Tag Archives: Ribbon

A & B Tip 4 – turning on toolbars

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In this series of posts, I’ll be providing tips that show how to do something in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD, hence A & B.

The Series

The idea behind this series is to provide useful information for several sorts of reader:

  1. AutoCAD users.
  2. BricsCAD users.
  3. People in the process of transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who need to know what to do differently (if anything).
  4. People considering transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who want to know about the differences and similarities.

Your First Toolbar

If you are using a ribbon-based workspace, you may want to have some toolbars visible, too. There are several reasons you might want to do this. You might want some buttons to be consistently visible, no matter what the ribbon state. Although the QAT in AutoCAD provides some toolbar space, you might want more space than it offers. You might also want toolbar controls that are not available in the QAT; several of them only work in conventional toolbars. You might want the buttons in a different place, such as down one side or on a second screen.

If you have at least one toolbar visible already, things are easy. If you right-click on that toolbar, you will get a menu that allows you to turn on any other toolbar in the same customization group (CUI or CUIx file). Here it is in AutoCAD:

Here’s the equivalent in BricsCAD:

Note that in BricsCAD, the list of toolbars is one level down because the first-level right-click menu in BricsCAD gives you many more interface options.

What if the toolbar you want to turn on is in a different customization group? You can get at those easily enough by right-clicking on any blank (unused) area of a docked toolbar area. AutoCAD:

You can do the same in BricsCAD:

The difference with BricsCAD is that you don’t need to have a docked toolbar with spare space in it to access toolbars in different groups. They’re all available by right-clicking any toolbar button, docked or not.

That’s all easy enough, but what if you don’t have any toolbars visible? You’re stuck in a Catch-22 situation. You need a toolbar to click on to load a toolbar. How do you get that first toolbar loaded?

AutoCAD Interactive Method 1

The first trap to avoid in AutoCAD is using the TOOLBAR command. From Release 13 to AutoCAD 2005, that was useful. With the introduction of CUI files in 2006, the TOOLBAR command became a near-useless cut-down version of the CUI command.

Ignore that. If you’re going to use the CUI interface, use the whole thing. Enter the CUI command. In the top left pane, pick the workspace you want to change:

In the top right pane, pick Customize Workspace. In the left pane, expand the Toolbars part of the tree and turn on one of the toolbars:

Pick Done (top right) and OK (bottom). Your chosen toolbar will appear.

AutoCAD Interactive Method 2

If you have your pull-down menu bar turned on, you can get at the toolbars using the Tools menu as shown here:

You can turn on your pull-down menu bar by setting MENUBAR to 1.

Thanks to James Maeding for pointing that out.

BricsCAD Interactive Method

In BricsCAD, you can turn on toolbars interactively even if there are none visible, without having to deal with the CUI interface. Just right-click in any part of the ribbon, and you will see the same menu you get when right-clicking a toolbar area. That gives you access to all of the toolbars in all of the groups.

AutoCAD Command Line Method

If you want to use the command line to turn on a toolbar, you need to use the -TOOLBAR command (note the leading hyphen). You also need to know the name of the customization group and what the toolbar itself. One example is the Object_Snap toolbar within the ACAD group. The command line required is therefore:

-TOOLBAR ACAD.Object_Snap Show

To be sure this will work in all environments, I recommend you add the special characters _ and . thus:

_.-TOOLBAR ACAD.Object_Snap _Show

BricsCAD Command Line Method

In BricsCAD, you don’t need the leading hyphen in the TOOLBAR command (although you can use it if you like). The customization group and toolbar names will be different, but the syntax is the same. For example:

TOOLBAR BRICSCAD.TB_EntitySnaps Show

The recommended special characters also do the same job in BricsCAD:

_.-TOOLBAR BRICSCAD.TB_EntitySnaps _Show

Adding Express Tools to BricsCAD

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If you’re evaluating BricsCAD to replace AutoCAD, you might be put off by the apparent absence of the Express Tools. Don’t be.

First, some express tool commands have been added to BricsCAD as native commands, such as OVERKILL and TXTEXP.

Next, the Express Tools menu can be added, thanks to a free add-on by Martin Drese (CADwiesel). Here’s the step-by-step process:

  1. Go to the Bricsys Applications page.
  2. Start typing “EXPRESS” into the search box. You should be pleasantly surprised to discover that by the time you’ve typed four characters, what you are chasing will already be displayed for you:
     
  3. Click on the Express Tools box, turn on the checkbox and then pick Download.
  4. If you’re not already signed in with your Bricsys ID at this time, you’ll be prompted to do so. You should have created this ID when you downloaded the main product.
  5. The download (a straightforward one; no nasty download managers involved) is a 3.6 MB zip file. Unzip this to a location of your choice.
  6. As described in the file Install Notes Express Tools for Bricscad V18.pdf, copy the Express folder to the BricsCAD installation folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\Bricsys\BricsCAD V18 en_US). You’ll need admin access for this step.
  7. Add that location (e.g. C:\Program Files\Bricsys\BricsCAD V18 en_US\Express)to the BricsCAD search path (Settings > Program Options > Files > Support files search path).
  8. If you already have a file called on_doc_load.lsp in your search path (this is the equivalent of acaddoc.lsp), then add this line to it:

    (load “Acetutil.des”)

    If that file doesn’t already exist, you can just copy the one from the unzipped location to anywhere in your search path (e.g. the path you just added – C:\Program Files\Bricsys\BricsCAD V18 en_US\Express).

