Crash, crash, hang, crash, hang,...

I have to agree - 2007 has been one buggy release for me, it's about time they take a year off feature developement and fix bug only - and then keep them fixed.

Zander

Paul Salvador wrote:

It will be fixed after they have strung out the paying customers long enough to get them hooked on the next release. I have noticed that SW is less flexible on the subject of penalties and reinstallation fees. Could it be because more and more customers are refusing to upgrade every year?

Kman

Well, I don't agree with that - refusing to upgrade really only would be hurting yourself - even with bugs etc. it is still incredibly productive software for the money. I do a lot of work in solidworks so some bugs that seems very minor to others can add up to significant time hits when that bug is encountered hundreds of time over many years and it persists from version to version. I use to model with no shell command (pre swx days) and I spent countless hours offsetting surfaces manually to create mold geometry - shudder.... If I had never upgraded I'd still be doing that - or no, actually I'd be out of business! :)

Zander

Kman wrote:

I can honestly state with fact, since I installed SW2007 last month, SW2007 sp0 and sp1.1 have wasted no less than 20 hours of my time. I've lost that time forever and I continue to loose time each time I use it. My current estimate is about 10% of my time is lost/wasted using SW2007.

..

This is the first time Paul, either lurking or participating, that I haven't had the same trouble at the same time. I could live for months on an invoice to Solidworks for '06 time wasted, but so far, '07 has honestly been better. Perhaps this time around, we aren't doing as much surfacing at this particular time because we are at a point in our projects where we are concentrating on metal parts and drawings. In a couple weeks a large batch of injection molded parts will be in full force so maybe I'll be singing your song. We'll see...

For what it's worth, I didn't go with '07 sp0. I waiting until 1.0 was out and was meticulous about how the admin image was created before installing on any workstations. Even then, toolbox had to be cleanly updated, toolbar icons went missing, etc. I was also very anal about removing every trace of prior version(s) using the clean install tool and crap cleaner from ccleaner.com

Thanks,

- Eddy

It isn't that I object to upgrading if there are improvements that fit with my needs. I just don't upgrade for the sake of upgrading because SolidWorks says it is time. I agree if a specific SP is hosed then upgrading to an improved SP makes sense. I personally don't feel there have been any magic bullet back to back releases that save significant amounts of time. For me, upgrading every couple years is just fine. However, SolidWorks makes it expensive for those of us who don't want or need to upgrade every year (penalty plus back release renewal fees)

Backwards compatibility would boost productivity far more than all those nip and tucks. This one never made SW's top list of things to accomplish. However they did find time to develop an AutoCAD backwards compatible solution using our subscription dollars.

Kman

Yep, I agree with you. I personally pay subscription every year and I make full use of my var for 'everything single thing I can'. But really I pay because I want the upgrades.

For me it all comes down to the idea that sw should freeze feature developement for say 12 months and spend all of that energy refining what they have. ie. bug fixes, drivers etc.

I think if you did a poll of sw customers and asked them if for next year they would prefer a: new features or b: the same sw2007 but with fewer bugs that the answer would be a resounding "B". No one can claim that sw is feature poor that's for sure. I just want limit mates that don't flip on me.....!

eg. since 2007 the blue dashed preview to show you've referenced a section view from an origin no longer shows up for me - it does for my var though - so it's another 'unresolved bug' or driver problem etc that will never be addressed. I have a quadro card, I have a new computer and I'm using a sw cert. driver so....

The other day I was working in 2007 for about 12 hours - while I worked I kept an open email with a numbered list in it. Everytime I encountered a bug I made a note, at the end of the day there were 20 items - some resulted in spr's but about half were not reproducible, not even by me, not even in the same file - but the next day

--------arghhh!

