Beta Testers should get a discount!!

If Solidworks is going to rely on Beta testers more and more to do their quality control then they need to dangle a carrot. With the work environment getting harder and people having more of a work load because of fellow workers getting downsized it will be difficult for people to spend the time doing SW work for them. I am afraid that SW will keep passing the cost of there QC to us dummies who do the beta testing for them. The main reason i did Beta testing was trying to influence some of the new commands/features to work better, but i have decided it is not cost effective for me to do this.

Reply to
Rocko
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A little more compensation might induce more serious beta testing, I agree. As it was, only the top 5 testers for 04 got anything. Personally, I have no use for a portable mp3 player, so most of the compensation meant little to me anyhow. (Personaly taste. They're hot products.) The points awarded appear to follow a normal distribution (if I can judge by the top 25 that were given at one point). I'd guess that maybe a third of the testers who seriously reported issues (significantly more than 1.1 issues) recieved any material compensation. Perhaps they intend to get more participation for 05 by sweetening the pot. Frankly, I expect a lot of potential beta testers to be discouraged about recieving compensation after the 04 beta cycle. Lets face it. To be a serious tester takes a lot of time, and two thirds of the serious testers last time got nothing for it but the satisfaction that the reported issues might maybe get fixed (and keeping the Excel BOM). According to my estimates, anyway.

I suspect they're bragging about the beta program because they got so much more feedback than they ever got in the pre-release process.

Reply to
Dale Dunn

well they are obviously thinking they will get twice as many people doing a 'freebee' next release...2100 bugs to be found if you dig in the right places...prizes for 'contestants'...however it will be quite a mission to fix 2x as many in the same 2 months seeing as how they managed to fix only

800 last time...

cynically I suspect they're propagating about the beta program because they are avoiding attention being given to the sp mess - if you were VP R&D you wouldn't want to stand up and address SW World about how poor the internal management is would you? nah that would be too honest..better to put some corporate spin and gloss on it for the punters... ....bah, humbug! I say : )

Reply to
neil

I totally agree. I've done a small amount of alpha testing, and there is no incentive for me to take my time, or for the company to take me out of work for two or three days to test and give my input on their product. I see it as very necessary for solidworks, but they need to give a little in return.

Yeah, there is the possibility to structure their software toward what my company needs, but in the end, it really doesn't pay.

I've been using SW since '98, so I know the software well. Some suggestions that I offered were considered & implemented, but many got the "Why would you ever need that" attitude. I'm all for a fully custimizable package. Your designs should never be limited to what your cad software can (or can't) do.

the classic error message I get a kick out of... "can't scale due to geometric conditions. Please enter a differen value".

Hey! Due to thermodynamics, I CAN'T ENTER A DIFEREENT VALUE!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHH *sound of forehead hitting keyboard*

Reply to
oredock13

Wow, I must have spent 4 hours the other day trying to figure out why my model wouldn't scale. I kept chopping little pieces here and there until finally I narrowed it down to a tiny little area with just a simple fillet. I made a super small Cut Extrude there and then the model would scale.

Whatever SolidWorks

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Reply to
Mike J. Wilson

Mike,

I get this on a regular basis. I used to hack and slash my models to bits the same way you did. Try rolling back close to the beginning of the tree and add your scale. Now just inch the scale feature forward until it fails. The last feature you pulled it in front of is the culprit. Of course this only works on native SWX parts.

HTH,

Malc>> "oredock13" wrote...

Reply to
Malcolm_Tempt

Hey, there would be an idea.

On the other topic about Beta testing...I actually talked to Chris Garcia (VP of R&D) Monday night at SW World. He wasn't overly excited that I wore their shirt touting my Top-25 "finish" in the Beta from last year. He acknowledged it, but wasn't sounding out to the world that someone actually cared enough to "put his life on the line" by wearing it around some hostile sp2 fans.

He stated that this year, there would be 10 top prizes, and they would be better than last years. No mention on whether there would be shirts to the top 25 or 50 or nothing like that.

Me wonders if I would actually care enough to write down and submit bugs this go-around. It was fun in the beginning, but it got to be way more work than I thought it would be. There is only so many 1 sentance bugs out there. After that, you have write a paragraph or two or three to get the message across, or send files, another treat.

Why do they want the Beta drones to catch 2100 this time? Are there going to be 2500 to start the contest? Seems like THEY ought to do their best to make it HARDER for the Beta drones to find 1300 bugs this year.

But, what do I know....

Mr. Pickles

Reply to
Mr. Pickles

Hello Dale-

You bet SolidWorks is happy. I'd gladly pass out 1 new computer and a few MP3 players for 4,776 man hours of work.

Let's see, just for grins; 4776 @$25.00 = $119,400.00

One new computer, full price, say $4,000.00 A few MP3 players, say $800.00

$119,400.00 dollars worth of work for $4,800.00.

OK, I'll give 2 computers for 4,776 man hours of work, AFTER the work is complete(just like SW). Any takers?

Best Regards, Devon T. Sowell

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Reply to
Devon T. Sowell

I spent countless hours Beta testing 2004 as well and "all I got was this lousy oversized cheap polo". So they simply added insult to injury, but really it was my fault because I knew what I was getting into. Oh well.

As for Beta testing 2005, I may go to Beta night to see "What's New" out of curiousity, but I'm not bothering with the testing part. It's simply not worth it to me. Not to toot my own horn, but they just lost a good employee.

Reply to
Jeff N

I see that one when I get a file from a customer who had un-checked the `verify on re-build' box.

Then if I do a tools, check and check the body , there will always be a bad face.

jk

Reply to
John Kreutzberger

Ah, now I get it. That's how much they pay the code writers.

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Reply to
Mike J. Wilson

Reply to
Jeff N

Take your prejudice, bigoted and nationalistic remarks somewhere else.

1 wrote:...
Reply to
Paul Salvador

Here's the link about the outsourcing of SW progamming

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1 wrote:
Reply to
1

the problem was your "raghead" comment, asshole.

--nick e.

Reply to
Nick E.

There's no room for this personal racist crap here. Who's doing the programming has nothing to do with who chooses what they work on. Outsourcing may be a problem for other reasons but the race of the programmer has nothing to do with it. Time to crawl back under the rock...

- Eddy

Reply to
Eddy Hicks

Well, you know what you said and a simple apology would have been in order.. but now you are going to defend or reinforce your remark with a article or that article makes it right??

Have enough balls to say you were wrong.

..

1 wrote:
Reply to
Paul Salvador

Good article, I laughed when I saw the part about $200,000 being offered for the SW source.

Quick survey: How much would you offer?

Joe

Reply to
joe(usenews)

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