SW 2005 stable?

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:

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. : )

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.

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
before...as

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.
before...as

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."

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