2024 isn't an upgrade, it's a disruption!

[Erica H]

Dear vectorworks

 

please stop making upgrades that AREN'T UPGRADES !

2024 is a massive workflow disaster and disruption. You've moved all the menus, NOT made them customizable, AND changed the icons?

 

Does anyone who actually drafts for a living have any input on these changes? Because these are unnecessary and unnecessary. 

 

seriously - please make this horrible top menu customizable - this is bad for workflow, and has cost me so much time and added some serious frustration to an already hectic workload.

 

For example - saved views being all the way to the left at the top does me no good - i like it in the middle - i should be able to move this to where it works best. 

Snapping at the top? why ? when i'm drawing it's more helpful to have it at the bottom, or again, customizable ! 

 

There was no logical reason to make these things static and in completely different locations than they were in the previous version

 

to me, nothing here is an upgrade. 

What i want in an upgrade is a program that runs better, faster, exports and imports smoother, where the tools become more sensitive and useful, where i can group layers, have assignable attributes to symbols so i can see a single symbol in different line weights and styles . . .

 

i do not care about the look

i do not care about the icon design

 

i DO care about how the above has messed up my workflow and costed me time . . . which means money.

 

Not a fan . . . 

-Erica

[Jeff Prince]

2 hours ago, Erica H said:

There was no logical reason to make these things static and in completely different locations than they were in the previous version

Changing user interfaces like this not only disrupts daily operations for presumably 10’s of thousands of people, but it also forces all training materials such as websites, videos, and books to be updated for a trivial reason.  The net impact is staggering for no gain.  I guess it keeps the training division happily employed…

[Kevin Allen]

There were many requests, mostly involved larger type in the OIP and elsewhere. 

 

  Many of your comments were brought up by the beta testers.

[Kevin Allen]

For example many of us preferred the snapping controls in a floating positionable palette. But that didn't work for the programmers on Windows, so they are where they are now,

[E|FA]

There's a Wishlist item.  Please vote (up arrow at top left):

 

[Tom W.]

10 hours ago, Erica H said:

Snapping at the top? why ? when i'm drawing it's more helpful to have it at the bottom, or again, customizable ! 

 

If you unpin Snapping in the View Bar Settings it will return to the bottom.

 

10 hours ago, Erica H said:

saved views being all the way to the left at the top does me no good - i like it in the middle - i should be able to move this to where it works best. 

 

I agree on this but decided I actually preferred not having it there at all + instead I use the detached Saved Views tab from the Navigation palette. Then I can position it wherever I want + have it auto-collapsable. I much prefer this set-up + am glad to have the option of removing Saved Views from the View Bar since I don't need it there.

 

I feel like there is more customisation now than previously. There are the Control Sizes in VW Prefs (although this is Mac-only I believe) + three different View Bar modes plus you can choose whether to display the group labels or not. Plus there are improvements in the way Layer Scale + Data Vis works on the View Bar. I have to say I genuinely prefer working in VW2024 to VW2023.

 

My one gripe is the Quick Pref icons which are just too dumbed-down. I am toggling 'Show Other Objects' + 'Zoom Line Thickness' on + off dozens of times every day + still have to stop to look + find them each time. I would love to be able to reorder these so the ones I use the most (these two) could be positioned to one side. And have the icons  better defined of course.

The other icons however I generally think are better. For example would I really want to swap this  back to this ? Or this  back to this ? Nope.

 

But I appreciate others have a different perspective.

[Christiaan]

13 hours ago, Jeff Prince said:

Changing user interfaces like this not only disrupts daily operations for presumably 10’s of thousands of people, but it also forces all training materials such as websites, videos, and books to be updated for a trivial reason.  The net impact is staggering for no gain.  I guess it keeps the training division happily employed…

Can somebody post a screenshot of MiniCad 1.0 so we can reminisce about where we'd be if the user interface never changed?

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Many good points brought up on this thread.  Jeff hit the nail on the head so to speak.

 

But, it's done, they are not going back, so the path forward is the only path available.

[Kevin Allen]

3 hours ago, Christiaan said:

Can somebody post a screenshot of MiniCad 1.0 so we can reminisce about where we'd be if the user interface never changed?

I think the point is two fold, the evolution from MiniCAD 1.0 was most just that 'evolutionary.' I think there was one other major exception. The other thing I point out is that one of the key sales points for VWX is that it is very customizable. The new GUI is not. The users asked for incremental change and got revolutionary change. I have been using the new GUI since the first beta. Maybe even an alpha version.I still hunt for things and find some of the icons inscrutable. 

I am frustrated with some of the placements. I have all of the typographic controls turned off, but that leaves unused real estate and I can't move things I use around.

It can only get better and hopefully it will

[Jeff Prince]

4 hours ago, Christiaan said:

Can somebody post a screenshot of MiniCad 1.0 so we can reminisce about where we'd be if the user interface never changed?

I’ve been using this program since 2016.  I think there have been 3 significant graphic overhauls in that time.  This latest one is the most disruptive with the least upside.  It’s the equivalent of turning half the light switches in your home upside down and then reassigning half of those to unrelated functions.  You can still turn the lights on, but every time you do it you have to think about how to use the ubiquitous switch for its unique situation.  Sometimes up turns on the light, sometimes down.  In one room, the switch turns on the air conditioning, in another it opens the garage door.

 

The last time I protested is when they updated the icons to have an overly 3D look.  Now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction to the point of making them even harder to distinguish.    That’s a lot of changes to icons in very few years.  That makes it hard for people to learn the program and antiquated training materials.

 

I don’t mean to be overly critical, but this doesn’t appear to be the work of an experienced UI designer.  The human interaction side of things has seemingly been ignored.  Hard to see, hard to find, increased movement needed to access common tools are not improvements.    A few releases ago, the redesign of the Color Selector to eliminate the color wheel is simply criminal.  To be fair, the creation of the Smart Options a while back is a great example of good UI design.

 

we get it, software changes over time, but a lot of these changes in recent years feel like introducing a new color to an old jalopy that really needs a new motor.

 

 

 

[grant_PD]

I fail to see the point of adjusting anything in the user interface if the user is not allowed to adjust it to their needs.  After all, they are the "user," not the developer.  If you take a look at the C4D user interface, you will see that practically everything is adjustable, from what's on a palette to where the palette is.  They provide multiple starting point workspaces for different tasks and then let the user create whatever they want from those. 

 

To me that is the only way to create a user interface, since we all have different needs and different ways of working.  We are not talking about an iphone here, where every user is using the same hardware.