Ribbon vs Classic

[nextvkin]

Hi,
I've upgraded to ACAD 2013, & I'm still using the classic menu & mainly keyboard shortcuts. Just wondering if I'm missing out on any advantages by not using the ribbon. Any old DAUGs proficient in both care to give me some clues? Thanks.

[Wanderer]

I use the keyboard a lot myself (old daug says 'woof!'), but, I adopted the ribbon years ago.
Of course, I do more support than I do drafting, so it behooves me to keep as close to the default interface as possible to help people find things.

If I were you, I'd at least give the ribbon a try. The best part about it is the contextual tabs that pop up when you're performing certain commands and have certain types of entities selected. I'm positive you could save many mouse clicks or typed options because of the contextual states being so convenient.

[ccowgill]

I still prefer to use keyboard commands whenever possible. I have eliminated the menus. I have my ribbon anchored to the left side of my drawing space, and use it basically as a storage place that hides many tool bars. We're on C3D now, so there are a lot of commands that I cant remember the names for.

[Ed Jobe]

*woof* *woof*
There's no reason you can't have it both ways. I'll second another vote for contextual tabs. For example, if you pick a block, you get a special tab just for working with blocks/atts/db's. I also have a few key toolbars showing.

[jaberwok]

woof, woof, woof.
Keyboard as far as possible, toolbars for the rest.
But I have decided to at least take another look at the ribbon now that it's been around for a few releases.

[nextvkin]

Good ideas & advice from all, thanks - looks like it's time for this old DAUG to learn some new tricks.

[irneb]

Actually woof, woof, haul :mrgreen:

I use them all: Ribbon, Keyboard & Menu (just set menubar=1). Then I move the ribbon anchored to the side and auto-hide it (as ccowgill does). Only I tend to turn it on/off every time I want to work with hatches, otherwise my i7-SandyBridge + 16GB crashes on my drawings (they're just too complex for that preview hatching).

[Wanderer]

:Oops: D'oh, you know, it just occurs to me... while I use vanilla AutoCAD at home, and *could* turn the menubar back on if I wanted to... I have AutoCAD MEP at work, and it (and some other verticals) do NOT have that option. I mean, you can turn it on, but, the only menu you will see would be the Express tools menu.

The first year after they removed it, I was using ACA, and was able to download a file, thanks to folks posting about it on the forums, to add back the menus, but, I haven't seen it for the newest versions (honestly, I haven't really looked on purpose, but, I don't recall seeing it mentioned in passing either).

[irneb]

The first year after they removed it, I was using ACA, and was able to download a file, thanks to folks posting about it on the forums, to add back the menus, but, I haven't seen it for the newest versions (honestly, I haven't really looked on purpose, but, I don't recall seeing it mentioned in passing either).I've noticed the same issue with ACA. You could of course import the menus from an old ADT MNU file into the CUI ... but the real problem is that you won't have all the newest stuff in the menu (unless of course you go and create them manually inside the CUI, not difficult just time consuming).

[nextvkin]

As suggested, I now have the ribbon on my other screen but still having my personal UI on the main screen, ie with menubar & toolbars. However I found that when I do a hatch (keyboard command H), the dialog box doesn't come up, but the command line says HATCH Pick internal point or [Select objects/seTtings], and by typing T the dialog box appears. Any way to overcome this, ie without having to type that T option? I know it's a minor thing, but if it can be fixed, great! Thanks.

[irneb]

As suggested, I now have the ribbon on my other screen but still having my personal UI on the main screen, ie with menubar & toolbars. However I found that when I do a hatch (keyboard command H), the dialog box doesn't come up, but the command line says HATCH Pick internal point or [Select objects/seTtings], and by typing T the dialog box appears. Any way to overcome this, ie without having to type that T option? I know it's a minor thing, but if it can be fixed, great! Thanks.


... Only I tend to turn it on/off every time I want to work with hatches, otherwise my i7-SandyBridge + 16GB crashes on my drawings (they're just too complex for that preview hatching).I've made a keyboard shortcut for the Ribbon command (set to Ctrl+R), that way I can toggle it on/off quickly before creating / editing hatches.

Edit: Here's the macro code:
^P^C^C(command (if (= (getvar 'RibbonState) 0) "._RIBBON" "._RIBBONCLOSE"))

[irneb]

Actually, it seems that doesn't need to be done. The HPDLGMODE in 2012 seems to sort out this issue, just set it to 1 instead of the default 2.

[nextvkin]

irneb, you're a champ! Thanks.

[irneb]

Glad to help, though I only found out about that setting because of this thread ;)

It's a much better solution than my previous way of toggling the Ribbon on/off! Now if only I could get at a setting to display the bedit palette & toolbar instead of the ribbon panel in bedit mode (just because I like it better) ... probably need to learn how to use the ribbon panel instead (though I hate it when the wrong panel is displayed :roll: when you need it)!

[nextvkin]

In the same vein, when editing mtext with the ribbon on, the text formatting toolbar does not show up unless MTEXTTOOLBAR is set to 1 (default is 2).