Negative Nancy – AutoCAD 2009 – Continued

Here is your Negative Nancy update on AutoCAD 2009 (really, I don’t always have negative things to say). I’ve continued working with 2009 (minus the annoying ribbon) and have found more useless, resource consuming updates to complain about.

First using Autodesk Map 2009, I was again shocked to see another pointless graphical change… a BRIGHT blue drawing background. Blue??? Where did that come from? After only 30 seconds of that color while I switched the background, I had a monster headache. I can’t imagine staring at that color for 8 hours a day… I’d probably go home and kick the dog (I don’t really have a dog and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t hurt a poor, defenseless animal for some Autodesk genius’ new “improvement”) If anyone out there has any clue how a bright blue background could possibly be an improvement, please enlighten me. For the rest of us, it’s right to options (key-in) -> display tab -> Colors. Set the uniform background to black. Heck maybe we should all set it to neon pink… wouldn’t that be pretty.

Here is a pretty screen shot for you….

Next up, the super cool, gigantic tool tips. If I want pictures and several paragraphs explaining how to use a tool, I’ll press F1 for help. Back to the options I go. I don’t see these monster pop-ups being useful to anyone other than an extremely inexperienced user (even they would probably be tired of them after an hour or two).

Okay, I’ve complained enough for today… don’t think I’m completely done yet, I have quite a list of awesome 2009 updates (can you hear the sarcasm… guess you can’t hear it) I’ll find some positive things to write about next time and maybe a useful tip or two.