  9. Close and restart BricsCAD.

This is more involved than your typical AutoCAD app store installation, but as a CAD Manager I do like the fact that these are straightforward steps that I can automate in a custom environment such that the users have no need to get involved.

The end result is a Pull-down menu (if you have that turned on – MENUBAR 1 if you don’t) that will be familiar to you:

There are also four toolbar menus:

If you’re using a ribbon and don’t want to see toolbars, substantial manual effort is required to add Express Tools to the ribbon interface. If you are interested in me doing a further post explaining how this is done, please add your comments to this post.

Most of these tools will work with all BricsCAD variants. Some of them require OpenDCL support which is not available in the Classic version, so you’ll need a minimum of BricsCAD Pro (that’s the second level) for complete functionality.

It’s worth noting that the various API LISP functions (acet-xxxx) that are added to AutoCAD by the Express Tools are also there in BricsCAD. Unlike AutoCAD, they are native functions; they can be relied on to be there in BricsCAD, regardless of whether or not the Express Tools add-on is installed as described in this post.

Also unlike AutoCAD, the functions are supported. If there are any problems, you can report them (with, in my experience, a reasonable expectation of them being fixed in a short timeframe by Torsten Moses), rather than being fobbed off by an uninterested Autodesk.

If you go back to step 2 above, see the box that says LISP Developer Support Package (LDSP)? If you code in LISP (with or without BricsCAD), I suggest you download that package. Among many other things, it documents the acet-xxx functions.

Edit: I should point out that R.K. McSwain covered much of this ground earlier this year.

Automated .NET 4.7 update kills AutoCAD pre 2017

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Thanks to Robert Green for pointing this out:

Microsoft is installing .NET 4.7 as part of their auto updates and it is causing many legacy Autodesk applications to crash on any ribbon interaction. Touch the ribbon, away goes your software.

If you can keep from installing the 4.7 framework do so. If the damage is already done then uninstall .NET 4.7 and install .NET 4.6.2 using this download link. Note that the uninstall of the offending version must be done first!

AutoCAD 2013 to 2016 and Inventor are affected, and possibly other products. BricsCAD users are unaffected.

It is also reported that you can work around the problem by hacking the registry to identify an earlier .NET version as being installed (the usual caveats apply). That’s described in this Autodesk Knowledgebase article that works around a related but slightly different issue.

Don’t you just love the way continuous automated updates enhance and enrich the user experience?

The worst feature ever added to AutoCAD is…

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…the Ribbon, according to your selections in the What are the worst features ever added to AutoCAD? poll. As in the best ever poll, the winner (loser?) in this race had no serious competition. I’ve listed eleven top (bottom?) features here rather than ten, partly because the popular (unpopular?) choice Memory Overuse isn’t exactly a feature. But it’s mainly because I’d hate to see Action Recorder unfairly miss out on a well-deserved mention.

  • Ribbon (30%)
  • CUI (20%)
  • Help (on line / 2012) (18%)
  • Memory Overuse (17%)
  • AutoCAD Today (2000i/2002) (16%)
  • White / Cream Drawing Background (16%)
  • Unreconciled Layers (16%)
  • Nudge (10%)
  • Blipmode (9%)
  • Proxy Object Compatibility (9%)
  • Action Recorder (8%)

Given the reception the Ribbon received when it was introduced, maybe it’s unsurprising to see it top the lists here. Cloud observers may find it interesting to note that that Autodesk’s attempt to move AutoCAD’s Help on line has been very poorly received. Yo Autodesk with your Cloud an’ all, I’m really happy for you, I’ma let you finish, but on-line Help has been voted one of the worst features of all time! Of all time!

The dislike of the intrusive, useful-to-some but short-lived AutoCAD Today feature remains strong a decade later. Light drawing backgrounds remain unpopular, which should not be a surprise to anyone, except maybe some people at Autodesk who thought it was a good idea to rehash old mistakes in a new and exciting way (“This time it’s magnolia!“). History, doomed to repeat, etc.

As for poor old Action Recorder, that has to be the ultimate brochure feature. It’s something for Autodesk to boast about rather than something for customers to actually use; “We responded to customer requests and fulfilled AUGI wishlists for a macro recorder!” Well, you did, kind of, by giving us something that’s about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. Looks nice, though. Autodesk, please try again, but this time do it properly.

It’s interesting to note that the “worst ever” list is significantly younger than the “best ever” list. Only poor old blipmode is truly ancient. Only a single “best” feature (dynamic blocks) comes from AutoCAD 2006 or later. (In fact, that’s the only feature in the “best” list that was even introduced this century). In comparison, most of the “worst” list comes from AutoCAD 2006 or later, including the top (bottom?) three. So what does that tell you?

Cloud benefits – processing power

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A frequently stated advantage of CAD on the Cloud is the access to large amounts of processing power. Instead of relying on your lowly local processor to perform complex tasks, you can instead zap the job up to the Cloud where vast numbers of processors churn away in massively parallel fashion and then zap the results back to you before you’ve even had time to head for the coffee machine.

This is a scenario that applies only for certain types of very complex tasks that are suited to subdividing the calculations among many processors. Autodesk already has a big toe in the waters in several of those areas. The recent Autodesk Cloud changes made available Inventor Optimization, Cloud Rendering, Green Building Studio and Conceptual Energy Analysis to a small subset of Subscription customers. It’s safe to assume that these services will be improved and expanded over the next few years. (Is there anybody out there using Autodesk Cloud services for these processor-intensive tasks? Let’s hear about your real-world experiences.)

