Comments on: AutoCAD 2009 – Tooltips are bad for my sanity

By: PDSF

PDSF — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:31:15 +0000

This has gotten no better in v2012. These enormous “tips” drive me nuts, but I can’t turn them off because I need them occasionally (VERY occasionally). 100% agree with the need for a customizable delay.

By: Steve Johnson

Steve Johnson — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 02:42:10 +0000

I think you may be confusing the new-to-2009 user interface tooltips discussed in this post with the Dynamic Input drafting tooltips which were introduced by AutoCAD 2006. For the latter, you can indeed change the size and transparency using Options > Drafting > Drafting Tooltip Settings… (or Dsettings > Dynamic Input > Drafting Tooltip Settings…) but this has no effect on any of the things I’ve described in my post.

By: Huh?

Huh? — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:43:25 +0000

There is all kinds of middle ground. There are 4 different toggles depending on which particular command types you want to turn the tooltips off from. Plus the option to vary there transparency (which is CLEVERLY hidden in the Tooltips Settings box of the Options menu… where no one apparently ever bothers looking.)

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:53:47 +0000

Did anyone come up with a solution for this in AutoCAD 2011? I am still fighting these large tooltips. I have the extended tooltips OFF. I only want a small tooltip, like they had in AutoCAD 2008. Am I forced to use the old version to get what I want? I just like the old smaller tooltips that don’t use so much space.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:31:25 +0000

AutoCAD can’t come up with any useful feature. Therefore they have to come up with garbage to try and justify releasing a new package every 12 months. I have seen this happen more and more often. I haven’t installed my AutoCAD versions 2007, 2008 or 2009. I have stopped my subscription as they have continually added useless feature, that do NOT improve the software. I don’t think I will ever renew my subscription, especially since I watch all the complaints on their forums.

It’s become quite obvious, AutoDesk doesn’t care about improving their software. They do care about making manditory releases every 12 months to get more money out of their users.

By: William

William — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:44:41 +0000

The worst thing is that basically all the tooltips are on, or off…there is zero middle ground. I don’t mind tooltips to an extent because as you said, they help figuring out all the stupid GUI changes for 2009.

But why oh why didn’t they include an option for an appearance delay? Sure, they included one for extended tooltips, fine…but one for regular tooltips that is user-adjustable would make my work much more sane. Now, I have to turn them on and off and on and off if I forget which buttons do which (the ones much less used). BUT…if I could set a hover delay of say, 5 seconds, that would insure that I don’t accidentally see any tooltip I don’t want to see and, as Doug mentioned above, any tooltip you want to see would definitely be intentional.

One of the more annoying oversights in a program famous for high user customization.

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:03:32 +0000

My suggestion (in addition to the others here) is to add a hover delay variable) That way after you become somewhat familiar with the icons, you can set the delay to say three or four seconds. That way, you are intentional about the tool tip appearing. Another option is to allow just the command name to appear in the Status Bar at the bottom of the screen similar to when you hover over a pull-down menu item.

By: PJ Lightning

PJ Lightning — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:01:07 +0000

I totally agree. What is the point of a huge box that obscures everything. OK It’s useful to have something that gives a hint about the button, while you are learning. But eventually you KNOW what the bloody buttons sre and just need a small reminder for the ones you don’t use so often. I put a post in the C3d wish list for them to make tooltips a right click function. Then the info is there when you want it but not when you don’t

By: trebormoslrac

trebormoslrac — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:33:07 +0000

Short and sweet: Tooltips = real PITA

By: vmoreland

vmoreland — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:19:57 +0000

I ranted about this on Autocad discussion groups. I was assured there that Autodesk don’t really give a rat’s ass what old users think….and the speculation was that maybe Autodesk was doing this kind of stuff on purpose to drive people to using model based products.

Well….I don’t really believe it, but if it is true, I won’t be driven to Inventor because if they will will “dis” old time Autocad users, they will most certainly do the same to Inventor users.

Meanwhile….I am going to go back to 2008 since 2009 is driving me nuts. The hope is that a service pack comes out that adresses this problem as well as others….like….”find” which zooms to the target, and upon closing the dialog box, zooms back out so that you don’t have any idea of where the “find” was within the drawing.

By: ralphg

ralphg — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:21:03 +0000

Related to this is the removal of the Description field at the bottom of some palettes and dialog boxes. The area is still there, but blank — making the dialog box larger than necessary.