Well, it's impossible to have ALL the function icons on the Ribbons, or for that matter, on the older Toolbars, therefore, this approach of using the Command Finder to (excuse the pun) 'find' a function is not such a bad idea. At least with the Ribbon, we've pretty much included the icons for ALL the fully supported functions SOMEWHERE on a ribbon, if not in one of the main Ribbon groups, then either in a 'Gallery' or on one of the drop-down 'More' panels. With the older Toolbar UI the additional supported functions were relegated to a set of secondary drop-downs where you HAD to take an explicit action just to enable the icon so that it could even be selected and then if you were ONLY going to need it ONCE, you either had to disable the icon yourself or ignore it, which would eventually result in these extra, but seldom used icons, cluttering-up your toolbars.
NO, I like the new approach better and if you think that you're going to the 'More' panels too often, you can always use Customize to move the frequently used icons up into either an easier to access 'Gallery', onto the main Ribbon itself or for that matter, perhaps a totally NEW Ribbon where you might wish to collect all of your frequently used functions. And I've not even mentioned that you also have those currently 'hidden' SIDE and BOTTOM 'Bars' where you can drop any icon, no matter where it might currently be located. And you can even place icons on one of those extra 'Bars' or ANY of the Ribbons themselves, from the Command Finder with only a single click of the mouse.
And as for this idea that some of the less supported or preferred fucntions are now 'hidden' meaning that they have to be made active from the Command Finder, this is NOT an idea that was born with NX 9.0. We've been doing that for years, ever since the Command Finder was added to NX.
And getting back to this idea that perhaps using the Command Finder as a 'normal' way of finding something, with that in mind, we have made the Command Finder a PERMANENT part of the new User Interface, so now it's very easy to (again, excuse the pun) 'find' the Command Finder ;-)
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
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