What this doesn’t mean is that it makes sense for us all to be using CAD on the Cloud, all the time. The processing time gained by using the Cloud is offset by the communication time spent passing the data back and forth, so any processing gain has to be substantial to make it worthwhile. Twenty years ago, when every zoom extents was followed by a looooong wait, a big swag of extra processing power would have come in very handy. These days, processors are ridiculously fast in comparison. They are also very cheap and getting cheaper. Even low-end PCs have had multiple cores for some years, and these days seeing eight almost unused cores on your performance monitor is pretty normal.

The performance of today’s CPUs and the variable performance of today’s Internet, mean that calculations need to be very substantial to make them worth outsourcing to the Cloud. For the vast majority of tasks associated with using CAD software you simply don’t need to hand the job to somebody else’s hardware, because there is ample capacity right there on your desk.

(As an aside, whether it’s on your desk or a server farm, writing software that takes advantage of all those cores must be really difficult. I say that because today’s CAD software seldom uses more than one or two at the same time. Even a seemingly straightforward split like loading AutoCAD’s Ribbon while allowing you to start drawing appears to be too hard. It took Autodesk four Ribboned AutoCAD releases to even attempt this, and the result is a failure; the cursor lag while background loading the Ribbon is unacceptable.)

For tasks where there is the technical potential to share the load, a remote service still might not be the best solution. How about a private cloud instead, where the processing load gets shared between your company’s idle processors via your LAN, and your data never leaves the premises? It seems to me that such a solution could provide most of the Cloud benefits and remove almost all of the concerns. This has already happened in pilot with some Autodesk software. I’d like to see more emphasis placed on private-cloud-friendly software, because I think it has a much better chance of customer acceptance and the development effort is less likely to be wasted.

Ribbon poll roundup

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Further to my last post, Here is a brief summary of this blog’s various poll results that relate in some way to Ribbon and CIP use. The most recent polls are at the top of the list. I have placed in bold those percentages that relate directly to the proportion of AutoCAD Ribbon use among the voters on this blog.

  • AutoCAD 2010 users’  Ribbon use: 44% (AutoCAD 2010 users’ CIP on: 36%)
  • Ribbon love: 28%
  • AutoCAD 2010 menu bar non-users: 23%
  • Inventor Ribbon use: 44% (Inventor 2010 users’ Ribbon use: 59%)
  • Revit Ribbon use: 42% (Revit 2010 users’ Ribbon use: 58%)
  • AutoCAD Ribbon use: 32% (AutoCAD 2009/2010 users’ Ribbon use: 38%)
  • CIP on: 27%
  • AutoCAD 2009 menu bar non-users: 21%
  • AutoCAD 2009 Ribbon one of 3 best new features: 11%
  • AutoCAD 2009 Ribbon turned on in some way: 29% (fully visible 13%)

The polls were run at different times over the past couple of years with different questions being asked in different ways about different releases, and responded to by very different numbers of voters. Don’t expect consistent or directly comparable results; this is not a scientific study. As with all polls here, there is a self-selection bias; those people who feel most strongly about a subject are more likely to find these polls and make the effort to vote in them.

The more recent polls generally have significantly greater sample size than the early ones. The smallest poll (AutoCAD 2009 best new features) has 37 voters, the largest poll (AutoCAD users generally using Ribbon) has 751. While the former certainly qualifies as Shaan’s “a few dozen”, the latter does only if you consider 62 to be “a few”. In which case, can I give you a thousand dollars and you give me a few hundred back?

Here are the poll details, which you can also see in the Polls Archive. If you think any of these questions or the available responses are in any way biased or leading , I’d be interested to hear your reasoning.

AutoCAD 2010 users, what are your Ribbon and CIP settings?
Start Date: 15 March 2010

  • Ribbon on, CIP on (24.7%, 65 Votes)
  • Ribbon on, CIP off (19.4%, 51 Votes)
  • Ribbon off, CIP on (11%, 29 Votes)
  • Ribbon off, CIP off (44.9%, 118 Votes)

    • Ribbon
    Start Date: 16 January 2010

  • Love (28.2%, 164 Votes)
  • Hate (71.8%, 417 Votes)

    • AutoCAD 2010 users: pull-down menus – is your menu bar turned on (MENUBAR=1)?
    Start Date: 14 September 2009

  • Yes, it’s on all the time (69.3%, 475 Votes)
  • Yes, it’s usually on but I sometimes turn it off (4.1%, 28 Votes)
  • Yes in verticals, no in AutoCAD (1.9%, 13 Votes)
  • Yes (other) (1.5%, 10 Votes)
  • No, it’s usually off but I sometimes turn it on (7%, 48 Votes)
  • No, I never use pull-downs (13.7%, 94 Votes)
  • No (other) (2.5%, 17 Votes)

    • Inventor users: are you generally using the Ribbon?
    Start Date: 11 September 2009

  • Yes (44.3%, 82 Votes)
  • No (using 2010) (30.8%, 57 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release to avoid the Ribbon) (15.7%, 29 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release for other reasons) (9.2%, 17 Votes)

    • Revit users: are you generally using the Ribbon?
    Start Date: 9 September 2009

