Autodesk has offered new options for users to increase their (our) productivity. We are trying to follow them and share our experience with you.
Just to define, AutoCAD is a CAD (Computer Aided Design or Computer Aided Drafting) software application for 2D and 3D design and drafting. It was one of the first CAD programs to run on personal computers. Now I will discuss some of the updates of AutoCAD 2015, concentrating on the controlling of the Status bar Icons.
With AutoCAD 2015 came the annoyance of being able to display the status bar icons as text. Even more frustrating is that not all of the normal Status Bar icons that we are used are even displayed. They work on previous AutoCAD versions including the version of 2014.
AutoCAD decided to turn the “Drafting Settings buttons” at the bottom of the screen from words into “icons.” I’m sure they did this to free up some space in the Status Bar, but what happened? The problem that I have seen is that they are not very clear as to what these icons mean. So people hover their mouse over these icons until the words appear, then they choose the needed button. That was not very efficient. Some of the status bar icons that are not visible are the very ones that usually toggle off until user needs them – Like Dynamic Input, Transparency, Dynamic UCS and many others. In the whole work, the Text option is really missing. I think we all agree about this!
We are waiting for the new update from Autodesk and we are hoping to be more user friendly. Meanwhile, here you can share your opinion and experience with AutoCAD 2015.