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.

After five days of use ...

In my opinion, this new interface needs to improve a lot to be really competitive.

I have worked with this CAD from the first Intergraph stations to this new version of CONNECT. I have programmed from the old "user command" to MDL and VBA. All the improvements have seemed very interesting, because they provided speed of work. But ... honestly ... I think it's obvious that ribbons take up more screen space (bad), that its operation is slower (bad) and ungroup functions that were previously joined (mmhhh ..bad)… 

The complexity to customize it has seemed to me the same as always ".dgnlib". Here I found no differences. The bad thing is that apart from the facelift, I have not found any improvements (speed, compatibility, new functions?). Behind is the same program as always, but with the complication of having to train skilled workers to a new interface. It would seem a good idea to have an option (preconfigured, not to waste more time) that would allow a more classic Access (For now, faster than the current "ribbons"). Once we finish the deliveries requested by our customers, we will have time to learn new tricks to handle the same program as always.

Perhaps they have been hasty in producing a product that does not seem well finished. I insist, it's just my personal opinion. I trust, no doubt, in an improved update that corrects many of these errors.
With regards

Unknown said:

ribbons take up more screen space

Yes, so many users minimize it and use ribbon pop-ups as the main tool (and I like it also).

Unknown said:

ungroup functions that were previously joined (mmhhh ..bad)

Current ribbon is really "generic", which is far from customers' workflow. To customize it is the way to go. I remember there was interesting discussion in the past about sharing how people customize ribbon and what structure of tools they prefer.

Unknown said:

The complexity to customize it has seemed to me the same as always ".dgnlib".

Yes and no: There are some new features (for me e.g. possibility to consume synchronization events to event Named Expressions, ribbon pop-ups and screen menus), so even customization based on dgnlib are more flexible comparing to V8i.

But there is also more advanced way of ribbon customization available: This documentation is part of MicroStation SDK help, but the customization itself, which allows more detail modifications and a few extra functions (like context sensitive tabs), does not require to write any code.

Unknown said:

Behind is the same program as always

Really? This thread is about GUI only (so new features should be discussed in some other post) and I don't want to steal it, so I will only epxress my complete disagreement with such statement ;-) There was I remember some discussion what from new features (and there are long list of new features) are the most interesting for users.

Regards,

  Jan

Unknown said:

Perhaps they have been hasty in producing a product that does not seem well finished. I insist, it's just my personal opinion. I trust, no doubt, in an improved update that corrects many of these errors.

After initial release of CE, Bentley as been sending more or less constant updates and until now I count 300 corrections, but we still need more.

Regards

Why am I some replies missing? I have been notified by email of one from RodWing but don'r see it here!

Not all replies go to the bottom. I replied to comment further up to  Yrjo Ala-Heikkila, and my reply appears just under that.

OK thanks. Have to say that is confusing!! How do we keep track of replies?

OK thanks. Have to say that is confusing!! How do we keep track of replies?