Really unhappy with the new interface unfortunately.
new icons all look too similar to each other so accessibility on this is low
labels take up too much space
undo and redo buttons are in an unnatural spot
search button is not as useful on iPad so shouldn’t be so prominent
the high contrast of all the buttons is distracting
feel like there is less screen realestate
Overall I’d love the ability to toggle back to the old layout. I appreciate the work put in but the change is too drastic and has affected my workflow heavily.
I understand that getting used to a new interface takes some time and initially it can be frustrating. We are already looking into the search button and the undo/redo button positions. It will not be possible to revert to the old interface. Are you left handed by any chance? We have heard most complaints from our left handed users, and we are working on better understanding what’s causing the issue for them, so that we can improve the experience.
Just adding one thing to what Istvan said: we always show the labels by default on iPads to help new users find the right tools, but it is also possible to turn them off in the Settings menu.
The above screenshot is incorrect but would be better. It says the search button is in a fixed position at the top left but it’s not. It’s the first item in the dynamic menu. I’m hoping this is just a bug.
Apologies if all this input is disheartening or comes across as aggressive. Just giving a thorough analysis.
To add more thoughts to this, I’ve just been reading over the refresh blog.
It seems that you guys keep calling this new icon language a “high contrast” set of icons. These icons infact have a lower contrast between the elements in the icon. The new fill colour you’re using lowers the amount of contrast between your line work of the icon and the block sections of the icon. So now, when you blur your eyes or just quickly glance over to the icons, all you see are white (or black) squares with no details.
Before you had much higher contrast with your icons and much simpler iconography because you had simple linework and if you had a fill colour it was blue (on light mode). Now you have a white line with a slightly less white fill and then slightly less white details. (Or black if in light mode)
The actual icon drawings are all too similar as well. A pen to indicate sketch means so much more than a curved line with a crosshair and a dot grid. You’ve way over complicated these icons and now, as a user, I have to look at them for an extended period to try understand the action they’ll perform. (Or turn on labels and lose half the screen. Did you change the font size btw? Seems bulkier.)
This screenshot would be perfect if the left side was the new ones and the right side was the old ones. The left side feels lighter and breathes more and allows you to identify the difference in tools at a glance. The right side just looks like blocks of white so you have to stop and think about them
The old set had highlighted the part of the icon that indicated the action. For example, the old shell icon used high contrast to show that the inside is removed. Now the icon has less contrast because the outside of the box is also filled with colour. Because of this the meaningful action is lost.
The same for the chamfer, align, scale and move/rotate icon. You’ve removed meaning of these icons by adding in an extra filled block of colour.
With complex tools, meaning is conveyed by highlighting the forward momentum of what the tool does. By adding this new faded white fill you’ve made it harder to identify what the action is.
The labels are good but they take up a huge amount of space on the screen. Turning them off leaves you with high contrast, mostly meaningless icons.
The previous icons had 2 colours + shades which allowed for more detailed iconography and gave a better sense of what each button was.
Accessibility wise these new icons are a huge step backwards from what was there and don’t actually benefit the user.
The top bar that now has the back buttons feels unnatural, a top bar should have document-wide settings, not flow related buttons. tYhat on top of the the tooltip video you get when you perform any action (can’t figure out how to turn off these tips) literally takes up more than 1/4 of the screen in horizontal view.
Also the new little toolbox in the top right of the screen pushes the gimbal into the screen which is again an unnatural UI pattern.
It seems to me you guys tried to revamp the UI simply to look different rather than to be better.
I love the work you guys do and use your app daily to run my business but these changes have completely slowed down workflow. It’s not a simple relearning of where everything is. Your previous layout was intuitive and allowed for self-learning. Don’t fix what isn’t broke kind of thing
I think the biggest problem here is that you’ve stepped away from conventional UI rules and patterns and that makes the interface now feel unfamiliar to the user.
Think about it - you have a toolbar in every corner of the screen, as well as at the top middle. that along with inconsistent placement of core control buttons means I’m spending more time trying to find buttons than actually working.
The search button placement is 100% in the way as it’s instinctive to know that the close/cancel drawing button is first.
Another problem with the left panel is that your button placement is inconsistent. It’s set to be vertically centered so depending on how many options there are, the buttons are in a different place. This shouldn’t happen for buttons like the cancel/close/exit button. It should always be in the exact same place. It’s habitual to reach for it so if it constantly jumps around this breaks workflow.
In a same way, I am fully aligned with Nicko, I will also add the align tools and/or other tools you hide and that now needs us to find them in either the menu or the left button or the right one or the bottom one or…
Please guys, at least put that in the Preferences Panel and allow us to show/hide it !!
Looks like all my comments came in out of order! Apologies for this. I would really love my feedback to be considered by your UI team though. Every time I pickup the app now it’s a challenge to work compared to the delight with the previous version.
Totally agree… I was advertising a lot Shapr3D to people who want to create with ease 3D Parts, but now I must admit that even I, I am something like afraid every time I start Shapr3D as I feel like it’ll take twice the time for me (as a poor 3D designer) to do simple things.
I also am struggling with the changed interface (v. 5.440.0 on the Mac). Here are the notes I’ve jotted down as I encountered things that don’t work for me and are a substantial step backwards:
Snapping to the edges of adjacent bodies seems to not be happening any longer (making it very hard to quickly and easily extrude or move bodies to line up perfectly)
The new tool column on the left of the screen frequently hides the textual labels and one then cannot figure out which tool is which (the icons themselves are not very helpful)
I continue to be unable to find the Union tool in the graphical sidebar/column and have had to resort to going to the Tools menu. Never a problem before.
The numerical display (value) of the current size of the grid display, that was persistent in the upper right corner previously, has been hidden. It needs to be visible without clicking and navigating so that when zooming one can immediately see what the value of the grid is. In the new interface I have to zoom (guessing at the grid size) click on the grid-like icon in the upper right, then infer the grid size from the “Lock grid size…” option. I cannot then zoom while this control is open if it’s wrong. I have to close the control, zoom again, then open the control to then see where the “Lock grid size…” number has ended up (it doesn’t update while open). In the old interface grid size was simply visible in the upper right corner as one zoomed.
Thanks for pointing this out. This does, then, use a lot of screen area. I’d prefer if the hover pop-up worked as I think you intended…and now it does!
Here is my understanding of what happened here:
Since the update I’ve had inconsistent display of the textual labels for the vertical (left) tool bar. When opening a sub-menu (such as More or Tools) the labels would display once and then would not reappear on subsequent hovers.
I just opened settings and set “Show Menu Button Labels” to Always and looked at it. Then switch back to “On Hover, On All Buttons” so that I could accurately describe the unexpected behavior I was seeing and this behavior is now gone. Now I get the pop-up labels consistently and repeatedly (as expected) on hover.
The earlier aberrant behavior persisted over many restarts of Shapr. Now the correct behavior also persists across restarts.
Don’t know if this makes sense relative to the code, but this is the best description I can offer of what appears to have happened here. Hope it is helpful.
I’ve experimented more now (was just trying to get work done before) and see that the behavior that is catching me up is that the labels on hover do not appear after opening a sub menu if the mouse has not traveled out into white space before returning to the first level menu/icons. Moving the mouse off the icons/menu intentionally and them bringing it back resets the pop-up behavior. Here is a video:
