SW2004, Splines still SUCK!!!

Now that was intelligent and constructive. Guess you missed my disclaimer. Wanna start a Huprich and Banquer-type rivalry or accept the fact that Paul is justified?

Paul was the one that took the shot at the beta testers. I never said/implied that he isn't justified. You are questioning constructiveness?!

The reason splines still suck has nothing to do with beta development issues. It would appear that the persons responsible for developing splines in SW do not know enough about their uses in solid modeling.

Have you ever viewed a curvature comb on a newly drawn spline? What happens at the ends? The go to zero curvature! There is no way to control this. The only remediation is to trim off the ends of the spline.

There is no means to constrain the curvature of a spline at any point, either by constraint or dimension. The only means of curvature control is "eyeballing" curvature combs to get them to match up! This is at best a gross oversight on the part of SW programmers.

SW can not be a serious contender in the industrial design market until it improves this most basic building block of organic surfaces.

thank you for saying something worthwhile we don't hear enough from you at this NG

Bruce, Your reply to Paul made it sound like his complaints weren't justifiable. As if because he did not participate in the Beta program that he can't complain about the problems with the software. While some may feel that way, I can share in his frustration and I was a Beta tester. So does that in some way make it OK for me to complain but not him? I'd really rather not make enemies on here as I enjoy relying on this as a great place to go to get and share knowledge of a lot of things and be part of a community. If I misunderstood your original post, my apologies.

Actually, this subject had little to do with beta testing problems, more a statement of "nothing has changed". Clearly spline tools are lacking.

Don't understand why you are trimming the ends of splines? But, when you do that, but you do set a normal condition at the ends. Similarly, you can add a tangent construction line to the end of the spline which gives you direct control. (personally, they should auto add construction lines to ends of splines, or have a option, RMB, add construction line)

Still, yes, you will have to eyeball the comb in most cases. And if you are talking about some of the tools which have explicitly integrated options to their splines like, degree, influence, slope.. and continuity (G1, G2 and G3) values as well as toggle spline control to either points or control vertices directly too the splines, yeah, it is needed/wanted.

I don't think they are serious either, that unfortunately comes from the foundation of their user base. But if it is taking them this long to add more spline functionality it may point towards the foundation of their tools which would mean changing the core way they handle splines.

I generally work with all splines and surfaces and I still can not get clean enough surface boundaries. SW is still limited, the curve and surface tools are just not there when it comes to the area of cosmetic shape modeling, The problem I have with SW splines has been that you do not have control over what the splines inherit while making changes, and in most case you have to start over, which means failed relations downstream.

I would think it is a no brainier at this point in time that the competition are applying the above and it makes SW look very bad. Especially since it's users and users using other tools know it is and has been bad.

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TheTick wrote:

Bruce, please, don't take things personally. Most venting and bitching is about sharing frustration, voicing opinion or indirectly asking for help, it's rarely personal.

At one point I think we have all submitted a good amount of reports and realized we are only getting more frustrated and I know some people have been way more active in reporting issues than most of us, and knowing that frustrates me in a generally shared way because I still see problems... Since I pay for using this software, I strongly feel it is my consumer right to voice my opinion, do I like doing it? NO, but I have seen rewards for being vocal. Do I think it is a good thing,... NO, not at all. Do I see alternatives to this? Not really because I see it as a core issue with the company.

BTW, what is sometimes a odd reward out of all the chaos, are seeing undocumented and useful features appear... it's the little things. I may read too much into stuff like this but it is a hint for me that some of the programmers are listening and that some of the processes are being controlled and limited by people who are not really listening to the users about core issues. I think they get too caught up with marketing fluff and drive. In my experience, I have rarely meet a marketing person who is or was creative... usually the people working just under marketing are the creative ones and marketing typically use and steal from those people. It is a issue which I find core in problems with companies. Don't get me wrong, marketing has a role but that role should not be overriding development.

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Bruce Wirkkala wrote:

More importantly why would someone's opinion only be valid if they participated in the beta? If you paid for the program (or at least your employer did) do you not already have a vested interest and a right to voice a complaint?

FWIW I think SWX2003 is a POS. Haven't upgraded to 2004 yet so I can't comment on that.

I'd have to agree with an earlier post that stated that anyone who has no complaints about SWX software isn't creating complex assemblies and drawings. (Ie. several thousand parts, high detail, various positions/configurations and multiple page drawings of these assemblies & parts). I'm entitled to this opinion not because I beta tested or didn't but because I ACTUALLY USE THE SOFTWARE.

