I would think that with one really well done version of this side Ribbon, Autodesk could get rid of at least the Menu Bar and the Command Panel and give us more working space.

I am not quite sure why we still need the old sidebar Command Panel, the Quad Menu, the Toolbars and this new Ribbon interface. I can see that if you are one of those artists with a mega-monitor set to super high resolution this may be less annoying, but 1440x900 is not too shabby and is as high as I can go on my laptop, which up until now has always been an amazing 3D platform. I did find a tweak in the Customize Interface option that lets you place a button in the toolbar to hide the Graphite ribbon or, even better, move it to the side. You can also see in my images that most of the time the Graphite toolbar is not even fully occupied, which seems wasteful.

This 125 pixels stretches all of the way across the screen taking up a whopping 1440x125 on my 1440x900 resolution monitor. That may not sound like much to you, but if you look at the accompanying images you will see that this is only the height dimension. When expanded, which is how you would naturally have it while working, the ribbon takes up almost 125 pixels. When collapsed, the Graphite ribbon takes up about 45 pixels of vertical space. Next, the ribbon is a terrible waste of space. For instance, why tease us with an OS X visual look but only for the Graphite tools? It seems strange that there is now an orphaned white interface within the gray interface of 3ds Max. Now don't get me wrong: I appreciate the reworking of the user interface so that things are context sensitive, carefully laid out and icon-driven (which they are), but there are some qualities here that are just really rubbing me the wrong way. Personally, I am finding it hard to warm up to this new interface decision. This is the giant icon in the top left corner and the long horizontal interface that rides across the top of your screen. Autodesk is inheriting the Microsoft-style 'Ribbon' interface. the 100 new modeling tools now known as 'Graphite.' However, I will instead touch on the thing that hits you the very first second that you open the new application. The Ribbon While I will be touching on many of the new aspects of 3ds Max 2010, it would seem appropriate to first dive into the meat of the matter. 3ds Max 2010 is available as of this week for $3,495 or as an upgrade from 3ds Max 2009 for $895. As you may have seen in Autodesk's press notes for the product, there are more than 100 new additions to the modeling toolset alone, so I will have lots to cover. I will be putting it through the paces, paying specific attention to the new additions. This week I received the new 3ds Max 2010.

3dr import option 3d max 2010