Another Year Another Release

The2009 Series of Autodesk products is upon us and if you read some of thecommentary on the AutoCAD discussion board, you may think the sky isfalling.  Many people sure hate it when their working environment ischanged and AutoCAD got a whooper of a GUI overhaul this time around.

Ihave mixed feelings about changes like this: I too get annoyed whensomeone messes with my working environment but if it bringsimprovements then I will integrate those changes into my regularroutine.  In this brief review of AutoCAD/ AutoCAD Architecture 2009 Iwill run through some of the key changes that you may want to turn offuntil you are ready to integrate them.

BeforeI run through a list of settings and system variables, I think itprudent to ask why Autodesk decided to focus so much of their energy onGUI changes instead of hard-core system improvements.  I recently reada very plausible answer to this question onhttp://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/ by Ralph Grabowski where he statesthe following:

“Inresponse to my question about varied user interfaces between theirproducts, Buzz mentioned that Autodesk was working on something theyare calling “Airmax” — that’s AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit and Max. No,it’s not all of them wrapped into one (what an organized mess thatwould be!). It is something to do with giving each program a unifieduser interface. It looks like some of this is already in AutoCAD 2009,for I doubt they spent all that time and money on AutoCAD 2009’s ribboninterface, only to drop it for something else soon

2Body

Ribbon

Thenew Ribbon tool may prove to be that “Airmax” unified interface forAutoCAD, Inventor, Revit and Max - like it or not, get used to it. Idon’t really have much of an opinion about this interface; it’s likeMicrosoft’s flavor for the decade and if history is any indication,this will all change again in about a decade.

TheRibbon in AutoCAD is really more of an evolutionary stage from theDashboard which no longer exists so it really isn’t that surprising. Unlike Microsoft’s, this Ribbon is customizable and thus stays true toAutoCAD’s legacy.

TheRibbon has several Minimize settings to help maintain some screen realestate but for those who are looking for the old AutoCAD appearance,you can use RibbonClose to turn the whole thing Off.

Menu Browser

Thatbig icon in the upper left corner is the new location for all of thepull-down menus.  Essentially it’s like consolidating all of theprevious pull-down menus into one giant pull-down menu with cascadingmenus off of it.  This is clearly not an improvement but more of a wayof setting aside legacy systems while making room for the new onesfound on the “Ribbon”.

Inthe illustration to the right I show one of the interesting newimprovements related to finding drawings you recently worked on.  Thereare now a variety of preview options built into the “Recent Documents”list.  I wonder if changes like this actually make a difference to themajority of users.  For me, it matters little since I have been usingExplorer with it’s preview thumbnails ever since Microsoft made thatfeature available - it’ show I open all of my files these days.

Menubar

The“antiquated” pull-down menus can now be controlled with a systemvariable so you can bring them back if you can’t quite stand using thatone pull-down menu in the upper left corner.  “Menubar” set to 1 is On and set to 0 is Off

StatusBar

In previous releases, the Statusbar system variable only affected the Application Status Bar but now it has four value options that affect both the Application and Drawing Window Status Bars.

The “StatusBar”system variable has four settings: 0,1,2 and 3.  0 = Both Off, 1 =Application Status Bar on, 2 = Both On and 3 = Drawing Window StatusBar On.

Inthe illustration to the right I show how to change those new draftingsetting icons back to the words that most have been looking at foryears.  For a concept like “Ortho” is a picture better than a word?

Layer Properties Manager Palette

The Layer Properties Manager Window can now be run as a Palettewhich might be pretty handy if you are primarily working on organizingand cleaning drawings based on Layer Properties; i.e., it can now beactive during work.  The undocumented system variable that switchesbetween the old and the new Layer Manager layout is “LayerDlgMode” where “1″ means that whenever you activate the Layer Manager, it will appear as a Palette.

In the illustration to the right I show how you can now collapse the Filters listof the Layer Properties Manager Palette to make a little more room. With this configuration I would argue that you can actually dock it tothe side and work while it is active.  Because I am always curiousabout new and undocumented improvements, I just had to see if therewere any drag-n-drop features added to the Layer Manager.  For example,I tried to drag an Object to a Layer but that didn’t work.  Then, Itried to drag Layer Names up and down in the stack; that didn’t workeither.  I suppose asking for an opacity control on Layers is out ofthe question

Ubiquitous Tool Tips

OMG, how many tooltips do I need? 

Thiswas the first thing I looked into deactivating.  I think tooltips areuseful for those just learning how to use a program but they can soonbecome annoying.  You can find two primary settings for Tooltips and RolloverTips under the Display tab of the Options dialog or you can use the system variables ToolTips and RollOverTips to activate or deactivate these distractions.

Iwonder if anyone out there with a good sense of humor will write sometooltips that read like those crazy balloon used on television shows.

Balloon Notification

Balloon Notification in ACA seems a little wacky to me so let me share what I discovered about turning this stuff on an off.

Whenyou start to draw a Wall in ACA 2009, for example, you will see aBalloon notifying you about the latest features of the WallAddcommand.  This type of Balloon is called a “Did You Know message” andyou can turn it off in two places (that’s where it gets weird).

If you look at the image to the right with the Wall Balloon active, you can see the “Don’t show me this again”setting.  If you pick on this option, the “Did You Know message”Balloons will go away but getting them back, should you ever want to,is confusing.

Before I explain what happens when you pick on the “Don’t show me this again” setting, take a look at the “Search Settings” menu option found on the Search menu.  From this menu, you can access the InfoCenter Settings dialog where you will find the “Did you Know message” checkbox and the “Enable Balloon notification for:” checkbox for everything.  If you turn off either of these two options, you won’t have Balloons for adding things like Walls

Balloon - “Did You Know Balloons”

Getting back to the discussion above about checking the “Don’t show me this again” setting on the “Did you Know message” Balloon, you won’t be able to use the information illustrated above to turn things back on.  Infact, if you use the “Don’t show me this again” option and check the“Did You Know message” checkbox, it will still be checked.

In the illustration to the right I show a new button on the System tab of the Options dialog box: “Hidden Messages Settings“. 

My guess is that there are plans for more Balloon messages.

Ifyou ask me, the “Don’t Show me this again” option shouldn’t be for allBalloons but just for that single one.  This would allow a new user toturn off balloons as they grow with the program.

3Conclusion

Running Old Releases Concurrently Ina recent e-mail from the Autodesk Subscription Center, I was notifiedof some changes or clarifications to my subscription policy.  I thoughtI would pass along the two items I thought were representative of whathas been going on in the “real world” anyway.