We are currently running SW 2004 and after about 3-4 service packs it has
become fairly stable for us. We are looking to upgrade to SW 2005 and I was
wondering in your opinion is SW 2005 with service pack 0.1 stable enough to
run in a production environment? Anyone running it having excessive amounts
of trouble? I don't want to go through the same nightmare we did rolling out
2004 with service pack 1.
Thanks in advance,
Chad
I personally do experience fairly regular CTDs (I expect one or two per
day), but I still consider 2005 to be relatively stable. I'm comparing
it to SW2003, SP5.1, however, not to SW2004 (which I almost skipped
entirely except for about a week's worth of work for one client).
'Sporky'
Chad wrote:
You really ought to do a Google search for this. There is a lot posted here
already including some fairly serious problems that certain people were
having.
It's not stability that will cause you problems. It's the bugs. You
will run into many... especially if you do any kind of in-context
work. I've already received a few SPR's.
Why just today a co-worker couldn't place balloons on a DWG.
Don't upgrade yet.
Mike Wilson
With all of the bugs with new releases, sometimes I wonder if they totally
re-write the code every time. Things that used to work suddenly don't work
anymore. I am not a programmer, so I'm sure there must be more to it than
this.....
Living proof of 'Chaos Theory' - SW makes a good teaching example of
how a small change in the the 'input' can have a very dramatic and
unpredictable effect on the 'output'
For example - line thicknesses in blocks - why the sudden failure to
print the correct line thickness in SW2005 ? - I think because they
have fooled around with the line thicknesses on the graphic buttons !!
that are noiw very toy like and toys are meant to break before
Christmas - or is it that the spirit that lives within SW is just
having fun with us poor ****s that have to work with it !!
All in jest
Jonathan
What kind of problem was he having? I have encountered a bug that
gives asterisks(*) instead of quantity or item numbers. The asterisks
appear when the subassembly the balloon is attached to is set to
"flexible". Setting the subasm to "fixed" corrects the problem. Great
workaround IF your assembly can handle the subasms not being flexible
(it's a long story). Another wierd behavior is that if I mess with the
settings on the balloons with the asterisks, a -1 appears in the
ballons.
As long as I'm ranting, is anyone else having problems getting feature
control frames to snap horizontal correctly? If they don't fix that
little gem quick someone is going to have a seisure from all the
flip-flopping. I finally gave up and just let the arrows point to the
surfaces.
AND if you put a projected tolerance zone in a feature control frame it
is squished up against one of the boundaries and elevated. WTF?!?
The list goes on and on.
Criminy. There has been A LOT of colorful language coming from my
cubicle lately. And my drawings look like crap. ...But at least the
icons are cool.
frustratedgirl
I don't wish to be unsympathetic to people but we haven't even got to sp1
yet...experience with previous SW releases should tell you it is prudent to
wait until sp2 or 3 before expecting a reasonably well behaved
program....yes I know... but unfortunately that's the reality of it...
If you bought a new car, would you be satisfied if it didn't run
correctly until you'd had it in the shop a few times? Heck no. I
don't think it is unreasonable to expect a new version of software to
allow me to do my job when it is officially released.
The reason we upgraded to 2005 was that it gave us functionality that
significantly sped up our design cycle. Additionally, there were
problems in 2004 that had been corrected in 2005. Unfortunately,
upgrading has sometimes led to trading one issue for another and
making a choice of which issue is easier to deal with. Furthermore,
sometimes users do not get to choose when and if they upgrade. They
just have to deal the hand they're dealt.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but come on, no one in QA noticed
that the text on the drawings was being squished together? No one
noticed that the projected tolerance on a drawing was screwed up after
they "fixed" the text problem?
I realize that software will never be perfect, but I don't think it's
unreasonable to expect this product to work correctly out of the gate.
Yes, I realize that SW has a track record of flaws in newly released
products. One would think that over time this would happen less
frequently. Especially with the Beta program. The real issue here
is that while flaws will be fixed in sp1, others will pop up. So when
is it truly safe to upgrade? If everyone waits, then how will anyone
know when it's "safe"?
Highexpectationsgirl
The repetition of bug software and performance drain is so repeatable that
it has to be on purpose. Does anyone here believe that SW performance has
been steadily improving since the inception of the 3000 strong beta test
program?
Kman
Arrgh. I plan to go to SWW. One thing I really enjoy is the SW challenge.
But I don't think I'll have more than a months experience on 2005 by the
time Feb. rolls around.
My impression of beta is that we get asked a lot about whether we like this
or that. And this or that are the new things, not old things that are still
broke.
Kman wrote:
at last year's SW World, one of the VPs got up and gave a talk on the
success of the beta program-- he was quite proud that the 2004 beta program
had discovered X thousand bugs, and stated that the goal for the 2005 beta
program was to discover something like 50% more bugs.
This "goal" betrays a fundamental quality principal--the way to get better
software is to write fewer bugs into the code base, not to find more of them
at the beta phase. In a better world, their goal would be to increase the
number of beta testers (which they did, to their credit), but to find FEWER
bugs.
Given the current mindset at SolidWorks, as revealed by their goals, quality
software isn't something we can expect to see any time soon.
Its the marketing monster that has taken over most sofware firms. If
marketing can convince beta testers to pay money for the privledge of
running a beta in the guise of a new release then they will do so.
I think the entire subscription service model is a major part of the
problem. They must deliver new releases to justify the subscription.
Solidworks even makes the service packs a benefit of subscription.
My current philosophy with software is to stick with a version you
are happy with, only upgrade if absolutely necessary. Of course,
marketing has come up with new devious methods to help make it more
"necessary" by things like retiring versions (like is happening soon
to AutoCAD 2000).
Joe Dunfee
Highexpectationsgirl,
Well I think the sooner SW stop poking new releases out the door before the
last one reaches stability the better off we will all be. In the case of
2004 we might hope sp5 will at last deliver the quality you want from
sp0 -just in time to be redundant. If you go back a couple of years you will
find a lot of angry posts from me bitching about the quality issues etc and
...actually I agree with your expectations however the reality is SW hasn't
delivered any better stds in new releases or sp's. The reality is that
people moving immediately into production with a fresh release can expect to
have a lot of minor hassles-potentially this could amount to significant
financial penalty...but all this has been said and debated here before...as
I said I am not unsympathetic cause I've been there done that.
take me as I am boy. : )
One mistake I think SW did was to name their releases "SW 200X" instead of
the traditional "1,2,3...etc." I think it forces them to release a new
version once a year whether it's ready or not....
On another note while I'm here - We just rolled out SW2005 yesterday with
relatively few problems. One though that I noticed is that symbols (dia,
depth, +/-, etc) in annotations and geo tolerances look like their bold when
they print. They seem to be directly tied in to the line weights, and by
adjusting the "think" line weight setting, you can screw around and get them
right, but that frigs up my line weights in other places (obviously) - I'm
sure I'm not the first to mention this, but did they fix this in a later
release?
Thanks,
Scott
We are still waiting for the next service pack in 2004. We are currently on
SP3 and were told to wait for SP5. If I our CAD user by jumping to the next
realease or SP I will find myself on the street looking for a new job.
I agree that thing should not be this way but I have learned that it is a
fact of software life.
Sorry late night last night. The below should have read......If I hose our
CAD Users by jumping to a buggy release or SP I will find myself on the
street looking for a new job."
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