Constant Revit UI?

[Shaun v Rooyen]

In R6.0 it was "Tools/Location and Co-Ordinates"
In R7.0 it became "Settings/Location and Co-Ordinates"
In R8.0 it remained the same.
Now in R8.1, it is spread all over the "Tools" pull down, and then "Manage Place" is left behind under "Settings" took me 5min to find it all, and to top it all "location & Coordinates" is no longer!
Is there no way to keep uniformity in the UI????
File; Edit; View; Modeling; Drafting; & Site, have remained constant except for the addition of new tools. "Location and Coordinates" is by no means a new tool, It's been there since ever I can remember (from R4.0). Just find a home for it and leave it there.

[JamesVan]

Revit seems to have caught a case of ADT. My recommendation...plenty of rest and drink lots of fluids. This will pass and you'll feel all better.

[bowlingbrad]

Revit seems to have caught a case of ADT. My recommendation...plenty of rest and drink lots of fluids. This will pass and you'll feel all better.
Case of ADT?!?!? I sure hope not!

[BWG]

It seemed to work better in 8.0. Even though I know it is spread now, I still keep going to the same place (8.0) looking for the commands. Please leave these commands in one place.

[FK]

Just trying to impose some logic on this thing...

[Scott Hopkins]

Just trying to impose some logic on this thing...
I can see that you are the kind of guy who like to painfully pull a band-aid off millimeter by millimeter rather than ripping the whole thing off at once.

[anthony.67953]

Now my logic would go to the Site pull down to look for site related tools.

[janunson]

Just trying to impose some logic on this thing...


no logic allowed.. everything must work by intuition... a vague 'feelingness' of interface.

Seriously, though, i actually kind of mean that.

When working in Revit i'm often reminded of the Macintosh in the 80s. It was new, different... these things that it did, it acted differently depending on the context... all very mystifying for a while, until you got the FEEL for it. something i have a hard time teaching other users, then and now.

One thing that Apple did then and Revit developers must remember now... they were consistent and true to their metaphors across all kinds of situations. shift-click always added, function (apple) click always activated options, etc. Overall Revit is great w/ this, part of why i think it's so intuitive to use.

Things that break the 'feelingness':
Moving commands
Removing transparent functions (like F2)
Making longer menus
Adding button bars, toolbars, etc. (kudos on the options bar!!)
Having buttons move to different places on the screen in different situations
Having a command (like line) not work the same way in different situations, or not be triggered in the same way in different situations.

[FK]

Millimeter...by...millimeter...yesss! Actually, the last round of rearrangement was without my involvement.

Changing things does not break intuitiveness, it breaks habit. People automatically reached for "Tools" when shared coordinates were in "Settings", so at least that change was for the better, I think.

[Steve_Stafford]

I think they've found a good home now...but I was enjoying the "Where's the shared positioning tools hiding in this release" :-P Just imagine if we could customize the menu and toolbars...you could walk up to someone else computer and not know where anything is!! :shock:

[Gadget Man]

...Just imagine if we could customize the menu and toolbars...you could walk up to someone else computer and not know where anything is!! :shock:
Yeah, I work here alone, so for me it would have to be the case of forgeting where in the World I moved that command...!? Thank Goodness we can't do that - too much freedom would drive us all crazy! :? :wink: :screwy:

But seriously, I don't understand, why oh why we can't customize the Menues and more importantly the Command toolbar!? Thankfully, by now I memorised most of the shortcuts (original as well as my own), so I don't need to get frustrated about a strange habit of (for example) the Dimensioning tool moving from the top to the bottom of different toolbars. As if it couldn't live, say, the second (or third, or whatever) from the top (or bottom) on each relevant toolbar, uniformly - regardless of other tools...

[Shaun v Rooyen]

My latest find in the inconsistency, is that CTRL+ENTER is now SHIFT+ENTER for the wrapping of text. Took a while to figure that one out. There's also the "F2 = Renaming" thread going on as well.

[iru69]

Changing things does not break intuitiveness, it breaks habit. People automatically reached for "Tools" when shared coordinates were in "Settings", so at least that change was for the better, I think.
[/font]
Excellent point, and generally speaking, I'm all for this - as long as it's really an improvement and once I break the habit, it'll make working with Revit faster, easier, more intuitive.
In Zed's first example, it doesn't bother me that it's moved around - but it does bother me that it's still seems confusing.

