CE PowerDraft - Settings, Tasks, Preferences etc

That is not good. Not good at all!!

True but with the option to have either option for the users is a good thing. It's a preference

Hi Reginald,

Also in my opinion the MicroStation and PowerDraft interface should be the same since we have customers working with both programs, it would be very unlogical that you should change your workflow when changing software. So you need at least positional mapping in powerdraft too if one day you work with microstation and the other day with powerdraft.
so please let us know as soon as possible what bentley decides so we can inform our customers
best regards,
Ronny

I have just been asked to look at powerdraft for our company, I am also a little confused as to why the Tasks would be removed with no provision for re-instating it as a user setting. It would be counter productive to have to use a different work flow for the two programs.

Has there been any effort to re-introduce the tasks back to powerdraft?

Reinstating the Task Navigation option in PowerDraft CE, like in MicroStation CE has been requested, but no news so far no news as to whether that will be the case or not.

I think price elasticity is finally going to shoot Bentley in the foot if they think they're going to be successful in forcing customers to upgrade their PowerDraft licenses to MicroStation licenses, just so they can upgrade to CE and continue to be more productive with Task Navigation than they would be by using the Ribbon.

I hope Bentley sees the light sooner rather than later.

We are a small business and have a number of Microstation Licences however we do not use all the functionality of Microstation, we are bringing in a new draughtsman and feel a powerdraft licence would be cheaper yet allow meaningful work to be carried out. It is disappointing to be forced to use a different work flow, or spend more money on a licence for a higher powered program which we will not use fully, or use outdated programs [as I have discovered powerdraft v8i uses the tasks, and so as a workaround I'm looking at this]

I can only hope too that Bentley will re-introduce the tasks back to powerdraft connect, and allow us to get the best value possible. Maybe there is a legitimate reason for them to phase out the tasks, but why in one program and not another? If the reason is only that in "their opinion" it's better, then I'd say that in "my opinion" it's not.

We are a small business and have a number of Microstation Licences however we do not use all the functionality of Microstation, we are bringing in a new draughtsman and feel a powerdraft licence would be cheaper yet allow meaningful work to be carried out. It is disappointing to be forced to use a different work flow, or spend more money on a licence for a higher powered program which we will not use fully, or use outdated programs [as I have discovered powerdraft v8i uses the tasks, and so as a workaround I'm looking at this]

I can only hope too that Bentley will re-introduce the tasks back to powerdraft connect, and allow us to get the best value possible. Maybe there is a legitimate reason for them to phase out the tasks, but why in one program and not another? If the reason is only that in "their opinion" it's better, then I'd say that in "my opinion" it's not.

It may be a test. They've advocated "The Ribbon interface is the one we'll be moving forward". However since currently the performance penalty of going Ribbon for production work is so significant I don't see many companies embracing PowerDraft CE. Maybe they decided to leave Task Navigation out of PD, just to see if that led to a significant difference in adoption between the CE's of MS and PD.
MS CE in itself has its share of problems though, so it may take a while before Bentley catches on.

A company with a mix of MS and PD will have a very hard time, if they ever decide to move to CE, due to the lack of support for the legacy interfaces in PD.

Maintaining 2 interfaces is more work than maintaining just one. That's the biggest "legitimate" reason for leaving out Task Navigation. Some people at Bentley seem to think that moving to the Ribbon interface will make to program more "discover-able" and thus more easily, and ultimately more productively, usable. That last part is still WIP though.