Saturday, September 26, 2009
Easily find Ribbon Commands
The CAD Geek Blog: "As illustrated by my blogging frequency, the last several weeks have been incredibly busy. During that time I had the chance to speak with a large number of AutoCAD (and its many vertical flavors like Civil 3D) users, and answer some of their burning questions. As you might imagine, I fielded a diverse range of questions, many of which I intend to use as inspiration for a number of upcoming blog posts. Certainly one of my most asked questions was some derivative of “Where can I find ___ command in AutoCAD 2010?”"
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Oh, ribbons. Why have ribbons become a standard of windows UI design? I don't know if it's an improvement over menu-based implication. All the same information is there, and often the icons are larger, but tabbing through what is essentially just larger menus is a little unintuitive. As a user of drawing programs and a fan of the adobe interfaces, I like having all my tools laid out in front of me. With CAD and with word processing programs, I often end up with hacked solutions instead of using the program the way it was intended because I don't know where tools are located and have no initiative to systematically dig and experiment. With adobe programs, I experiment all the time, but that's because I can see everything the program has to offer.
Still, it's useful to know that the CAD ribbon has a search function. I'm actually one of the people that uses the help search when I'm stuck. Of course, I also google something before I ask a question of another person. Heaven forbid people RTFM.
I agree with Cass about ribbons... I myself do not like them at all. I feel like having the commands in that format is not an improvement, but rather just a pain to deal with. I like having everything laid out in front of me. In autocad, I always set it back to the "classic" format. Scrolling through the ribbons is just a waste of time and gets frustrating when you are looking for something. I'm not sure why orienting all of the commands for a program in ribbon format is a big hit, but I prefer having the menus like they used to be.
So I find this a bit ridiculous since I have learned autoCAD without any ribbons. Since I learned all by the command line I don't even think to use the ribbons, I just type whatever the command is. I find it is faster, but maybe that is because I have no idea where anything is in the ribbons.
As for the ribbon in other programs, I like how Microsoft Office 2007 pack is set up. It makes a lot of sense to me with how it is all laid out, but that might be from using it so much. But for Office, I find the ribbons to be laid out in such a way that makes it easy to use.
While it's great that programs like ACAD have search functions, I'd really like to see a feature that gives me the correct tool based on keywords. You can find almost anything if you know the actual name, but imagine trying to find something like the multi-point circle tool if you didn't know that a tool of that exact name didn't exist. On the ribbon topic, I've gotten use to them. I find them annoying, but on some levels they minimize the clutter created by needed to have the occasionally 10+ tool bars I tend to have open so I don't mind them as much as others seem to. The fact that ACAD shows you within ribbons where what you are searching for is probably is a nice perk, but that doesn't address the fact that I'd like for the program to help me find the right tools rather then where the tool I'm trying to use is located.
I hate the ribbon only because I hated in when Microsoft started doing it with the new versions of Microsoft Office, but also because I learned an old version of AutoCAD years ago and this new invention has got in my way.
I find myself always trying to get rid of any sort of "new" CAD look and revert everything to classic whenever possible.
The search feature is very useful, though, I found. This comes in handy especially when there is a feature you aren't exactly sure what it's called. It's funny: I think a command line better serves a community of people who are "drafts people" and heavily use the software--something about how basic it is. Giving AutoCAD a ribbon seems to "give away" some of our mystic powers to the "other people." Now, everyone can use AutoCAD!
I guess that's a good thing.
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