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Anyone care to discuss this in relation to a product like AutoCAD? (It's beyond my ken, but I'd like to hear)

• retroafroman 14y ago
  I've used AutoCAD quite a bit, and it's complexity goes to show that a product doesn't necessarily need to be overly shiny and simple to sell. It does follow a few of the principles it's talked about, such as the simplifying of the UI by moving to a "ribbon" UI not too unlike the move Office made recently, and splitting out features to different products. For example all AutoCAD releases can draw lines and circles, but AutoCAD Architecture has different advanced features that that of say, AutoCAD Electrical. Backwards compatibility is a huge issue in the CAD industry, not only with files, but also UI issues like keyboard shortcuts. AutoCAD does this pretty well. I doubt someone who used AutoCAD back in the 80s would have a hard time sitting down in front of the latest version and still getting the same work done without the extra features. The UI and even the toolset are all extremely customizable, but the defaults are very sane as well.