I finally got around to installing 2015 ACAD (mainly to try to figure out a problem another 2015 ACAD user was having with it being convinced it wanted to snap to the grid, even when grid snaps (and the grid) are turned off. It seems to be someone fucked with the object vs. grid snap settings causing F9 to toggle it between object and grid snap rather than object and NO FUCKING SNAPS GODDAMMIT.
Switching it from Grid to Polar snaps seemed to help - but why isn't there an option for NO FUCKING SNAPS GODDAMMIT!?!? Basically, I never want to have any fucking thing automatically snap to any fucking thing - ever. If I want to draw a line and have it snap to an end/mid/center whatever - I have already typed l, enter, mid/end/etc. (all in a fraction of a second) and if I want to keep going from end point to end point I'm pressing the up arrow and enter each time. To the uninitiated it might seems like extra steps - but it's part of the rhythm that gets built up around the way I use ACAD.
If I am in a situation where I'm doing a metric fuckton of snaps, I will enable it, but I'm currently having to keep it enabled, without any object snap options checked in order to draw whatever I want wherever I want however I want (the entire point of ACAD).
Anyway - the fact that it was having fucked up problems like this right out of the gate didn't fare well for my no-holds-barred opinion and review of this wank-tastic piece of shit. Once I installed it on my machine it immediately ran into problem #2 - something is preventing it from coming up quickly (despite 2014 ACAD/Revit AND 2015 Revit not having a problem). I'm holding out hope for an in-house solution for this one, but it's just one more arbitrary speed bump on the way to greatness.
Once it finally came up, I went to work disabling all of the various bullshit that someone somewhere might use, but 99.9% of which is just in my fucking way. First item was getting rid of the tabs (newtabmode=0) - I will give them credit, it's a cute idea (and can be disabled), but it's not fucking happening. Since I don't generally have a lot of drawings open to begin with, and can easily scroll through them with ctrl+tab, it would just be another thing taking up valuable real-estate (not to mention it apparently gives some people fatal errors).
Next was to make it to where when ACAD opened, I get a drawing instead of a useless 'front' or 'cover', which seems to be a new trend in software - and is definitely a Revit staple (since if Revit came up to even an empty template it would add 3-4 minutes to it's loading time), but in ACAD it makes sense to have it be ready for action (even if I immediately open another .dwg file - the initial one would be ready to rock if I need to just start sketching, or if I need a temp file to paste-in and cleanup a drawing).
Switching the background to BLACK instead of washed out gray, getting rid of the coordinates at the cursor, getting lines that extend out from the cursor to the edges of the screen, disable the viewcube and a few other random things - then it was on to the Ribbon. It's easy to get rid of - and prompted me to go ahead and set up my own workspace (not sure if there is another way to kill it), which allowed me to tweak a few other items.
I never import settings from previous versions - it's a guarantee for headaches. The only minorly time-consuming thing I had to do once I had killed everything else - including all of the crap at the bottom of the screen (with one exception, which we will get to in a moment) was to set up my Quick Access Toolbar or 'QAT'. It's simple with a screenshot of my 2014 setup, and seems to be working great, except for the occasions when it will decide to FUCKING DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY.
Restarting brings it back - and I was running it through a pretty serious set of customization and other settings, so we'll see if it settles down. If not, that's one MOTHERFUCKER of an oversight, and will need to get fixed ASAP, along with this snap/grid bullshit, and speed of opening. The only other thing I wasn't able to get set up exactly like my 2014 ACAD was to have a quick view for paperspace tabs. Now, I don't fucking use paper space, but it is necessary if I open someone else's drawing that has been done in paperspace (I disabled the model/layout on the lower left too).
Fortunately a QAT icon takes care of this for me (as long as I can remember that's where it is now), leaving only the 'type a keyword or phrase'/'sign in' bullshit in the upper right (which I can ignore), and the aforementioned icon in the lower right (for hide/isolate objects) that I can't seem to get the fuck rid of. Actually there are two icons down there - but one is for customization, and to tell the truth, even with hide/isolate, it is cleaner than 2014, so I think I'll leave it be (although if anyone knows how to get rid of it, feel free to chime in - in ACAD less is always more).
All that - just to get a huge empty drawing space with one line at the top (w/QAT), one transparent line for minimize/maximize/close, and one line at the bottom (basically wasted space - but not a problem). I'll be adding any more good/bad/different/totally fucked items as I find them (which I'm sure I will).
I only have one additional concern with this release -all of this Revshit vs ACAD drama causes me to view every shortcoming in this latest release to be intentionally removing or breaking functionality in ACAD to force people over to Revit. It definitely gives the Reviteers something to hoot and holler and throw feces about with - but of course they will be too busy Reviting to notice that my (fairly short) list of items will probably all get worked out in short order, while their software will continue to languish in development hell.
But you know what I always say - FUCK 'EM.
Twice.