  • Yes (41.6%, 153 Votes)
  • No (using 2010 in unsupported classic mode) (30.2%, 111 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release to avoid the Ribbon) (20.4%, 75 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release for other reasons) (7.9%, 29 Votes)

    • AutoCAD users: are you generally using the Ribbon?
    Start Date: 9 September 2009

  • Yes (32%, 240 Votes)
  • No (using 2009/10) (51.1%, 384 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release to avoid the Ribbon) (11.7%, 88 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release for other reasons) (5.2%, 39 Votes)

    • Do you enable CIP (Customer Involvement Program) in your Autodesk products in production?
    Start Date: 23 February 2009

  • Yes, always (17.9%, 74 Votes)
  • Yes, on some products/releases (8.9%, 37 Votes)
  • No, because of privacy concerns (30.4%, 126 Votes)
  • No, because of performance concers (19.3%, 80 Votes)
  • No, it is not available for me (3.4%, 14 Votes)
  • No, other (20%, 83 Votes)

    • AutoCAD 2009 users: pull-down menus – is your menu bar turned on (MENUBAR=1)?
    Start Date: 28 November 2008

  • Yes, it’s on all the time (68.3%, 136 Votes)
  • Yes, it’s usually on but I sometimes turn it off (6.5%, 13 Votes)
  • Yes in verticals, no in AutoCAD (2.5%, 5 Votes)
  • Yes (other) (2%, 4 Votes)
  • No, it’s usually off but I sometimes turn it on (2%, 4 Votes)
  • No, I use the menu under the big red A (6.5%, 13 Votes)
  • No, I never use pull-downs (9.5%, 19 Votes)
  • No (other) (2.5%, 5 Votes)

    • Choose the best things about AutoCAD 2009 (up to 3)
    Start Date: 11 July 2008

  • Ribbon (10.8%, 4 Votes)
  • Menu Browser (5.4%, 2 Votes)
  • Quick Access Toolbar (5.4%, 2 Votes)
  • Smaller floating toolbars (8.1%, 3 Votes)
  • Status bar changes (8.1%, 3 Votes)
  • Action Recorder (18.9%, 7 Votes)
  • Modeless layer interface (18.9%, 7 Votes)
  • Quick View Layouts/Drawings (8.1%, 3 Votes)
  • Quick Properties (13.5%, 5 Votes)
  • Spell checking in text editor (29.7%, 11 Votes)
  • Rollover tooltips for objects (13.5%, 5 Votes)
  • Enlarged tooltips for user interface (0%, 0 Votes)
  • ViewCube (21.6%, 8 Votes)
  • Steering Wheel (2.7%, 1 Votes)
  • ShowMotion (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Geographic Location (2.7%, 1 Votes)
  • DWFx (5.4%, 2 Votes)
  • Off-white model space background (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Drawing recovery changes (8.1%, 3 Votes)
  • Updated button images (2.7%, 1 Votes)
  • LISP bug fixes (13.5%, 5 Votes)
  • Scale List bug fixes (10.8%, 4 Votes)
  • Other bug fixes (10.8%, 4 Votes)
  • Improvements available only in vertical products (16.2%, 6 Votes)
  • Other improvements in base AutoCAD (8.1%, 3 Votes)

    • AutoCAD 2009 non-Ribbon users: why don’t you use it?
    Start Date: 20 June 2008

  • Uses up too much screen space (63.6%, 35 Votes)
  • Doesn’t make good use of my screen size/shape (45.5%, 25 Votes)
  • Using it minimised requires an extra click/hover (47.3%, 26 Votes)
  • Tab concept means extra clicks (65.5%, 36 Votes)
  • Dislike concept of hiding tools – want buttons to stay visible (60%, 33 Votes)
  • Tab switching is too slow (45.5%, 25 Votes)
  • Button click reaction is too slow (38.2%, 21 Votes)
  • Turning it off saves startup time (30.9%, 17 Votes)
  • Ribbon content doesn’t match my needs (43.6%, 24 Votes)
  • All the commands should be on it (27.3%, 15 Votes)
  • Express Tools are missing (32.7%, 18 Votes)
  • Other things I use frequently are missing (40%, 22 Votes)
  • Too hard to find things (50.9%, 28 Votes)
  • No advantage over existing methods (63.6%, 35 Votes)
  • Customising it is too difficult (43.6%, 24 Votes)
  • Don’t like the colour scheme (16.4%, 9 Votes)
  • Don’t like fuzzy text (ClearType) (25.5%, 14 Votes)
  • Using a vertical product that doesn’t make use of the Ribbon (23.6%, 13 Votes)
  • Want to avoid training expense/inconvenience (18.2%, 10 Votes)
  • Want to avoid initial productivity reduction (18.2%, 10 Votes)
  • Inconsistent with other programs we use (e.g. Office pre-2007) (12.7%, 7 Votes)
  • Opposition to Microsoft’s influence (23.6%, 13 Votes)
  • I’m a Luddite and resist change for the sake of it (7.3%, 4 Votes)

    • AutoCAD 2009 users: in what state do you usually have your Ribbon?
    Start Date: 28 May 2008

  • Horizontal and fully visible (10.4%, 8 Votes)
  • Horizontal and minimised to panel titles (5.2%, 4 Votes)
  • Horizontal and minimised to tabs (7.8%, 6 Votes)
  • Vertical, floating and fully visible (1.3%, 1 Votes)
  • Vertical, floating and auto-hiding (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Vertical, docked and fully visible (1.3%, 1 Votes)
  • Vertical, docked and auto-hiding (Anchor left or right) (2.6%, 2 Votes)
  • Turned off (71.4%, 55 Votes)

    • Autodesk’s CIP data – massively biased?

