I came across this post and figured I’d offer up my own opinions as well…
The default formatting would honestly keep me from using the class designer for anything but reverse engineering and visualizing the code I have already hand written. Even though everyone has a different way of doing it, the structure of the code is what really matters when it comes down to efficiently parsing it with the human brain. And let’s face it, we’re still not at a point (yet) where developers can avoid editing the source files by hand.
You should really be able to control the output of the class designer. I haven’t looked at the VS.NET 2005 APIs at all, but wouldn’t it be smart to have a pluggable output API? I realize it wouldn’t be for the faint of heart since the VS.NET codedom APIs aren’t exactly brain dead simple, but that shouldn’t mean that it not be possible at all. Has anyone out there played with the VSIP APIs for 2005 yet? Would this type of customization be possible?