SolidWorks 2007 Beta4

Has anyone been able to get this to work? I downloaded it and the installation hung at my serial number even though my subscription is current?

most probably you should ask this on the beta forum

Goes to show they even have problems with the basics, still!!!!, lol

Neil, Where is the beta forum? I called our VAR and SolidWorks yesterday afternoon and neither would support this beta. The SolidWorks beta contest ended the 9th of June. I was too busy this spring to test but had a break this week. SolidWorks told me they had email support but the guy on the phone could not tell me the email address or the link on the corporate web site to find email support. I also looked for the forum on the SolidWorks community site and found nothing. At any rate I got it installed last night on my home workstation. It looks pretty good from the little playing I did last evening. The SolidWorks Installation Manager is new and this is what we will be using going forward; maybe I goofed it up at the office yesterday, I will try again today. Has anyone got any comments on any beta testing they may have done on this or prior betas? Thanks for your comments. Ray

neil wrote:

not participating myself but should be accessible here

as a condition of being a tester you are required NOT talk about beta to the wider world - here, on the usual SW forum, or anywhere else other than the beta forum.

Beta4 is available to all subscription customers plus Solidworks has announced 2007. The NDA is no longer in affect.

neil wrote:

really? ok so why is no one talking about it?

This could be worth a visit

John Layne

ok so I just watched the surfacing video and I have some questions :o)

1.is the push pull actually useful - it seems the polygon control not used in the example might be easier to use than points? can I see zebra stripes at the same time? the manipulation points must all lie on the boundary and on the same plane?so no picking a 3d point and pulling on it? 2.in the past flex has been fairly useless because it messes up surfaces and boundary conditions - does the new geometry handling preserve the quality? or is this an overstatement and misrepresentation of functionality? 3.how does boundary surface differ from a loft? does it fail to produce C2 results readily like trying to make lofts with conditions stumbled in the past? 4.'through out many aspects'...?so it is not fully C2 yet?

MAB - You have both polygon control and direct point editing of the control points >can I see zebra stripes at the same time? MAB - Yes, as well as the mesh. You can change the mesh density and you can have Curvature combs on both the mesh isos and the control curves with thumbwheel scaling and density slider control.

no picking a 3d point and pulling on it? MAB - Neil, not quite sure what you mean here but, there is a technical limitation currently that you can only pull the points on one control curve at a time. You can, however, actually move edges of the surface with the movable edges, or moveable edges tangent option.

or is this an overstatement and misrepresentation of functionality? MAB - FreeForm is limited to one surface or face only currently. We are investigating multiple surface. You'll just have to try it to see if it works for your geometric case. It currently is also limited to

4-sided surfaces, it will not do n-sided (Fill). We are looking into that also. It does work, however on a great many of the cases that have been submitted through Alpha and Beta.

results readily like trying to make lofts with conditions stumbled in the past? MAB - Loft is is for Solids, Boundary is for surfaces only (will not boundary solids) where you require higher quality and can get C2 in both directions, Loft can not do that. Also, there are many more options and controls for Boundary to get your surface just the way you need it to be. Connectors can be added either direction and they will affect the boundary surface. You also have options for the directions like Tangent influence which is very useful for "inflating the surface, especially when it wraps around corners. You can also pull the connectors to limit or delimit the actual surface built. You can also build a boundary surface for a single 1st and single 2nd direction curve.

MAB - Neil, not quite sure what you mean but sufficed to say, C2 is not for everyone and every situation. Many times tangency is all that is required. Boundary will also do better at tangency than loft. Additionally, Boundary does not exhibit the characteristic of Loft that puts the influence of the profiles over the guide curves. This causes problems when you're trying to create as patch surface that "pulls tight" over four boundaries. Boundary is also better than loft in that the boundaries are not approximate like guide curves but much more accurate and you'll see this when it comes to knitting. There is a lot more to say about Boundary and perhaps I'll put something together soon for our customers to explain, in more depth, the differences between Loft, Fill, and Boundary. We have been working on Boundary over the last 24 months (was supposed to go into 2006) and I'm glad that we finally can give it to you. It will be the most important surfacing tool since Fill.

Regards

Mark

Sweet Jesus! someone from SW spoke to me! Man I'm going to frame this and put it on the toilet door for daily reading... Praise the Lord brother! Ask and ye shall receive.... :o) BTW you don't know the numbers for next weeks Lotto draw by any chance...

Yes I would definitely like you to put something together to show the capability properly. As you know I am not a subs customer presently and haven't seen the beta but if you can impress me enough with new C2 I will consider coming back. However - it sounds like there is still important work to do and I know what tends to happen is that we get a whole lot of bugs/changes in new stuff...I see in the press images splines have improvements as well...I would be shy of using this release for production until sp5 anyway from past experience let alone aggressively using new functionality so I might even let subs lag another release - all depends how stable you can make it and how much you can impress ;o) BTW the new mesh import/surface fit up tools are only in the office version? I think a whole lot of people would like that in the core product. Congrats to the team for finally getting C2 out the door.

also... :o) is there multi-threading in 07?...you guys haven't said anything about this topic at all anywhere or coming Vista. I keep asking cos I am interested in new hardware...can we have something said about this officially please even if it is only an expected requirements.

ok I have one more wish remaining right?...can recent subs customers please continue to have access - albeit limited -to SW information through the portal to keep up with developments - I am thinking webcasts, sp release notes etc. to lessen the impact of learning about features and functionality that will be new to them. Maybe an area set aside just for returning customers?

Purely anecdotal evidence here, but we just tested out a couple of our more likely to fail parts built in SW06 on 64bit SW07Beta4 and they didn't break. No guarantees for anyone else, but this is the first time that we haven't broken a major part in a new version since SW99 or so.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"