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2021 - Teaser Tuesday: Work Smarter with User Interface Improvements


JuanP

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41 minutes ago, Art V said:

the visibilities setting of the organization window

 

My other dream feature is an Org palette that I can leave open and accessible at all times (so much more powerful, and fewer clicks, than the Nav palettes). I pick these battles every year around this time. Someday... 

 

Edited by Mark Aceto
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1 hour ago, Art V said:

It would also be useful if one could copy/paste a custom toolset from one workspace to another,

 

^ This

 

Yesterday I also tried to just copy my pimped Default Tool Bar to

create a cleaned up version for SOD.

That is not possible.

I would have to pull out all Tools manually one by one again ...

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   3 hours ago,  Mark Aceto said: 

Intentionally activate it (vs getting incessantly distracted by it when I'm looking at complex geometry and it turns my view into mud)

Unchecked "Show after mouse idles"

 

 

Meanwhile I got so used to My Bricscad Quad constantly appearing

that I even set VW idle time down to one second.

(Which means effective 2.5 seconds for any reason, at least on my

Trash Can Mac Pro)

Edited by zoomer
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On 9/19/2020 at 4:45 PM, Art V said:

Having contextual responsiveness like the quad tool in BricsCAD would be really useful to have and would make the SOD improve workflo, so please put that on the wish list for VW2022.

 

There are Pros and Cons.

 

If a Tool Panel works context sensitive it also means that it looks

completely different each time it appears.

I had difficulties with that and it needed at least 1.5-2 years to not

find it annoying anymore and make real use of it.

Basically after I was able to recognize all Tool Icons and learned

all situations Tool orders.

 

For VW SOD I would wish that I could scroll through all or a selection

of Palettes.

 

Or something like 3D Connexion Devices where each Button may

be set to offer a user customized Pie Menu filled with a selection

of Tools for a specific workflow.

Edited by zoomer
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2 hours ago, zoomer said:

If a Tool Panel works context sensitive it also means that it looks

completely different each time it appears.

I had difficulties with that and it needed at least 1.5-2 years to not

find it annoying anymore and make real use of it.

Basically after I was able to recognize all Tool Icons and learned

all situations Tool orders.

Yes it definitely takes a bit of time to get used to that, but it does show the most recently used options for that context first and then you can still bring up the underlying tool palette for tools in the same tool category. At least it works more intelligently than the Microsoft "intelligent" ribbon which I still don't like.

 

As I read once somewhere... AI is no match for human stupidity 🙂  Though within this context it is merely to indicate that no mater what "AI" is put into the software it is devised by humans and you can't predict all kinds of workflow and ways in which things are done in a program so it won't be perfect for a while. But context sensitivity should at least get rid of most of the "unnecessary" tools showing up and that would be an improvement anyway. Right now I still need to search through all the tools in one of the palette's of the SOD.

 

Edit: completed last sentence that got chopped off.

Edited by Art V
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The only way I can make it happen is having the SOD show up, then hit the tab key to bring up the num input but in that case the num input is above the SOD.

If I tab first to bring up the num input and then the SOD the SOD will overlap but moving the cursor will bring the num input away from the SOD. Only if I don't move it will remain overlapping.

In both cases there is some transparency getting in the way of easy reading of the first num input field but slightly moving the mouse to make the num input move way from the SOD space solves this.

 

It would be nice if the SOD and num input would not overlap, regardless of which one is triggered first, but it is easy to solve so for me it won't have much of an effect.

 

Are there other effects that have a negative impact or is it just a matter of readability? It could be one of those Mac vs Windows differences where it may affect one more than the other.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
21 hours ago, Mark Aceto said:

 

@Ian Lane speaking of "preference overload", let's say I want to change the hotkey for Launch Quick Search to "Command-F". I have to do that in every single workspace (I'm currently up to 9 "stock" workspaces), which will duplicate (modified versions of) every single workspace. Then when I inevitable have to dump my user folder as a troubleshooting step, I have to reimport them. Et cetera et cetera et cetera... 

 

 

Hi Mark,

 

Thanks for the feedback.  Can you elaborate a bit on why you need 9 different workspaces?  I'm a little unclear on that part.

 

It seems to me that what you are requesting is an "everything" workspace that has ALL of our tools and menus already added in.  With the new Quick Search tool this kind of workspace could be useful because you can still easily find everything.

 

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
21 hours ago, Mark Aceto said:

 

@Ian Lanehere's my thought-starter solution (screenshot attach for reference):

 

When I'm in the Braceworks workspace *, there are also Spotlight and Event Design menus (both native to the Spotlight workspace). We're already halfway there with this solution BTW... 

  • Event Design doesn't need its own dedicated menu. Make it a sub-menu of the Spotlight menu.
  • Continue adding "module" menus to the menu bar (Arch, Landmark, ConnectCAD)
  • Consolidate BIM-Arch with Arch

You can see where I'm going with this... 

 

If I'm in danger of running out of menu bar real estate, let me choose which modules to display in the menu bar. Dump the rest in a workspaces sub-menu that contains all of the same menu commands vs taking me to a different workspace. Honestly, if this was the only change, it would be a pain-point game-changer.

 

* If I'm working in Braceworks, are there any Spotlight features/menus/tools...  missing? Can I just ignore the Spotlight workspace altogether? How would I know? This is like that game at the bar where I have to spot what's missing between 2 similar photos. Except that I can't see both workspaces at the same time, so I have to screenshot them to compare them... 

 

 

20 hours ago, Art V said:

@Ian Lane

 

Yes, creating/changing workspaces could definitely be more efficient.

 

It would also be useful if one could copy/paste a custom toolset from one workspace to another, not to mention being able to even simply drag a complete existing toolset from from the left into the toolsets section on the right instead of having to create a new toolset first and then drag all the items one by one into the new toolset as you mentioned.

 

 

Yes I would agree that the workspace editor has been a long standing feature that hasn't evolved much over the years.  It really could use a complete overhaul to improve a lot of aspects in my opinion.  But even some small features like the ability to drag multiple items from the left side would be a good start.

 

I would recommend that you create a new thread where you outline your requested workspace editor fixes, that will make it easier to keep these together and not get lost with the other SOD or QS comversation.  There are two flavors to this, workspace editor improvements and also suggestions for how we should modify our shipping workspaces.  Obviously with our shipping workspaces it is impossible for us to create something that everyone will be happy with, but suggestions for changes are always useful.

 

Thanks again!

 

 

 

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20 hours ago, Mark Aceto said:

 

My other dream feature is an Org palette that I can leave open and accessible at all times (so much more powerful, and fewer clicks, than the Nav palettes). I pick these battles every year around this time. Someday... 

 

 

This is the intent of the detachable tab palettes task and the ability to direct edit in the nav palette.  We wanted to give users the ability to keep these lists open all the time and edit the info so maybe they don't have to use the org dialog as often.

 

Our plan is also to support more columns on the nav palette and make them editable in the future.  

 

What functionality do you need in the org dialog that you can't get from the nav palette?  This will be helpful information for us to have.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Sorry for all the multiple comments, just trying to keep the various conversations organized with my quotes.  There was certainly a lot of useful info shared over the weekend!

 

Last thing I'll add is that a context aware quadrant for SOD is another one that we have discussed during task planning, so this is a definite possibility for the future.

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6 minutes ago, Ian Lane said:

Last thing I'll add is that a context aware quadrant for SOD is another one that we have discussed during task planning, so this is a definite possibility for the future.

That would be really nice if it actually does get implemented. 🙂

 

Sometimes it just feels as if VW got the right idea but comes one step short of getting it right the first time and then it may take a while before the next step gets taken because other features have gotten priority, which also need priority no problem with that but it just creates a delay with fixing/improving things.

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On 9/21/2020 at 7:04 AM, Ian Lane said:

 

Hi Mark,

 

Thanks for the feedback.  Can you elaborate a bit on why you need 9 different workspaces?  I'm a little unclear on that part.

 

@Ian Lane thanks for the quick reply!

 

For clarification, I don't need 9 workspaces. I need one workspace to rule them all. However, these 8 workspaces (screenshot attached) are automatically generated + AutoPlot (third party plugin).

 

2057716339_ScreenShot2020-09-22at1_58_29PM.thumb.png.9515199c1038385696f412a8f8f2c0d9.png

 

On 9/21/2020 at 7:04 AM, Ian Lane said:

It seems to me that what you are requesting is an "everything" workspace that has ALL of our tools and menus already added in.

