2007 SP0.0 available

That is an excellent way to do it. You are really gaining more than most realize with that procedure. First, hard drives fail. It is not if, it is when. You are getting a new o/s AND a new hard drive. Second, you still have all of your old data for that 'just in case'.

So simple and so easy to do. Such an excellent idea! Why didn't I think of this? :~)>

"TOP" wrote in news:1154060540.257942.128770 @h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

Surely all 15,000 didn't voice their opinion on SW quality? Did they do a poll? (IIRC that forum has polling features, so maybe they did.)

If someone took the time to do a study of c.c.s.w, they might find something like 50-75 individual posters who had voiced a negative opinion of SW quality. Is that a significant sample? Is it a random sample? I suspect SW would need to identify whether those opinions are affected by personality, and so a more formal survey might be in order. I don't see how SW could be in business if the opinions voiced here were representative of the entire user base.

Polling rates aside, I doubt SW as a company is concerned about real quality. Actually, I think that is empirically obvious just from using the software. What they are concerned about is perceived quality in the market, and whether that level of perceived quality justifies spending development money on quality efforts.

The practical upshot is that a publicly held company can never appear to supply quality software to those with somewhat higher expectations than others. Those of use who want SW to work properly will always be disappointed.

I think you're the sort of person who has been asked with regard to a particular new function a question like "is it good enough that you would use it?" I think that sums up the whole situation. That's the criteria they're shooting for. They not asking if it's right.

Someday, hopefully, quality will become a significant distinguishing feature in the CAD market. Until then, the CAD world is stuck with crapware. Somebody could make it a distinguishing feature, and I wish they would.

"Or what OTHER choices do we, as long term solidworks user/choosers, have "

You noted SolidWorks as a singular choice.

I think there are 2 or 3 SolidWorks Choices:

1. Blindly upgrade every year accepting the fact you will be getting Beta software with SP 0. I don't consider this much of a rational choice, which is why it is at zero.

1. Stay with whatever SolidWorks version you are on now, and live with it for a couple years while you evaluate the world CAD situation, including translators. Possibly just give up on buying maintenance for those years.

2. Evaluate SolidWorks yearly upgrades only at Service Pack 4 or 5 and make a clear choice on a single machine evaluating old and new SWks files as to whether it would work for your situation to upgrade or not.

1. Set up an entirely new policy: Upgrade to 2006 or 2007 when you chose to do so, BUT...

Keep ALL hard drives with OS & the year's SolidWorks release you use and other hard drives with data, and never upgrade the SolidWorks or data, so you can always just "reboot" the hard drive for SolidWorks

This is not perfect, and may not be a choice possible for larger operations, but offers a way to avoid getting trapped into the situation where you use the "Conversion Wizard" to update 4,000 of your SolidWorks files, only to find out a week into the new yearly release that you have a half dozen major things that cause you significant lost time in one way or another.

With this new scenario, Got Bugged?, Flip Hard Drives! They are so darned inexpensive, there's no reason not to do it.

I keep looking for ways to give myself flexibility so I don't commit the sin to having the Quad four letter word phrase pasted on my back: DUMB DOLT, LOST TIME. Yup, the 2nd word could start with the letter S.

Bo

Life > Great thread, good rants, great points.....

Dale,

It doesn't matter how many voice their opinion. If one person shows a significant number of verifiable problems then there is a problem. This is different than saying 15,000 are satisfied that the software has those problems. One is a statement that the software has significant problems and the other is that people care or don't care that the problems are there. SW focuses on people not caring.

And again, Eng-tips doesn't allow grousing. So you won't hear it there even if there are people who have a gripe.

Dale Dunn wrote:

OK, now I see what you were getting at.

Either the customer is satisfied, not satisfied or indifferent to some degree. The questions questions regarding capabilities, performance, features etc.. Personalities will be measured and that is to be expected.

Do most people believe that war is good for humanity? Do most people want war? Wars are decided by a minority using propaganda to influence the masses.

Then there is the saying that goes something like "eat s*it, billions of flies cannot be wrong"

How many beta testers are relevant to producing a quality product? More isn't necessarily better given the continued performance problems. It would be reveling to know SW annual ratio between $Marketing and $Quality expenditures?

The unwritten mission statement for SW

This company's culture is such that technology, engineering and quality are the necessary evils of doing business. No doubt their are many talented individuals within the organization. Unfortunately, they are being steered by a few individuals and the responsibility lies at the top.

Stop paying maintenance! That is the real leverage all users have. You can complain to your VAR and many have. Unfortunately for everyone, too many VARS are focused on today, tomorrow they cannot see.

