New Ribbon interface, what do you think?

An absolute disappointment. I have been working with Microstation for more than 30 years and defending it against AutoCAD. Is it time to change software? I can not waste time finding out how tools have been placed now, my clients can not afford it. Who has decided which is my workflow, some Microsoft worker? A big BENTLEY mistake. By the way, I still use the "MAIN CLASSIC" menu. All utilities in one, small and accessible menu. Goodbye to comfort.

An absolute disappointment. I have been working with Microstation for more than 30 years and defending it against AutoCAD. Is it time to change software? I can not waste time finding out how tools have been placed now, my clients can not afford it. Who has decided which is my workflow, some Microsoft worker? A big BENTLEY mistake. By the way, I still use the "MAIN CLASSIC" menu. All utilities in one, small and accessible menu. Goodbye to comfort.

I've yet to install CE and it will be for a long time before I consider doing so judging by the number of complaints I constantly read. I don't mind ribbon interfaces per se but I would prefer to go back to using neither ribbon or task interfaces. If I had a spare £650 I would get myself one of these:

I used to own a Summagraphics 1812HR digitising tablet and it was only due to no longer being able to buy the pucks that I had to embrace the task interface and learn to draw with a mouse. Of course its now like 2nd nature due to a customised task interface but nothing beats the tablet for maximum screen real estate, speed of drawing and the absolute freedom of designing your own tools interface and not be forced to adapt to Bentley's latest GUI development direction.

Well, you can change the layout back to the V8i look and customize everything (and then hide the ribbon bar). I am also no ribbon fan so that's what I did and everything looks and feels just like my customized V8i. No big deal. :-)

Its good to see that people have different opinions !

I personally strongly dislike the V8i layout and love the connect ribbon layout.

Unknown said:

Its good to see that people have different opinions!

Agree :-)

Unknown said:

I personally strongly dislike the V8i layout and love the connect ribbon layout.

In my opinion it's often only about to become familiar with GUI and to be able to customize it to own individual needs and requirements.

I know there always be people that will dislike anything new (one my customer uses only old tentative assigned to middle button and he switches AccuSnap off as useless badly designed tool, simply because he learned MicroStation V5 and he is completely sure it's enough for him ;-). But at the same time there are serious issues that are not subjective and are based on facts like ribbon occupies scarce space on todays wide but not tall (16:9 and wider) monitors.

My feeling is that part of the discussed confusion and dislike comes from comparing former V8i task based interface, often customized, with standard ribbon configuration delivered with MicroStation. But MicroStation CE GUI can be customized also and it's not about ribbon, but also about ribbon pop-ups (available by default at <space> shortcut, many my customers really like this feature) and also about screen menus as alternative to normal ribbon and toolboxes.

And the customization can be even more complex, far better than what was possible in V8i. With a proper knowledge, but without any coding, for example custom context sensitive ribbon (similar to what is displayed when table is selected) can be created. But that's task for product admins and developers, not users ;-)

With regards,

  Jan

I don't know how to use quotes in a post but I really like your (Jan's) last paragraph. I can't wait to see Bentley take advantage of a context sensitive ribbon across all verticals.