SolidWorks [CAD] info

This just hit my in-box and may be of interest to the group

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Reply to
F. George McDuffee
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I was really eager to bring SW to my company, and last year we finally did so.

In all the things I had read about it, no one ever mentioned that there was no compatibility from release to release. If you wanted to open a file created in SW10, you had to have SW10 installed on your system. It didn't matter that you had SW12, SW13 or whatever. SW allows you to install older releases than the one you bought. I sure want to install umpteen versions of the same thing because my clients don't all have the same release I do. What is especially grating is that SW will display the CAD before it tells you it can't open it.

As it stands, to export a file, I'm better off saving it as a DWG or DXF, which most CAD packages can handle.

David

Reply to
David R. Birch

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Thanks for the info. I'm sure you saved some people considerable time and aggravation today.

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

That is pretty appalling but even Microsoft have played that game as some versions of VB wouldn't load previous projects, you had to cut and paste the content into a new project. At a company I used to work for we went to some lengths to make sure that older versions of the software database would automatically be updated to the latest format and suitable defaults set in new data fields so that customers data was preserved and usable.

Reply to
David Billington

BTDT. Had lots of time in a project in VB5, upgraded to VB6. Was told VB6 would convert it. NOT!! It did, but the got tons of errors, from a project that WORKED in VB5. Not only that, but it did not import, it overwrote my old files, totally fuxoring it. Spent forever fixing it up, and finally gave up, dumped VB6, and went back to VB5. No more adding in this and that, and needing dot.net. My project was a standalone, using simple database access.

Reply to
Steve Walker

Sure you don't have something else going on? I don't recall ever having a problem opening SW files from previous versions. Out of curiosity, I just opened the oldest file I could find in my backups - it hasn't been touched since May 2009 - and it opened with no complaints. This machine has only SW 2012 & 2013 installed.

Reply to
Ned Simmons

What I have going on is exactly what I was told in SW training. They said we were free to install earlier releases to handle SW CAD from clients. Big whoop.

David

Reply to
David R. Birch

To be completely clear, are you saying you can't open files created in earlier SW releases, or that you can't save files that your clients can open in an earlier release? If the former, there's something wrong. If the latter, that's true of all the 3D modelers I'm familiar with.

Reply to
Ned Simmons

The first. I can't open SW files unless they were created in SW12, the release we bought last year. AFAIK, our clients have the same problem. If they aren't using SW12, I ask them to save the file as DWG.

David

Reply to
David R. Birch

Have you considered working on your social and interpersonal communication skills? What does all the name calling and profanity get you?

FWIW -- why doesn't SW have a save-as option for the older formats? Most of the programs I use from word processing to IntelliCAD have this option.

The reason the .stl file format is important, in the context of several 3d printing threads, is this is what the free-ware slicing programs use as input to generate the required g-code to drive the printer.

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Reply to
F. George McDuffee

SW2012 is going away in 20 days. Or maybe it is that in 20 days, MS stops supporting XP and the universe halts and catches fire.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

Reply to
pyotr filipivich

Fortunately MS doesn't produce anything that runs the universe or we wouldn't have an up time of 13.8 billion years.

Reply to
David Billington

Because SW wants to force you to keep up with their update sca... eh, scheme.

Reply to
J. Nielsen

You shouldn't have to do that. My customers and I are always leap-frogging one another with new releases. We've never had a problem reading files from earlier releases, regardless of who happens to be a version ahead at the time. Nor have I heard complaints about this, and you can be sure there'd be plenty if this was a problem inherent with SW.

That old file that I opened was created with SW2009, which has never been installed on this machine. It opened seamlessy in 2013. If your dealer can't help you, I'd suggest poking around or making an inquiry on the SW fora.

Reply to
Ned Simmons

David Billington on Wed, 11 Dec

2013 17:37:43 +0000 typed >> "David R. Birch" on Tue, 10 Dec 2013 16:43:02 -0600

I've been convinced that WW4 will start with a 'terrorist' detonation of a nuclear device on the Redmond campus of Microsoft.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

Reply to
pyotr filipivich

You could nuke Microsoft by applying their software licensing model to their own lives -- no personal property or real estate, rent everything, and it retains no value at end of the lease.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Gunner Asch on Thu, 12 Dec 2013 07:37:14 -0800 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

See what I mean?

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

Reply to
pyotr filipivich

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David and others that followed this unnecessarily acrimonious thread.

Even when some of the postings were not initially correct, civil discussion was helpful in indicating an area of possible improvement at little to no cost, i.e. additional training in using an existing cad package to more fully utilize its capabilities.

This was the original intention of news group capability, much as an extended coffee break.

We have not seen further postings by David, and the unwarranted abuse he received may have prompted him to drop this group, which would be a shame, as he appears to be a working professional with much to offer the group, even if he was not fully aware of all the capabilities of his CAD/CAM package.

[An other explication is that no one wants to go on coffee break with a bunch of shouting dorks and duffuses, even if some of them are knowledgable about cnc.]

For a group New Year resolution I suggest we eliminate the abuse and profanity, and concentrate on the primary area of common interest, i.e. cnc, learn from each others mistakes, think before we type and review/edit before we hit the send button.

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

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