    10 Replies

    You may have seen Shaan Hurley and I having a discussion (ahem) over the validity of his statement:

    I really do use the ribbon now with AutoCAD 2010 along with most users as evidenced by the CIP data we receive daily from thousands of AutoCAD users who choose to send the great data.

    So, now you know. Most of you use the Ribbon now,  Shaan said so. Shaan, as he always has done in the past, declined my invitation to back up this assertion with more details. He has vast amounts of data collected from huge numbers of users. How could that possibly be wrong?

    Here’s how. CIP data is biased.

    How can millions of data points be biased? Actually, all samples are biased. Only the degree of bias varies. The polls on this blog are no exception. I do my best to keep the questions and options neutral; the only leading questions you’ll see here in serious polls are the ones I copy and paste from Autodesk blogs. But readers of this blog are one self-selecting small portion of Autodesk customers, and people who vote in my polls represent another self-selecting portion of that portion.

    The question is, how biased is Autodesk’s CIP data? Without access to Autodesk’s data (which it won’t provide) and resources for alternative data collection from its customers (ditto), the best I can do is use my own biased sample (that’s you lot out there) as a cross-check.

    Let’s examine it in light of Ribbon use among AutoCAD 2010 users. In an earlier comparison of my 2009 poll figures and Shaan’s CIP data, I wrote this:

    But Shaan’s CIP users are also a biased sample, comprising those AutoCAD users who have CIP turned on. Are users who go with the flow and have CIP on also more likely to go with the flow and leave the Ribbon on? Possibly, but I would have thought the CIP-on bias would be less significant than the blog-reader bias.

    I have recently run a poll to try to determine if that “possibly”, that hunch, has any basis. Let’s examine the results I got.

    AutoCAD 2010 users, what are your Ribbon and CIP settings?

    Ribbon on, CIP on (24.7%, 65 Votes)
    Ribbon on, CIP off (19.4%, 51 Votes)
    Ribbon off, CIP on (11%, 29 Votes)
    Ribbon off, CIP off (44.9%, 118 Votes)

    Total Voters: 263

    For the sake of argument, let’s make the assumption that my poll sample is unbiased. It’s not, and the degree of bias is unknown, but let’s see what it would mean if it was. Let’s see what kind of results Autodesk would see from its CIP sample:

    CIP-on voters (94):
    Ribbon on 69% (65)
    Ribbon off 31% (29)

    Shaan would see from this result that 69% of AutoCAD 2010 users have the Ribbon on, and would be tempted to say stuff like “use the ribbon now with AutoCAD 2010 along with most users”. Understandable. That’s just CIP users, but non-CIP users can’t be that different, surely? Or can they?

    CIP-off voters (169):
    Ribbon on 30% (51)
    Ribbon off 70% (118)

    Wow. That’s a huge discrepancy, and it implies that a sample selection based on CIP use introduces a massive bias. I’ve watched this poll grow over the weeks, half-expecting things to even out as the sample size increased. It didn’t. It has been pretty constant, with non-Ribbon non-CIP users outnumbering Ribbonite non-CIP users by a substantial margin.

    Let’s put the groups together, shall we?

    All voters (263)
    Ribbon on 44% (116)
    Ribbon off 56% (147)

    So, if the voters in my poll were observed by Autodesk via CIP they would appear to be 69% Ribbon users. In fact, only 44% of these voters are Ribbon users.

    How many AutoCAD 2010 users really have the Ribbon on? 69%? 30%? 44%? Some other number? I don’t know, and that’s not the point. The point is, Autodesk doesn’t know either. It can take some smart guesses, but just assuming CIP is accurate isn’t smart, it’s just a guess.

    Why does this matter? Because Autodesk makes decisions based on this stuff. Decisions that affect you and me and how we use our tools. Have a look at this statement from Autodesk’s Teresa Anania, Director of Industry Management (taken from her interview with Deelip Menezes about Inventor):

    …we had data that suggested that the new ribbon UI was well received and would be absolutely all that customers needed …. And now since we have the CIP data that shows us how our customers are using the software, we can analyze this before we permanently turn anything off.

    Comments like this (and others from other Adeskers) seem to indicate that there is an unspoken assumption that CIP users accurately represent a true cross-section of users in general.

    I know that Autodesk doesn’t rely solely on CIP; it uses a wide range of research tools to find out what users are up to and what they need. I regularly encourage you to participate in various Autodesk surveys, for example. But there are problems of accuracy inherent in all those methods. It would be natural, when faced with a set of apparently conflicting results from different sources, for Autodesk decision-makers to simply assume that the source with the biggest sample size is the most accurate. That could be a dangerous mistake, for both Autodesk and its customers.

    Note: my arithmetic was off in several places when I posted this, and I have edited the post to correct some of the figures. These corrections do not invalidate the arguments; the substantial bias is still evident.

    How is your AutoCAD 2011 hatching?

    16 Replies

    Hatching is the poster child for AutoCAD 2011’s 2D drafting feature changes (although there are several other significant ones), and also for demonstrating the advantages of providing a contextual interface via the Ribbon. It looks great at first glance when working with simple demo drawings, but how are things going in the real world? I’d be interested in hearing about your experiences.

