Warning: this is going to be another of my opinionated posts. I welcome any, and all, well thought out comments. However, should you make things personal, I’ll be forced to call for the immediate removal of all your body hair so that you end up looking like this (yes, it’s safe for work). You have been warned.
A couple of months ago I was training some engineers on SolidWorks. Their company had been using SolidWorks for a bit and a couple of them had brought their laptops to the session. After going through one lesson, and having them start the examples, I was walking around and saw a screen similar to this:
I say similar because I’m pretty sure he had every possible toolbar turned on and I got tired going that far. I stood behind him for a moment, slack-jawed. Bear in mind, this was on a laptop with a 17″ screen. I’m not sure how he was ever able to design anything in the 6 square inches of usable graphics area , but I digress. So I asked him why he still had his setup looking like something from 2006. He gave me that look. You know, the look that says “why are you such an ass?”. Anyway, he went on to explain that it’s what he was comfortable with, that he didn’t have to search the command manager, he knew where everything was, yada-yada-yada. That was when I noticed that he didn’t have the command manager turned on either. I’m thankful that I didn’t hit anything when I fell over…
I took a deep breath and asked him about the ‘S’ key. He asked, a bit arrogantly, what I meant (thankfully, I was sitting down at this point). I then went on to explain to him the wonder that is the ‘S’ key and how it was customizable. How it was there only when you needed it. How, in his case, it could provide ten times the available graphic area, which garnered me “that look”, again. How his mouse travel would be greatly lessened. How all the cool kids were doing it. How, had the technology been around, there’d be 11 commandments instead of 10.
What it all boiled down to was this: it was outside his ‘comfort’ area. Now I don’t want to go and start belittling people who are uncomfortable with change. I’ve been there, I get it. However, there are times when not changing really isn’t the best course of action. I believe this is one of those times.
I know there are those of you out there who have a macro mapped to every single key. That’s awesome. Honestly, I’m jealous of you; I don’t have the brain capacity to remember what macro was mapped where. The ‘S’ key, though, I can handle. With one keystroke I have 95% of the tools I need at that particular moment. That, in my not so humble opinion, rocks! As I explained to him how versatile the ‘S’ key was, I could see that his mind was beginning to engage, that he was beginning to see the possibilities. That totally made it all worth it for me. I love teaching SolidWorks, especially when I see the light come on.
Here’s the thing, I know that there are still a number of people out there who still have toolbars active. There are those who don’t use the Command Manager much less the ‘S’ key. I want to know why. I want to understand what it is about toolbars that makes you stay with them.