I think we need to lobby SW as a group specifically to improve splines.... seems to me we need to put them to the test and see if the 250 customer driven improvements each year would actually include something specifically asked for in the public domain. probably there aren't enough serious surface users to make a big impact on the powers that be however I gotta say the limited spline functionality is becoming something of an embarrassment (sure can be ham-fisted to use at times) splines/surfaces are an area of the software that is obviously underpowered now and needs real attention SOON

"Jeff N" wrote in news:bp041j$1jkhat$ snipped-for-privacy@ID-203611.news.uni-berlin.de:

...

...well, sometimes it's kind of tricky, and believe me, I've put myself in hot water more than once. Slow learner ;o)

My view is that paying customers pay my lunch money, and I owe it to them to be as knowlegeable and realistic about the software as possible. That means impartial, for the good and for the bad. That may be why I gravitate toward real world application and away from sales demos. In the end, I wouldn't work in this capacity unless I believed that the product was worth my energy.

I don't think the ng "has to" be anything. Even if it did, no one could enforce it. Maybe in a perfect world no one would be allowed to wish for things either, but I wish there could be more discussion (like what Mark B had to say) and less theatrical acting out.

matt

Actually the most basic building block in a hybrid modeler is support for disjoint solids. I would agree that splines are next, though. I guess SolidWorks users will have to wait till SolidWorks 2005 and for D-Cubed to develop decent spline control in 3D DCM. Using ACIS as SolidWorks main modeling engine would also help greatly as Parsolid contains very little in the way of surfacing routines where as ACIS does.

For those who need a solution now and don't want to wait...

Concepts has no problem with any of this whatsoever. Concepts uses Spatial Corp's, ACIS to get the job done. Spatial is a Dassault Systèmes company. ;>)

For $995 you get a modeler that has parametric solids and quality surfacing that is associative... both surface to spline and surface to surface. It's not for large assemblies, it doesn't do sheet-metal, it has no CAM but when it comes to pure modeling it blows the doors off of SolidWorks in many areas. Not all, but many.

Perhaps this can help for those stuck with SolidWorks less than adequate surfacing ???

Concepts offers a free demo that can be downloaded at:

Here are Concepts features:

. Same intuitive user interface for

2D and 3D tools

. Snaps for intelligently locating x y z coordinates, tangents, and perpendiculars

. Concept Explorer to examine and modify associative relationships and construction history

. Customizable key short cuts

. Prompt Window for prompting designer through commands

. Data Entry Window for explicit creation and modification of geometry.

. Object show/hide tools

. Layers and Sub Layers

. Tool Tips

. User defined views, work planes, and pen styles

. Precise kernel serves as foundation for NURB and analytic based geometry definitions

. Points, Lines, Arcs, Circles, Ellipses and Conics

. Splines construction methods of Through point, Control Point, Bezier, On Surface, and Sketch

. Add, remove, elevate, smooth spline control points

. Dynamic modification of position and tangencies

. Dynamic curvature plots

. Project curve to plane

. Best in class offset, trim and relimit curve tools

. 2D Fillet, Chamfer, and Corner

. 1 & 2 Rail Sweep

. Extrude by Vector

. Cover (Coon's and N-Sided)

. Skin, Skin with Guides, and Skin with Draft

. Nets (MxN curve networks)

. Offset

. Blend with user defined takeoff magnitudes

. Fillet

. Rebuild, Elevate, & Join

. Thicken

. Match G1 or G2

. Trim and Untrim

. Associativity for all creation and modifications

. Gaussian, Zebra, Draft Analysis

. Best in Class Filleting and Chamfering Tools

. Shelling

. Extrude, Sweep, Lathe

. 1 & 2 Rail Sweeps

. Protrusions and Cutouts

. Booleans (Add, Subtract, Union).

. Trim and Split

. Stitching and Healing with user defined tolerances

. Primitives

. Holes

. Lofting between Faces

. Parametric Features

. Associative History Tree

. Deform Face

. Remove, Offset, Move, Replace, Match Face

. Bend and Bend Along Curve

. Draft Faces

. Generate drawings automatically from 3D models from templates

. Pen Weights, Patterns, Styles

. Horizontal, Vertical, Radial, Diametric, Center Marks, Leaders, Callouts, Angular Dimensions

. Tolerances and User Settings for Dimension Attributes

. Stacked, Dual, Fractions

. Hatching and Fill Patterns

. Bill of Materials

. Text (Normal, Angle, Path)

. Raytracing with Anti-Aliasing

. Unlimited Point, Spot, and distant lights

. Adjustable soft and hard shadows

. Drag and Drop from Material Library

. Backgrounds & Foregrounds

. Material Editor for controlling reflectance, color, displacement, transparency, and texture space