    • Is the hatch Ribbon tab snapping into place and going away quickly enough, both the first time it is used in a session and subsequently?
    • Is the Ribbon interface easy to use, efficient and complete?
    • Does the hatch preview always match what’s actually hatched when you accept the preview? If not, how often is it wrong?
    • Are you happy with the new default double-click hatch action? (If not, see the Hatch double-click section of my AutoCAD 2011 – Putting things back to “normal” post).
    • Does the hatch preview work quickly and accurately in simple areas? How about more complex areas? How about areas bounded by complex polylines with lots of vertices?
    • Is the performance up to scratch when creating and editing both associative and non-associative hatches? How about when grips are visible on complex bounding areas? How about when you make changes to hatches using the Properties palette?
    • Is boundary detection working reliably in finding and filling a closed hatch area? Even when using a solid or gradient hatch pattern?
    • How is your zoom and pan performance in drawings with a lot of hatching?
    • Have you noticed any problems with the new transparency and background features?
    • Have you experienced any hatch-induced crashes or lockups?
    • Are any of your hatch problems new to 2011, or do they also exist in earlier releases on the same PC when using the same drawings?

    If your hatching performance is poor, have you tried changing the values of system variables to turn off features to see if the problems persist? Try HPQUICKPREVIEW = 0, HPDLGMODE = 1 and SELECTIONPREVIEW = 0. Also, if you are having display performance issues, try VTENABLE =0 and check using 3DCONFIG to see if your graphics card/driver combination is certified.

    What do I think of the Ribbon?

    9 Replies

    I’m curious. What do you think I think about the Ribbon, particularly in AutoCAD? Do you think I’m a hater, a lover, indifferent, or what? Now, on what evidence do you base that view? Feel free to quote back to me anything I’ve written on this blog or any other public place to support your opinion. If you can’t find anything that gives you any clues one way or the other, feel free to mention that, too.

    Polls, especially CIP and Ribbon settings

    7 Replies

    I encourage all my readers to participate in the variety of polls I have made available, over towards the right of this site. In particular, if you’re a user of base AutoCAD 2010, please have a go at the AutoCAD 2010 users, what are your Ribbon and CIP settings? poll. The results so far are very interesting, but the numbers are currently too small to be significant. My two longest-running polls are now approaching a thousand votes each, and it would be great to see several hundred responses to the Ribbon/CIP poll.

    While I’m on the subject of polls, I’ll repeat some comments I made a while ago. Back then, I noticed that more than one person had been voting multiple times. While this is technically possible for people who have access to the Internet via multiple IP addresses, it’s obviously not desirable. The idea is that you have one vote each. While you might be able to work around that restriction to give yourself a little extra influence on the result, doing so is less than honest.

    I accept that people who have access via home and work might accidentally vote twice on occasions, but if I perceive a continued pattern of deliberate abuse I will remove the offenders’ access rights to this site. As I respect everybody’s privacy I will not reveal any identities, drop any hints or make any announcements about this, I will just do it.

    Just to make the privacy issue completely clear, I will not, under any circumstances in public or private, reveal who has voted for what. To anybody. Similarly, I will not reveal to any party any identifying information behind any of the users of this site, with the exception of spammers.

    Fortunately, the influence of dodgy votes on poll results has so far been small and in most cases statistically insignificant. That is, it does not invalidate any conclusions that might be drawn from the overall poll results. The more valid votes there are, the less influence the multi-voters will have, so go to it and have your say. Once, please!

    Ribbon acceptance in AutoCAD and Revit

    24 Replies

    AutoCAD Ribbon use (and non-use) may have been the hottest topic on this blog to date, but it’s a storm in a teacup compared with what has been going on between Revit users and Autodesk. More on that later, but for now I’d just like to pass on a statement made by Autodesk BIM Design Product Line Manager Anthony A. Hauck on the AUGI forums that:

    Recent data on other Autodesk applications having both the new and “classic” UI show about a 2 : 1 split in favor of the new UI.

    I would be interested to know the full details behind this assertion. Whenever I see a baldly-stated statistic like this, my first thought is “where did it come from?” Without full details of the data and how it was obtained, every statistic like this is suspect at best. It could just as easily be useless or misleading. I’m afraid I’ve become rather cynical whenever I see any kind of Autodesk statistic. When challenged in the past, Autodesk has consistently failed or refused to back up its marketing statistics (or even vague assertions that certain secret Autodesk-supporting statistics exist) by providing the comprehensive details required to make them useful. I’d love to be proven wrong in this case, but I won’t be holding my breath.

    Instead, I’ll just ask you and we’ll see how the numbers compare. Over on the right, there are two new polls on Ribbon use; one for Revit and one for AutoCAD. If requested, I’ll do similar polls for Inventor and 3ds Max. Please add your vote and feel free to comment.

    AutoCAD 2009 – An outsider’s look at the Ribbon

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    Kirill Grouchnikov is a developer who has a blog called Pushing Pixels. This wouldn’t normally be of particular interest to AutoCAD users, but he recently wrote a piece describing the AutoCAD 2009 Ribbon. It is always interesting to things described from a different perspective, in this case the Ribbon from a non-user’s point of view. He pays particular attention to the ways in which the AutoCAD Ribbon differs from Microsoft’s standards. As a non-user, he has skipped lightly over several aspects of AutoCAD Ribbon use, including some drawbacks of the current implementation, but it is still a worthwhile read, as are some of the comments that follow.