Kman

About 8 months ago I interviewed for and SW offered me a job as senior engineer in the Quality department. I seriously considered the job because the pay was good, the benefits were good, the working environment was good, and all I had to do was look for bugs, which I do in the course of everyday work anyway. After talking to everyone, I at first wanted to take it. But then I asked different questions. In the end, I didn't take the job because it seemed to me that I would spend all this effort tracking down bugs, but they would just sit in a database somewhere and wouldn't get fixed.

Through that experience there were a lot of things I learned that wouldn't be cool to blab on a newsgroup, but the overall impression was that people worked hard, and some of them were really good, but at the end of the day, something other than competence and good intentions wins out.

There have been a lot of big behind the scenes changes to the quality system in the past year, but from the outside, it looks to me like Salvador said, like the sos. I just don't see any tangible results from all the improvements.

I'm beyond the point of wondering if they get the message. I know they do get the message, and they understand it and sympathize. I know there are internal people at SW that complain and bitch as much about the software as the worst of us here. Either the message doesn't seem to matter to the people making the decisions or the momentum of the beast just steamrolls it.

If all those beta users pound on the software and find as many bugs as some people seem to have found, I can't imagine SW releasing software like it is unless they are really just glossing over all of that. The bugs aren't fixed. Why spend the effort holding a big beta contest if you're not going to fix the bugs people find? There doesn't seem to be any real monetary reason to go so fast with development, as best I can understand. It's all about keeping ahead of the competition, but by what metric?

I'm just a little frustrated. I'm not just a mindless software basher or someone who jumps on a bandwagon to beat up on people who won't defend themselves. Like Salvador said, the software has potential, but the

Anyway. I'm still mak> "TOP" wrote in news:1154060540.257942.128770

Matt,

Great comments! These really help give me some idea about 2007, thanks.

Ed

And SW banks on people not caring that there are problems because of the "perceived" benefits.

Here is a further cogitation. If you think about all the problems SolidWorks has had or now contains there is one type of problem that is almost non-existent. Can you think of what that is? It may surprise you.

Dale Dunn wrote:

Apart from revenue problems, I'm coming up blank. Are you thinking of a specifically software problem?

Software. And think about the kinds of problems they don't have. Kind of like an excercise we did in drafting class. Look at where the chair isn't instead of where it is.

I didn't know they were hav> > Here is a further cogitation. If you think about all the problems

Lack of file corruption? I've had only 1 file corrupted in 8 years, and SW Corp repaired it in a day.

AW

My first thought is the same as Art's. I used to get a lot of corrupt files on MDT, and I've never had one with SW. This would fit the surprising criteria, as I know they're using MS components for this.

Nope, I've seen quite a bit of that although not so much anymore. Given the number of times we save and open the record there is good, but that isn't what I have in mind.

Art Woodbury wrote:

Corp repaired it

I guess some of us still hope that sooner or later SW is going to do something about some of the issues that users take time to comment on.

As a consultant I have ran into two general types of users. 1) Those who work for bigger companies, full time jobs etc. 2) Smaller shops where it is critical that the software is effecient. I see very few of the users that work for the bigger companies ever show up at the user groups. Why should they take time out to go to a meeting where they are not going to get paid. If they have to push the same button 50 times to get something done, they just don't seem to care. What this probably means is that us folks that truely need our tools to be effecient so that we can stay in business are probably more active in user groups and in news groups. I suspect that they probably also send in more suggestions and bug reports too. So, I'm not sure that I would expect that your theory that the news group comments are statistically insignificant. We either just like to complain or we have made enough suggestions to SW's, (without seeing any results) that we are hoping that SW's may take notice. The real test if negative comments are just motivated from a bunch of guys that like to complain, (which no doubt is the case) is if there is any truth in the complaints.

A good example of this is ProE. That software was so expensive for so many years, $40k+ per seat that only big business could afford it. And for as long as ProE has been around and as funded it has been, it is amazing how poor the improvements have been for that software. But, then again, I see these types of CAD operators, (for the most part) sitting and staring at their monitors 8 hours every day and they just don't really care how effecient they need to be, (just what I have seen).

someone posted this article the other day and it's very interesting.

I think swx is past the point of reasonable quality.

Probably the thing to do now is rewrite the code (for Linux!) and save nothing from the old code except whatever is needed to convert old swx files. Making the interface adequately similar shouldn't be that big of a deal. From a marketing standpoint, you are publishing a new software package with a nearly guaranteed customer base of 250,000 users.

Bill

Wouldn't dream of adopting sw2007 for production work until sp3

If my customers hadn't switched, I'd still be on sw2004

Bill