. Walk Through, Fly By

. QuickTime Object VR

. QuickTime Panoramic VR

. QuickTime Event Recording Data Exchange

. DXF/DWG

. SAT, IGES, STEP

. CATIA v4

. Adobe Illustrator (up to v9)

. Rhino Import

. STL

System Requirements

PC

.Microsoft Windows XP Professional or Windows 2000 Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon class processor

.128 MG RAM or greater (512 MG to 1GB recommended for large parts)

.Mouse Point Device

.CD-ROM Drive

Mac

. OSX (Carbon)

. OpenGl

. G4 Processor

. 512 MB RAM

. CD-ROM Drive

. Mouse (recommend 2 button mouse)

jon

Very bad indeed. Very, very bad !

SolidWorks Corp. obviously thinks they can get away with it.

Have I mentioned Concepts, lately ??? ;>)

$995.

jon

You really want you very own personal stalker ?

jon

This is how I see it. I posted some comments on another thread about this. The fact that SW completely ignored adding a single new feature to splines is a cause for concern for my type of work.

Wierd, I sent in this exact request early this year. How funny. I called it "Spline Tails".

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce some useful info on just how much of a "no brainer" it may be to add some new features...

Take a look at the Spline Constraints video. In my eyes, it appears as if all SolidWorks needs to do is either turn-on these features or just plug-em in.

Could it be a lot more work than that? Is it a monumental undertaking to add these new features? I really wish I (we) knew the answer.

To me it's a real drag when SolidWorks doesn't take advantage of technology they are already licensing. It makes me feel like we aren't getting our money's worth.

Could it be that D-Cubed charges for each individual 'portion' of it's DCM technology such as "Symmetry", "New Spline Solving Modes" etc...

or is it all ready to go?

Just curious, I really don't know how all of that stuff works.

Maybe there are too many bugs in D-Cubed's initial code? Are they too suffering from all of this "Official SP0 Release but really Beta Release" problems?

Is SolidWorks just the middlemen in some of this bug reporting stuff?

Let's see, it goes from... User to VAR VAR to SolidWorks SolidWorks to D-Cubed D-Cubed to Planet of the Apes Planet of the Apes to Purple Monkey Dishwasher (heh, old Simpsons joke)

Mike Wilson

Do you think that an "advanced surfacing only" wish-list (or even a wish thread) would help?

I have a few things I can contribute to it. I may offer to host this list if no one else has the time.

Mike Wilson

"Maybe there are too many bugs in D-Cubed's initial code?"

That would be my guess. Also, as I have mentioned many times before shouldn't much of this not really be in D-Cubed 3D DCM not just 2D DCM ?

"Is SolidWorks just the middlemen in some of this bug reporting stuff?"

Actually I think SolidWorks Corp. pushes and lends more help to their 3 party software component suppliers than any other vendor.

The problem is that SolidWorks Corp. is really not capable of doing what other CAD/CAM companies do.... not relying so heavily on 3 party software component suppliers and doing it themselves.

jon

Good point about the user base, which is largely mechanical. Another very real possiblity is that the labor needed to improve these tools may not translate to any proportional increase in revenue for the company relative to developing another program function which may be more lucrative (actual or percieved).

Sombody in that company has to be setting priority on what gets programming resources and what does not - marketing always has input on what they think they can sell. Their primary stated focus is mechanical design. I think ID (and things like splines by extension) are maybe taken as an afterthought. When I think of ID software I think of things like alias and . . . umm . . . umm . . . things like that (that's at least what my IDing brother uses).

We should not lose sight of the fact that SolidWorks corp is a business in business to do what businesses do - make profit. Unfortunately, what a customer wants and needs may even be known, but perhaps it is not deemed as soemthing that will return revenue to the company. Maybe this is the case with some of these functions.

Personaly I have waited in vain for many improvements in things that seem blatantly obvious to me as anemic (not splines but things perhaps as badly needed for my situation). Perhaps the coders for SW also understand these particular limitations as well as I do but have no compelling reason to improve them (yes - we all have things about the program we know can be improved and are perpetually asking why? - Look how long it too for them to implement the ability to re-pick the sketch surface for hole wizard features - at least 3 years and this was a reallllllllllly obvious bad thing).

You can be sure someone is doing ROI analysis on what to blow off and what to fix. Unfortunately the little things get blown off, but it's the little thinks that make the whole darn watch tick - who cares about the diamond encrusted gold plated bezel if the thing won't tell time accurately?

Regards,

SMA

The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good.

Glad it made you laugh, Habib. :>)

Hope others get a kick out of it as well.

Best wishes,

jon

To Jon - I have begin on this laughing too much onto the floor too now!!

Habib