    Ease of use and the Ribbon

    5 Replies

    I have Office 2007 on my newest computer at home, which I bought primarily to familiarise myself with the Ribbon interface and allow me to discuss it from a position other than ignorance. I use Word and Excel 2007 on that computer, and find the ease of use about the same as earlier releases. Some things are easier to find and use, some things are harder.

    My 9 year old daughter recently asked if she could use PowerPoint at home, as she had started to use it at her new school for making little presentations and wanted to make her own at home for fun. I put a shortcut on her desktop and let her go for it, and she has produced some pretty impressive stuff with no help from me. Not only that, but my 7 year old daughter is now doing the same thing, having learnt just by looking over my eldest daughter’s shoulder. They don’t ask me for any help, they just get on with it.

    A vindication of the Ribbon’s ease-of-use claims? Not exactly. You see, they are using PowerPoint on my old computer, which has the completely Ribbonless Office 2000.

    I don’t hate the Ribbon. I just don’t see much benefit in it, even for novice users.

    Matt Stein’s Blog and Microsoft’s Mojave Marketing

    1 Reply

    Thanks to Shaan Hurley for revealing to the wider world the existence of Ribbon Man Matt Stein’s blog. I’m not sure it’s appropriate for a blogging n00b like myself to welcome somebody with a blog four years older than his own, but I’m going to do it anyway. Welcome, Matt (no pun intended).

    Some of Matt’s blog posts (particularly the early ones) make for, er, interesting reading, so don’t click if you’re easily offended. Please bear in mind that this is a personal blog, not an Autodesk one.

    Matt and I generally get on fine, but we have had some frank exchanges of view and often agree to disagree. One subject where we are unlikely to share the same views is the Microsoft Vista marketing exercise The Mojave Experiment. This is something I planned to post about some weeks ago but then something more important came up and I didn’t bother. Here’s what Matt thinks, and here’s what I think:

    While this is a cute marketing ploy and might convince the terminally naive, it pretty obviously qualifies as propaganda rather than any kind of meaningful study. Here’s how it’s done:

    Find a selection of people with no experience of a product but with ignorance-based negative feelings about it. Make sure the hardware and software you’re going to show them all works well. Fix up the settings for minimal annoyance. Present an expensively prepared, well-choreographed demo that presents all the best features and none of the worst. Result: oh wow, what a surprise, it’s better than they thought.

    A marketing company could reproduce the same results with practically anything if they set it up right. I bet I could do it with Linux, OS X, Windows Me, whatever. Give me Microsoft’s resources and open slather to present things as fairly or unfairly as I like and I will hand you whatever results you request.

    For the record, I don’t hate Vista. I have Vista and XP available, dual boot, on hardware that can easily cope with the demands. In my tests on that hardware, Vista runs AutoCAD significantly faster than XP. Vista has been reliable and it looks nice, but I use XP about 95% of the time. Why? A few minor annoyances, but mostly it’s because Vista doesn’t support my mouse fully. Is that Microsoft’s fault or Logitech’s? Who cares? It’s something I have to put up with when I use Vista, therefore I generally avoid using Vista. As Matt rightly points out, Vista has a lot of minor “nice to have” touches, but all of them added together don’t make it worth putting up with a partially functional mouse. Neither do they make it worth buying a new mouse.

    Back to the marketing campaign, it reminds me of a productivity “study” paid for by Autodesk an age ago to show how much more productive Release 13 was than Release 12. It was released, accompanied by a poorly worded and deceptive press release (unintentionally deceptive, supposedly), to hoots of derision from a cynical AutoCAD user community. It convinced almost nobody and angered many, and was, all in all, a spectacularly bad idea.

    Autodesk marketing people, if by any chance you’re thinking of repeating that old mistake, or even “doing a Mojave” with AutoCAD 2009, please don’t. Just don’t.

    AutoCAD 2009 – Top reasons to be Ribbonless

    6 Replies

    I’ve closed the poll for those of you who are using 2009 with the Ribbon turned off to show us the reasons why. The top 10 choices were:

    1. Tab concept means extra clicks (65%)
    2. Uses up too much screen space (64%)
    3. No advantage over existing methods (64%)
    4. Dislike concept of hiding tools – want buttons to stay visible (60%)
    5. Too hard to find things (51%)
    6. Using it minimised requires an extra click/hover (47%)
    7. Doesn’t make good use of my screen size/shape (45%)
    8. Tab switching is too slow (45%)
    9. Customising it is too difficult (44%)
    10. Ribbon content doesn’t match my needs (44%)

    I was hoping that the poll would help Autodesk in deciding how best to improve the Ribbon in future releases, but it’s pretty hard to do much about the top 7 choices here. Except number 2, perhaps; the Ribbon could be considerably tightened to remove waste space, in the same way as the excellent AutoCAD 2009 floating toolbars.

    The new poll is slightly related to item 5 above. Autodesk combined the Ribbon with a change to the button images. Personally, I don’t think this was a good idea. If you move people’s stuff around, changing the appearance of that stuff is only going to make it harder to find things and reduce people’s acceptance of the changed interface. Enough of my opinion, what do you think?

    AutoCAD 2009 – How many people really are using the Ribbon?

