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MANY OF YOU are familiar with Unigraphics. It's called NX nowadays, but old habits die hard. The latest version is NX 4, and it's a great relief in a number of ways. The developers at UGS fixed many things I didn't like and added many I do.
Interface, Interface, Interface
UGS says its primary focus in NX 4 is addressing the needs of new and casual users; specifically, making NX 4 easier to navigate and use. With that in mind, the company revamped the user interface, which is always a dangerous thing to do. You don't want to lure in new users at the expense of offending current users who took a long time to master the old interface. That's why so many software programs give you the option of keeping an older interface. For instance, KeyCreator allows its users to work with the Cadkey interface from the early 1990. I understand why users want this ability, but from a practical point of view, you can use the old version for only so long.
UGS studies how its customers use NX. One thing the company noticed was that users most often expand into a full dialog box rather than use a dialog bar. It seems we want to see more of the tools we have at our disposal. So UGS changed the default setting to allow us to do just that, while maintaining the ability to revert to the bar if we choose. (Hmmmm, wasn't it just a few revisions back that UGS gave us the dialog bars in the first place?)
In addition to the dialog boxes, NX 4 introduces what UGS calls Roles, which essentially are user-customizable interfaces. Users can display those toolbars and menus they really want to see. The default Role comes with large icons and text to make it easier to learn what everything is and what it does. When you outgrow this Role, you can select an advanced Role that has smaller icons and tooltips that pop up when you hover the cursor over an icon. Of course, you can create your own personal Roles by adding or removing commands, where it makes sense, and saving them.
And yes, you can...