 

Sort of... Long story short, I don't want to have to move and resize the Attributes palette in 10 different workspaces because it's the freaking Attributes palette, and would never change across multiple workspaces. I also don't want to wait for VW to do a Triple Lindy every time I switch workspaces. I also never want to realize, "Oh, I'm still in this workspace but I need to switch to that workspace... "

 

The big change I see from workspace to workspace is that workspace's menu. I don't need 10 workspaces. I need a way of managing 10 menus from a single workspace.

 

On 9/21/2020 at 7:04 AM, Ian Lane said:

With the new Quick Search tool this kind of workspace could be useful because you can still easily find everything.

 

That's what I expected but when I searched for the Center Line Marker tool in BW... it can't find it. And that's true for a lot of tools... 

 

Screen Shot 2020-09-21 at 8.26.00 AM.png

Edited by Mark Aceto
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1 hour ago, Ian Lane said:

Our plan is also to support more columns on the nav palette and make them editable in the future

 

Yeah, I thought VW21 brought attributes to the Classes tab in the Nav palette? Is there a way to activate that or is it coming in a future release?

 

Edited by Mark Aceto
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1 hour ago, Ian Lane said:

What functionality do you need in the org dialog that you can't get from the nav palette?  This will be helpful information for us to have.

 

I just need the Org window to stay open all the time, so all of the features of the Org window. It's perfect the way it is which is why I'm constantly opening and closing it over and over again.

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1 minute ago, Mark Aceto said:

 

I just need the Org window to stay open all the time, so all of the features of the Org window. It's perfect the way it is which is why I'm constantly opening and closing it over and over again.

So basically turning the Organization window into a palette instead of a dialog box, which would be quite nice to have. Though I get the impression that VW is trying to have the Navigation palette to become that equivalent over time, whether that is the better option or not remains to be seen.

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9 minutes ago, Mark Aceto said:

That's what I expected but when I searched for the Center Line Marker tool in BW... it can't find it. And that's true for a lot of tools... 

 

Is the "Center Line Marker" tool in your currently active workspace? Since that tool is legacy it's no longer there by default and you'd have to manually add it. Quick Search only shows menus and commands that are currently in your workspace.

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5 minutes ago, Art V said:

So basically turning the Organization window into a palette instead of a dialog box, which would be quite nice to have. Though I get the impression that VW is trying to have the Navigation palette to become that equivalent over time, whether that is the better option or not remains to be seen.

 

Exactly.

 

And, for the record, I love the tearaway tabs. I edited 20 imported DWG symbols yesterday, so having Shape and Render tabs open at the same time eliminated the need to click back and forth between those tabs which inevitably causes user error for such a tedious task. Also breaking off the Data tab is useful for adding Record Formats to a symbol... 

 

Edited by Mark Aceto
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
12 minutes ago, Mark Aceto said:

 

Yeah, I thought VW21 brought attributes to the Classes tab in the Nav palette? Is there a way to activate that or is it coming in a future release?

 

 

This is something for a future release.  

 

4 minutes ago, Art V said:

So basically turning the Organization window into a palette instead of a dialog box, which would be quite nice to have. Though I get the impression that VW is trying to have the Navigation palette to become that equivalent over time, whether that is the better option or not remains to be seen.

 

In our opinion, adding more functionality to the nav palette is always a good idea, as long as it can be customized so that unwanted info doesn't get in the users' way.

 

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4 minutes ago, Andy Broomell said:

 

Is the "Center Line Marker" tool in your currently active workspace? Since that tool is legacy it's no longer there by default and you'd have to manually add it. Quick Search only shows menus and commands that are currently in your workspace.

 

Yeah, that was my point: Quick Search should show all of the tools that I've paid for that are buried in the Workspace Editor, especially if Quick Search is intended to be an efficient workaround for editing workspaces.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
4 minutes ago, Andy Broomell said:

 

Is the "Center Line Marker" tool in your currently active workspace? Since that tool is legacy it's no longer there by default and you'd have to manually add it. Quick Search only shows menus and commands that are currently in your workspace.

 

 

20 minutes ago, Mark Aceto said:

 

 

That's what I expected but when I searched for the Center Line Marker tool in BW... it can't find it. And that's true for a lot of tools... 

 

 

Yes this is correct, at this time quick search only finds menus and tool that are in your active workspace.  So make sure the center line marker is added to the Braceworks workspace first and then you'll be able to find it.

 

We investigated being able to search all other inactive workspaces also but there are many technical challenges related to this.

 

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