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are palette tabs in VW2021 an option?


LarryO

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I've noticed that the data now has its own palette from the object information but they both are opening and closing using crtl I.

Similarly the navigation palettes are all opening and closing with the same keyboard shortcut.

Is there a new setting somewhere to enable the former tab functionality or a means to stop palettes that do not have a shortcut specifically assigned to them from opening. Do I possibly have to rebuild my workspace menu instead of using the migrated one?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
On 9/25/2020 at 2:36 AM, LarryO said:

I've noticed that the data now has its own palette from the object information but they both are opening and closing using crtl I.

Similarly the navigation palettes are all opening and closing with the same keyboard shortcut.

Is there a new setting somewhere to enable the former tab functionality or a means to stop palettes that do not have a shortcut specifically assigned to them from opening. Do I possibly have to rebuild my workspace menu instead of using the migrated one?

 

 

Hi Larry,

 

For 2021 we have allowed users to choose what they want to do.  There are menu items that will close ALL of the tabs that are associated with a tab family.  These are assigned shortcuts in our shipping workspaces and they will function like they used to in previous versions.  The CTRL+L shortcut will close all of the tabs that go with the Object Info Palette.  That is the Shape tab, Data tab and Render tab.

 

We also added new menus that will allow you to toggle the visibility of each indiviual tab if you want to do that instead. If you want to use these new menus with a shortcut you will have to assign shortcuts to them in the workspace editor, they do not have shortcuts by default.

 

As you can see in this attached screenshot, this is the new palette menu in one of our shipping workspaces.  You can toggle the visibility of each tab through this menu.

 

Best Regards,

Ian

 

 

Screen Shot 2020-09-30 at 9.50.42 PM.png

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I will also add that if you don't want to detach the tabs you don't have to, you can just ignore the feature and use the palettes exactly the same way that you used to.  The main menu items for the Object Info, Navigation, and Visualization tab families will close all of the tabs together, resulting in the same behavior from previous versions.

 

 

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42 minutes ago, Ian Lane said:

I will also add that if you don't want to detach the tabs you don't have to, you can just ignore the feature and use the palettes exactly the same way that you used to.

 

Now that you mention it, I've found myself accidentally detaching tabs once or twice a day. Small annoyance, though it builds up. This happens when I'm simply clicking on one of the tabs to activate it. (In the midst of trying to work quickly I must be moving the mouse ever so slightly while clicking). Would it possible for the "detach" function to ignore mouse clicks/movements that are less than a particular fraction of a second?

 

Alternatively, could the flyout in the upper right-hand corner have a "lock tabs" option to disable detaching entirely?

 

Related to this, I've noticed when a novice user accidentally detaches a tab, even if they know how to drag it back on the correct palette, they might end up putting it in the wrong spot (I'm thinking specifically of the default order of the 6 navigation tabs). As a teacher of Vectorworks it's already a little overwhelming for newer students to know where to look, but now if their tabs end up in a different order it's even more confusing. It'd be nice to be able to lock the tabs until a user is a bit more experienced and actively wants to change something.

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On 9/30/2020 at 6:54 PM, Ian Lane said:

I will also add that if you don't want to detach the tabs you don't have to, you can just ignore the feature and use the palettes exactly the same way that you used to.

 

 

What I came across was that all the tabs were already separate menus, "detached" and it is not apparent how to return them to the 2019 style tabbed arrangement that is familiar. This being compounded by them all being blank with the title of Vectortworks across the top. The latter I found that by opening them one by one from the window palette menu I could refresh each menu to identify which one is which.

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8 minutes ago, LarryO said:

it is not apparent how to return them to the 2019 style tabbed arrangement

There's a little white triangle to the right of the tabs that opens a menu.  The bottom item is "Dock All tabs Here".  I think the interface design is really unintuitive.  A gear icon would have been better, as would have combining it with the "?" icon directly above it so the controls were consistent.

Edited by E|FA
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  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/5/2020 at 6:00 PM, E|FA said:

There's a little white triangle to the right of the tabs that opens a menu.  The bottom item is "Dock All tabs Here".  I think the interface design is really unintuitive.  A gear icon would have been better, as would have combining it with the "?" icon directly above it so the controls were consistent.

 

The option 'Dock all tabs here' is greyed out on mine so I'm unable to select it, any ideas?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/30/2020 at 11:58 PM, Andy Broomell said:

 

Or some days, like today, it happens about 15 times. 🤦‍♂️

 

Building in a delay to the "drag" function would be a great improvement.

is the "dock tabs' option available to you as mentioned above? 
I notice you are running Catalina too and wondered if thats why my option is greyed out! 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi everyone, 

 

Thanks for all of your feedback so far.  We have been listening and trying to reproduce some of the issues that you have described.  The "Dock Tabs Here" option should be available all the time, if you aren't seeing this it could be a bug on our end, but we haven't been able to reproduce this issue yet.  If you have any additional info please let me know.

 

We have made a change that will go into VW 2021 SP2 that will make it a little harder to detach the tabs.  You will need to click drag a little farther away, so hopefully this will help some of the people who have been accidentally detaching the tabs when they don't intend to.

 

For your future info:

Palette positioning is stored in both the workspace and the saved settings files in your user folder.  When you open VW and move some palettes around, that info is stored in the saved settings, which takes priority.  That way we don't need to create a custom workspace just to save the palette positions.  But if you open the workspace editor or run the "Save Palette Positions" menu command, then the positions are written into the workspace also.

 

If you want to reset your palette positions for some reason you can use the Reset Saved Settings button in the VW Preferences dialog box, but you will also have to go back to a stock workspace if the positions have been saved there also.

 

Hopefully this provides some more insight into how these systems work together.

 

Best Regards,

Ian

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 11/11/2020 at 3:08 PM, Ian Lane said:

We have made a change that will go into VW 2021 SP2 that will make it a little harder to detach the tabs.  You will need to click drag a little farther away, so hopefully this will help some of the people who have been accidentally detaching the tabs when they don't intend to.

 

 

Just updated my VW2021 to SP2 and the tabs still detach fairly easy.....maybe its me?

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