I have good retention with my students. You might look at your teaching methodology if people are turning away in droves. Breaking out lessons into smaller pieces with an initial focus on navigation helps with the overwhelm factor. Some people are just going to want lower powered software like sketchup, not much you can do about that.
While I am no fan of the “new” multi-tab icon system, it isn’t a problem as I simply don’t use it. I do find that new folks like the tabs though, as they can have a graphical example of the commands while they don’t seem to suffer from overwhelm. The general number of icons on the standard toolbar seems fine, not any worse than adobe products, for instance.
Otherwise, the quantity of commands is on par with many cad systems. The students can always ignore the icons and use the menus or command lines. Whether that is a more user-friendly approach that is another matter, but either way an excess of icons seems an odd problem to me…
Unless we are talking about the Mac version, which is a complete mess, I can’t even get into it right now. I hate the UI, which is a strange thing to say about software hosted by the mac OS, but then again mac OS itself is going downhill with meandering bloat anyhow. I strongly encourage my students and clients to go with the PC version.
I am fine with the UI on it except for the fact that toolbar files are VERY dificult and annoying to manage- if there was a section in the preferences that was more useable in terms of toolbar management that would be great, as I never have any luck with what is there and scratch-rebuild my toolbars after loss at least twice a year. In the end it is actually a good thing for me, so when I sit on a client’s machine to consult I am not too tied to my own workspace, but I don’t think that an entropy of workspaces is normally considered a desireable feature.