Kman wrote:

Unfortunately no. I have asked this very question before here and the response was minimal at best. SW users actually just keep on upgrading and taking it no matter what. Go figure.Rats in the race are more at content to run than stop. I guess they mostly work for someone else and it doesn't rate in their conscious as something they should have a standpoint on.. If you look at the responses to my determined resistance to the mediocre quality on the SW forum it is more accurate to say people who actively want better are a 'radical' minority. Indeed SW and their friends try quite hard to marginalise my participation there...somewhat to my amusement but... Many of the replies I get are in fact defensive of SW continuing to rate bug resolution as low priority to introducing new features. Call it shilling, confluence, apathy, the silent majority or what you will, there is no "B" sorry. Should people be more vocal? Yes why not, there is room for improvement to be sure. It is not unreasonable to expect more out of the box. Other software makes the grade and so should CAD Will they listen and change? Most probably only when forced to. Until more people emerge from their comfort zone it isn't on their agenda. Profit, market share, etc the game matters more than substance. later -

Well, in defense of all those people who wouldn't vote B with me... the fact is sw is a productive and useful piece of software, I like it even with it's faults and still see the glass as way over half full. I mean, I'm still recovering from modelling software I had to work with before I switched to sw (in '99). Even though I want them to slow down and fix bugs doesn't mean I'm going to bail. Yes they want market share and profit, and they got it by creating substance - there is at the end of the day, tons of substance there.

Cheers,

Zander

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:

I am sorry what is your position then? Do you personally want it improved or is it good enough?

My position is: I want them to stop developing features and fix long standing bugs. However, the software is currently still good enough for me to be productive so I don't want to quit using it or change to another program. It ain't black and white!

Zander

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:

How much market share can be attributed to a simple lack of serious competition during the period of '99 until present? Not the lumbering oaf 2D guys - legends in their own minds and SW should not be skimming for the user they would attract. Or maybe they should be.

Consumers expect quality from the products they buy. Everyone likes new stuff, its in the engineering gene. And like you said they really need to fix what they have while continuing to release new features and enhancements. What ever happened to the philosophy of continuous improvement and the lofty goal of zero defects.

Kman

Or more likely the majority aren't paying for the software out of their own pockets. Just think if companies said this is a part of the tools you must bring to work!

I hope not!

Kman

Just think if we produced half-assed crappy work just to meet a deadline and put it in a binder with a real nice cover and promised to cross our t's and dot our i's with a later revision. What ever happed to doing whatever it takes? Apparently that is too expensive.

Solidworks, are you listen> > I guess they mostly work for someone else and it doesn't rate in their

Well, if SolidWorks is going to keep my subscription dollars, things like mates and configurations remaining 100% stable from one release to the next is a MUST HAVE.

There is no way I can justify paying for 2007 year maintenance, if I have to personally commit hundreds of hours to just fix up assemblies from earlier work.

I simply do not have the time to go through what now must be hundreds and hundreds of assemblies from earlier SWks years and fix & patch.

Bo

RaceBikesOrWork wrote:

If I bought Adobe CS, and every time I turned around it caused me a problem, do you think I would accept continuing to use it and pay the upgrade prices over time. NO! But then, I simply do not remember crashing an Adobe CS application (admittedly on my Mac). I'm sure it can be done, but not with the standard stuff I do.

When I look at Adobe CS and SolidWorks, the complexity is similar or even more complex in the whole Adobe package, yet I don't see "issues" with usability on Adobe CS.

If we users wouldn't accept anything less than what we get from Adobe, why in the world should we accept less with SolidWorks? Why should the management of SolidWorks in the U.S. accept anything less? Lack of commitment to quality at the top level of SolidWorks is evident. I would venture a guess today that some of the top management might not even be competent on their own software, and that indeed makes it worse.

I have my own personal estimate of what is going on & might go on:

1. Good product is started.
2. Successful growth brings investment-buyout = Dessault
3. Financial optimization causes cash to flow to ... Dessault
4. Pressure increases to increase payments to ... Dessault
5. Customer pressure to improve SWks causes pressure from ... Dessualt
6. The Asian programmers can't deliver any better than the U.S. Crew & Customers keep complaining while Cash & Champagne flows increase @ ... Dessault
7. SWks management, now working on the clock, not with their shares at risk, decide to just keep increasing FEATURES to attract new customers and maintenance upgrades to feed the bean counters @ ... Dessault.
8. Customers start dropping out of support & Dessault starts looking at Microsoft methods and saying, we have to build in a SWD (SWks Deactivator) and alter our EULA so when customers stop paying maintenance, SolidWorks stops, because, after all, "We own the software."
9. Customers organize and institute a RICO lawsuit against SWks...& Dessault instituting WWW5 with France...who sends their Catia designed AirBus planes to conquer the U.S.

Bo

Bo wrote:

I hate responding to these threads but oh well.... Is somebody posting all the same posts with these bug threads and just changing the dates and versions or is it just me???? lol

Let me start off by saying that I've visited many other newsgroups like this and I'll even list some examples....

