Autocad's not a 3d modeler either....easier to maintain backwards compatiblity when they add no new features....just lines, arcs, and text for the most part. Also, not sure I'd trust anything saved back. In the case of Autocad, try saving a multi paperspace page layout to a version (r14) that didn't have that capability. Person opening it in r14 won't even know there were extra sheets as they are now gone.
If new releases don't have enough VALUE in them to "coax" users to upgrade then is is just a matter of time before some competitor figurs out how to pull in these SW customers. The non-implementation of backwards compatability and other similar issues to promote sales is basically extortion and in the end this type of "marketing" will hurt SW and the users in general.
Edt
No other 3d parametric cad program offers backwards compatability so what's the incentive to switch? I'm sure it can be programmed but I can imagine it would be a tremendous amount of effort and would be a support nightmare for only a few handful of users that want this. Not to mention that this would be a project for Solidworks to work on for every new release which takes away from other development projects.
Anyway, this comes up quite a bit, if it was easy, some cad vender would be do> > It is a question of how many users will upgrade if they can remain on same
VALUE in them to "coax" users to
After reading through this post, both sides of the coin have some valid points on what should, could, and in the future might possibly be.
That said, it's always easiest to say what one would do "if"...... (insert phrase)
Kind of hard to see the big or overall picture when one does not have all of the pieces, or at least have some notion of what is and is not possible. If anything, time has shown, the human brain (intelligence) can quite possibly figure out any solution to a problem. That said, and not trying to get too philosophical, it's only once you understand the rules can you truly break them.
One of the main bullet points that have been brought up is that if a new feature is used in the program, what will it be in the past version. The solution was thrown out; just turn it into a "dumb" feature. But think about that for a second..... about how long your Feature Manager Tree (FMT) can get, how many Parent child relationships have been established, how this is just not a straight line anymore. Parametric programs are now akin to spider webs.
And I know that we all know and understand that these "rules" are in place. But take a step back for a second and really start to examine what is being asked.
Take my FMT and examine the 2,3,400 features that I have, Track and understand what was not in the previous version of the program Change that specific feature into a "dumb" solid AND, make sure that ALL relationships don't blow up, so that when I make a change everything holds true.
Not saying impossible, just a mighty big undertaking. Granted, there is tons of new user's everyday, but by now most of you seasoned veterans know about the sting, so there isn't any real reason to get caught by the upgrade bug.
I dunno, just 2 cents......
I think you hit on it, most of us don't know how hard it is and how much could go wrong. Hell, sometimes going up to a new version results in feature failures. And many probably don't realize that some of the underlying code for a feature changes from release to release which is what causes these errors. Now imagine going back to a previous version or two and the feature no longer has the code that made it work in the first place. Perhaps it works and doesn't error but gives you different geometry, it happens sometimes going forward, gonig back will be worse. I would be scared to trust the model that's been saved back.
I do see two ways that may it could work on a smaller scale.
Feature Works takes dumb solids and converts to feature based parts. They could call the new application "ReverseWorks" by stripping away the newer features and then convert the geometry to an earlier version. Maybe it can't be done so easily, but the name has a nice ring to it.
Kman
Solidworks has chosen that models will just automatically update when opened in a new version, and I'm sure this includes using new algorithms if the code for a feature has been rewritten. This is not the way that all CAD vendors do it. I-DEAS will continue to rebuild your models using the old algorithms, until you explicitly choose to "migrate" each individual feature, and gives you some tools to indicate whether this is likely to give you a problem or not.
I think the reason I-DEAS was made to work that way is that it has always been used to make the most complex types of solid and surface models possible, and so the likelihood of a rebuild failure is higher than for simple prismatic geometry. In contrast, SWX has traditionally only been used to construct simple geometry, and it's only relatively recently that it has started adding surfacing tools to construct more complex forms.
Maybe it's time for SWX to give more control over what gets updated under new versions of software.
John H
It seems they do some of both. I've had mates that error out (over-define) on a new version and can't be fixed....recreating the exact same mate then fixes the problem. In this cases it looks like a bad combination of the old mates code and the mate solver. Apparent the mate type's code change and thus the newer code works.
When you > "Jason" wrote in
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