100 Paper Cuts

[cadtag]

I was thinking in terms of a two-tier wish list.
1 - New functions, major improvements.
2 - Minor usability improvements.

1 - New functions, major improvements.
2 - finish what isn't done, fix what isn't done well.

Only in software development would we consider Part 2 a 'wishlist'.

[Richard.Kent]

Autodesk claims with each release to work on new functions and "fit and finish" items, which is what we are talking about. They don't seem to work on them all that hard as a lot of these have been around for a long long time.

[jaberwok]

1 - New functions, major improvements.
2 - finish what isn't done, fix what isn't done well.

2 = a better description but hardly a way to sell the idea to adesk.

[Charles Prettyman]

I'm actually of the opposite opinion (halfway). I like AC's plotting mechanism more than Revit's. But you're definitely correct about the annotation, I know of people drawing everything in AC, then importing that into Revit just to make use of Revit's automatic Section / Elevation / Layout / Detail / etc. referencing.

I just showed my most Revit capable team how to use annotative scaling in AC2010, and they are of the opinion that AC has actually jumped over Revit for this particular issue.

[Charles Prettyman]

2 = a better description but hardly a way to sell the idea to adesk.

I initially had the impression that this thread was all about #2 (read into that what you wish). the Augi Wish Lists serve well to address new features, etc. I was interpretting this list as a way to address the fit and finish items that often make a biigger difference to daily usage, but don't always make the top 10 list of totally missing features.

[Charles Prettyman]

Enterprise Palette Management - I have my users all using a profile that has two paths for palettes - a local path and a netwok path - it's great, if they create new palettes, they are saved locally, but I can create new palettes in the network path that propagate out to teh whole firm. I love it. But those new palettes NEVER appear in a palette group. Why? Because the grouping is saved in a separate file entirely, which is local. Why not let me have a file on teh network that defines palette groups that they all see, alng with a local file that lets them define their own groups - along with controlling icons size and all that stuff.

MLines in Table styles - I don't know about you, but I find MLines to be a more or less useless legacy feature. Maybe they are insanely valuable for some other discipline, but not for me. BUT< I would love it if I could specify MLine styles when setting up table styles. It's a small thing, a paper cut, for sure, but it would be great. And it might breathe some life into a moribund feature.

Elliptical segments in PLines - OK, OK, I can use the PEllipse variable to draw false ellipses with arc segment approximations. But why can't a pline have spline segments - and then if I add a ellipse segment to a pline, just draw it with the splines. A pet peeve, since some designers in this firm love ellipses.

Selection windows in the Area/Add/Object command - why make me click each object individually?

More to follow, now that I am thinking about it. The list of little irritations is long, but I generally suppress them from my attention.

[jaberwok]

Elliptical segments in PLines

Oh yes please.

[darthyoga]

I can't create a page setup in the Publish dialogue. I have to exit the command, go into a new one, save , then reenter the Publish dialogue.

So much extra typing.

[cadtag]

When trying to hatch an area that appears closed, but isn't quite and has a tiny gap in it, the user is told to reset the HPGAPTOL setvar. Of course, he can't from there, and has to cancel out of the hatch dialog (forgetting any/all settings he tweaked), change the HPGAPTOL from the command line, and then restart the hatch command. Wouldn't it make more senwe to be able to reset the gap tolerance from the warning dialog?

[michael.12445]

The HPGAPTOL example, IMHO, points out a fundamental flaw in the way AutoCAD is developed. Back in the day, the HATCH command had no tolerance at all for any gaps between the objects selected (or found by picking a point inside them) to form the hatch boundary. So HPGAPTOL was introduced to address this. Great - but the way it was implemented means the user still has to abandon the HATCH command in progress, making it almost as frustrating as having to cancel HATCH and actually close the boundary as before.

The new features in each new release are hyped as fabuluous, almost miraculous innovations, which they actually might be, if they weren't implemented with so many complicated, obscure gotchas, booby-traps, and just plain annoyances, i.e., "paper cuts," that users just avoid them. I can remember when most users eagerly anticipated each new release of AutoCAD, happily forking over several hundred dollars to get their hands on the upgrade as soon as possible (that was before subscriptions). Nowadays, many users regard new releases with fear and loathing and want nothing more than to ignore them. Our office, for example, is on subscription, yet even with the latest release available, an entire division is still using 2006, both for file-compatiblity reasons as well as angst over new-feature complexity / (un)usability. And because of this angst, even many of the features intoduced in 2006 (or before) are not being used at all.

I know there's a beta-testing process, but I wonder if the beta testers are predominantly very advanced users who don't mind hacking for workarounds and therefore have a high tolerance for "paper cuts." I'm also under the impression that beta testers are under so many NDA restrictions that the beta software cannot adequately be tested in a real-world setting, i.e., where a user (or users) is (are) actually producing real work under the pressure of a deadline. Empirically, some of the UI goofs and just plain bugs that make it into the final releases certainly seem to bear this out. Of course, there's also the issue of how much the beta testers' feedback actually matters. In our office there is an advanced Revit user who is a beta tester, and her comments don't seem to influence the final releases very much if at all.

Some of these "paper cuts" have been around so long, and, compared to the complexity of many new features, look so obvious and easy to fix, that they are starting to make AutoCAD look like a careless and amateurish effort.