Comments on: AutoCAD 2009 - Why aren’t you using the Ribbon?

By: N. Scharpen

N. Scharpen — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:09:17 +0000

Why is it that whenever a company has nearly perfected a programthey decide to rebuild the UI and completely cock the whole thing up? I guess if it ain’t broke you aren’t trying hard enough. I will not be purchasing 2009 and if all subsequent versions have this glaring error then Autodesk may lose me as a customer for good.

By: Adam Kimber

Adam Kimber — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:20:13 +0000

I found the ribbon whilst customisable is massive. I had before a space one or two toolbars high at the most. The ribbon eats into my workspace. Also the minimise feature of the ribbon whilst nice makes for a pain of more clicks. The ribbon also does not add any functionality that I can already get from customised buttons, scripts, additional lisp and typing. Its just a gimmick. MS needed a way to sell their new office, and for some reason Autodesk has joined the bandwagon.

By: N.Moeller

N.Moeller — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:24:57 +0000

The ribbon takes up too much space, crashes when customized and doesn’t hold a candle to a customized pulldown menu.
Now that I’ve seen it, I dont understand why Autodesk is taking such a huge leap backwards.

By: R.K. McSwain

R.K. McSwain — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:05:43 +0000

At least you can turn off the Ribbon. What about the color schemes and the menu browser? Ugh.

By: Rick Moore

Rick Moore — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:21:09 +0000

I was going to use a 2 tab ribbon - a drafting tab with one panel, one row; another tab for 3D work. This would take the place of workspace switching for me. There were problems:
1. The tabs take up the space of the menubar but turning off the menubar means using using that dreadful Menu Browser.
2. The blockeditor squeezes out tool panels when using a one row ribbon.
3. I could minimize the ribbon to gain the space back but doing this means you have no visible tools in the block editor.
4. The contectual text editor is too big to fit on a one row ribbon.

By: Chris Cowgill

Chris Cowgill — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:11:57 +0000

my vote for no advantage over exsting refers to (atleast in my opinion) keyboarding is much faster than finding buttons on toolbars or ribbons for that matter