was the first point of friction that I had with the ‘new’ 2024/2025 interface. Two-clicks are always worse than one.

Have you just got used to & accepted the two click route now?

[zoomer]

While trying to follow ....

I do not currently use saved views (I know I should, at least for exports and visibilities ....)
I was searching for Saved Views dropdown in Top Bar ....I really needed 10-15 minutes

to finally find it under a totally different style (Icon) all left beside the Plane settings,
which I ignored so far.

(Until I just tried Align Plane and it took another 10 minutes until I finally got rid of that

 Screen Plane again)

Edited November 8, 2024 by zoomer

[Tom W.]

1 hour ago, line-weight said:

I don't really like detached palettes but I could give Saved Views its own section in one of my sidebars I guess, separate from the rest of "Navigation". Not very efficient use of space though.

 

I don't like palettes floating about randomly either but I have several auto-collapsing palettes at the top of my drawing area, Saved Views being one of them, + it works well for me:

 

 

The other way to open the Organisation palette of course is Shift-Command-O which you could always assign to a single key. I used to have it as a button on my Space Mouse until it stopped working a couple of years ago...

[rDesign]

49 minutes ago, line-weight said:

Have you just got used to & accepted the two click route now?

Gotten used to: Yes, as long as I don’t open up an older version of Vw and miss having the single-click.  

Accepted: No, but it is what it is. 

[E|FA]

I have Saved Views and Classes as tabs in one Navigation palette, and Sheet Layers and Design Layers as tabs in a second Navigation palette, which I then dock vertically to each other.  The balance of space efficiency and clicks works for me, and Command-O gets me to the Organization window.

[rDesign]

59 minutes ago, E|FA said:

Command-O gets me to the Organization window

 

I'm guessing you made this a custom shortcut? At first I couldn't find the command shortcut to open the Organization menu in the PDF of 2025 shortcuts, but then I found it: Cmd+Shift+O (on Mac), Ctrl+Shift+O (on Windows) is the default.

 

I think I prefer Cmd+O for the Organization menu (one less key combo to remember), so I remapped it to be that instead of File - Open (which I never use as a keyboard shortcut). Thanks for the suggestion.

[E|FA]

1 hour ago, rDesign said:

I'm guessing you made this a custom shortcut?

I think approximately 40% of my Workspace has personalized keys.