My latest find in the inconsistency, is that CTRL+ENTER is now SHIFT+ENTER for the wrapping of text.
In my opinion, this is a good example of the feature becoming more intuitive. SHIFT+ENTER has traditionally been the way to enter a "soft return" in text... that it was CTRL+ENTER is unintuitive. So, it may take a few times to break the habit, but this is a move in the right direction.

There's also the "F2 = Renaming" thread going on as well.
This is a good example of moving in the wrong direction. F2 has (at least in Windows) been the standard "Renaming" shortcut for a while now, so that it would change seems unintuitive.

[J. Grouchy]

My latest find in the inconsistency, is that CTRL+ENTER is now SHIFT+ENTER for the wrapping of text.
What do you mean? Is this referring to Revit? I don't see what hitting either one of these combinations does...

[brantfetter]

Complement: I think a significant advancement by the Revit UI designers is the attempt to reduce key hits. For example, text editing is usually (by many current applications) exited by Shift+Enter. This annoyed me initially, but I'll say that I don't mind trying out a simpler method of just doing something else or clicking elsewhere on the screen.

I'm very much for UI consistency. Getting everyone on the design team to go the same direction is not easy. So I encourage further efforts at either better consistency with other leaders such as Adobe (who have done a fabulous job of bringing most of their applications into alignment regarding UI consistency), or key hit reduction.

Request: As for what may be lacking, what's up with the Dynamic movement??? Instead of complaining I'll just make suggestion. Fedor, please consider reworking the method of entering the dynamic view mode then having to select walkthrough, when walkthrough is all I use. It's really just a desire for better access (read less key hits) to use this type of camera movement. Please make the walkthrough part of the dynamic movement accessible via accelerator keys (if it is, please let me know what the correct phrase is for the keyboard shortcut.txt). I emplor you to consider or champion this UI improvement. Secondly, I suggest you consider using the standard movement key sets that the gaming industry uses. The reason I suggest this is that such movement is extensively tested and works well. It would also seem more intuitive since it has a very wide recognition and user base. If your curious as to details just email me. There's a lot more I'd like to add, but this is large enough for now...

[FK]

Hmm... I like these ideas, they crossed my mind too, but I never got to formulate them... But if you have a concrete vision in your mind (that would be consistent with the rest of Revit!), why don't you just write it in a doc and send it in?

[brantfetter]

No problem, however, I'll start by posting a further thought here that will be in our emails..

Best UI Design Practices for gaming movement in 3D environs:
The common input for movement is a mouse watcher with an acceleratometer adjustment on the x and y movement to sense urgency/acceleration. I recommend newer methods with easing already built in. This gives realistic response to the mouse movement and prevents jerkiness. The mouse watcher provides input on the horizontal planar movement (x and y).

There's a "biggest step" variable that permits a user to walk over objects, usually limited to prevent stepping over buildings (in the z axis), typically set to 3' but I bet 4' would be fine but this would need to be tested.

As for movement in general in the z axis it's simple to the users, but a bit complex for the programmer. This leads to collision sensing.

Now bear with me, there are a lot of little details that I don't know about your modeling language, but I'm willing to bet that you might be able to find prepackaged sub routines it's worth taking a look... of course I'm guessing at what your programming in, but regardless, the concept is to provide a method for collision sensing. So now you would have a on/off for collision in the [Settings:Options...:Walkthrough Tab ] so that one would have the ability to walk through walls or not.

Once you put in a default shortcut for the [Dynamic Modify View: Walkthrough Tab] a user would be able to just run around the model. Much faster and much simpler than all the shuffling you have to do at the moment to get into position. For example, when I show a client a model, they often get "sea sick" from watching because even though is relatively slower movement, it doesn't have collision and is not smooth in a walking way. So typically I have to prerender walk through animations for clients which can be a hassle. You can still get sea sick watching a game of course, but that's because demand of proportionally faster movement pushes the limits of hand-eye limits whereas I doubt that's Revit's objective. We can still exploit the advances and uniformity of basis in UI though.

There are of course the arrow keys or the good ole w asd key grouping that provide forward, backward, and side to side movement (dolly/strafe) that work in concert with the mouse movement. Go try out any current major game such as Battlefield, (ignore the ****** online gaming interface which needs more attention) I'm just talking about the movement. It follows 90% of current best practices for UI.

This would make the movement SO much better. Plus, since its a industry wide accepted practice, it's not proprietary. :) No programming or company worries there.


That's good for now, more later.