Solid Edge, Inventor, Unigraphics, 3D-Studio Max, LightWave, Adobe products, etc, etc....

All of these newsgroups at some point have threads that seem to look, sound and even smell the exact same as this one. I'm starting to pick up on a common theme that SolidWorks seems to be part of by some strange "software" phenomenon.

Now let me also say that I've gotten to the point with SW that no bug or nuance will ever surprise me anymore because I've seen and witnessed so many. I certainly am not saying that it's bug free by any means. Now with that said I do know many very stable versions of SW that are the most reliable I've seen. Now I don't know of any with 2004... but there are a couple of very good ones in 2005 and 2006 most notably the last sp's.

I guess what I'm getting at is what "forces" everybody to have to use the new version with new features??????? Now I know if your like me it's because they really do put a lot of good functionality in with every new release which tend to make our lives easier. However, what comes with this is some very painful bugs and issues for the early adopters. With this an obvious common theme every time why don't we all just use an sp5 or sp6 of an earlier version that is stable and has the fewest bugs? Now with all do respect to the people that want SW to stand still and stop developing and just solely work on bug fixes.... this seems a little absurd. Because for one.... software is naturally like this already as long you stick the last service pack of the last release (or close to it anyways).

So Paul sort of right in a way.... with the "new" version of software almost shouldn't even be considered until a later service pack. Think of it this way. When SW or any other Software toots a new version. Consider this.... consider grabbing the last version with all the fixes to be the safest one to stick with for a couple years. And so on and so forth.

There is a lot of people that hate this attitude but it's just the way it is. Software is software.... there will always some kind of bugs in a new release. AND WE KNOW THIS!!! it's natural. WAIT FOR THE LATER SP!!! DON'T LOOK AT THE WHAT'S NEW..... TRY TO HOLD BACK...... DON'T DO IT!!! lol

yea I know.... I'll still installing the new version too in the hopes that some way... some how...the natural order of software has changed with THIS NEW ONE!!!

Alright... I've rambled enough. However, I am getting fond of that whole "stop development" for a year and fix bugs. I'm going right now to my boss and let him know about this wonderful business model and future company direction. Boss.... let's stop all our R&D and new product development for a year or so and lets just work on continuous improvement and fix issues with our current product lines. Some how I'm thinking maybe this wouldn't be a bad idea as long as our competition stood still as well.

all in good fun gentlemen!!! dv3

Surprisingly, even with all the times I've been burned with SW... it's still imho one of the best ones on the block. Let's hope SW continues to take quality as serious as possible though so we only have to wait for sp 1 or 2. rather that 5 or 6.

hopefully...have a great and productive day sw users.

CONDERNING 2007 BUGS: I think that the SW programming/engineering group tries very hard and has done a great job. Of course we would all like to see bugs fixed.... especially longer standing bugs. However, for everything that was said negative about SW in this thread I found Inventor to be many times worse, (but this was just my experience) so I am relatively happy with SW in this area.

NOW REGARDING SW MARKETING POLICIES: I would like to see the VP or whoever sets some of these rediculious policies strung up with a rope. I really believe that many of these practices hurt us as users, the VAR's and SW itself.

ONE EXAMPLE of poor marketing policy is that $500 PENALTY to re-subscribe. What I have found in business is that if a client doesn't want to continue to pay for a service, there must be a rason for this. And the reason for not continueing for subscription is that us users are not getting reasonable value for our money. Because of financial constraints and being unhappy with the support that I was getting from the VAR I have not been on subscription for the last 9 months. And except for SP's I have not missed a thing. Actually, there have been very little impact by not having the SP's that I can tell.

Somehow, SW and the VARs need to put ADDED VALUE back into "VAR".

ANOTHER HORRID POLICY is the $500 upgrade PENALTY. Ie. to go from SW standard to SW Professional costs a "loyal" SW user and extra $500 more then a new user of SW that purchases the Professional version. I'm not sure what this is suppose to accomplish, other then to discourage existing users to upgrade. Out of the 400,000 existing SW users in the World, what is the probability that upgrades will come from this group compared to new purchases. If SW gave us Office Professional for free, within a few years SW would recover these dollars through higher subscription fees and additional training classes and potential sales. But, with an additional $500 PENALTY to upgrade, I'm not going to be upgrading anytime soon.

Ed