    5 Replies

    I was interested to see Shaan Hurley reporting the Ribbon usage figures from the Customer Involvement Program (CIP). Shaan’s figures show Ribbon non-users at 46%, my poll results show it as 71%. Why the discrepancy? Is somebody telling fibs? I don’t think so.

    First, blog nauseam poll respondents represent a biased sample, comprising people who are more interested in AutoCAD than average users. Dare I say more knowledgeable? More likely to be power users or CAD Managers, anyway. They are probably more likely than average users to make changes from the default AutoCAD settings. But Shaan’s CIP users are also a biased sample, comprising those AutoCAD users who have CIP turned on. Are users who go with the flow and have CIP on also more likely to go with the flow and leave the Ribbon on? Possibly, but I would have thought the CIP-on bias would be less significant than the blog-reader bias.

    Second, Shaan’s sample size is likely to be very substantially larger than mine. I currently get about 5000 unique visitors to this site each month, with only up to about a hundred bothering to respond to a given poll. Shaan’s numbers are likely to be in the hundreds of thousands, and thus much less prone to a few people skewing the results.

    Finally, the method of measurement differs. My poll is totally open and transparent, but requires active participation by the respondent. This means that the more strongly you feel about something, the more likely you are to be measured.

    Shaan’s measurement method avoids that pitfall. However, because the details of the CIP measurement mechanism aren’t public, its accuracy is open to conjecture. For example, if somebody spends 8 hours working in a Ribbonless session and then tries out the Ribbon in another session for a few minutes, does that count as a score of 1-1, or is the time used taken into account? If somebody works Ribbonless except when using the Block Editor (personally, I think the Ribbon works well there), is a flag raised that says the Ribbon was used during the session? Does that then count as one Ribbon Session and no Ribbonless sessions? (Shaan, you’re very welcome to put that speculation to rest with some details of how it works). In any case, the number of part-time Ribbon users is likely to be small enough not to make a huge difference.

    In summary, I’m quite prepared to accept that Shaan’s CIP numbers are likely to be closer to reality than my poll results. I think “about half and half” is a decent compromise answer to the question posed by the title of this post.

    The question is, is that a good result? Shaan says he was surprised by the results, but doesn’t state whether he thought the Ribbon would be more or less popular than that. Before I ran my poll, I would have said that a significant minority, say a third of users, were going Ribbonless, and that a good result for the new interface would have been if less than 20% of AutoCAD 2009 users were going out of their way to turn it off. Whichever numbers you choose, the Ribbon is doing a lot worse than that. Why? Please fill in the poll on the right and let us all know. Whatever the reasons, we should be grateful that unlike many software companies, Autodesk has at least given us the choice.

    AutoCAD 2009 – Why aren’t you using the Ribbon?

    6 Replies

    Following on from the earlier poll to find out what you were doing with the Ribbon (mostly turning it off, apparently), I’ve added a poll for those of you who are using AutoCAD 2009 Ribbonless. I hope I’ve covered all the bases with my 23 possible reasons! You can pick as many or as few as you like.

    AutoCAD 2009 – Why do you hate the Ribbon?

    81 Replies

    Judging from the results of the Ribbon usage poll (and the usual poll caveats apply), you are turning off AutoCAD 2009’s Ribbon in droves. I’m surprised. I thought there would be a significant minority of 2009 users who turned it off, but it looks I was wrong and it’s a large majority. The non-Ribbon numbers have hovered around the two-thirds mark right from the start and have now settled above the 70% mark. If nothing else, this validates Autodesk’s decision to make the Ribbon optional and keep all the old user interface elements.

    Now I’m curious about the reasons. Why do so many of you dislike the Ribbon so much? Is it an unwillingness to change, a reaction against Microsoft’s influence, or are there more practical reasons? Is it screen space, extra picks, performance, customisation difficulties, difficulty in finding things, or something else? Did you turn it off straight away or did you give it a fair go first? Is the whole idea a write-off as far as you’re concerned, or is there something Autodesk could do that might convince you to use it?

    Please comment and let me know. If I get enough responses, I’ll post a multiple-choice poll to get a better idea about how many of you have the various reasons for going Ribbonless.

    AutoCAD 2009 – Ribbon content for Express Tools

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    One of the many unfinished aspects of the AutoCAD 2009 Ribbon is the lack of Express Tools content. One enterprising user has put the effort into correcting this, and has posted an Express Tools CUI replacement in this Autodesk newsgroup thread. I have not tested this myself. As usual with CUI, be paranoid. Back up everything before you touch anything.

    While I wouldn’t normally suggest you do any Ribbon custom work in 2009 in its current state, it shouldn’t hurt in this case as it should be easily redoable once Autodesk has fixed up the worst of the 2009 CUI problems. Anything else you do should be considered as disposable. The problems with 2009’s CUI are so fundamental that it is quite likely a restructure will be required to fix them, either in a service pack or in 2010. That means your 2009 CUI efforts may need to be redone, just like your AutoCAD 2008 Dashboard modifications.

    AutoCAD 2009 – How do you use the Ribbon?

    24 Replies

    It would appear from comments made on the Autodesk newsgroups that a lot of AutoCAD 2009 users have their Ribbons turned off. That’s actually one of eight possible states for the Ribbon to be in. Is it really the most popular configuration? Does it apply to 12.5% of you or is it more than that? I’ve added a poll to find out. Please vote only if you’re an active AutoCAD 2009 user, as I want to see what people use in production.