SW 2006 better ???

Ditto.

To which I ask: Did these larger number of bugs result from off-shoring the CAD Code Grinders to Asia?

I would hate to switch, but the name of the game with 3D CAD is productivity always going up...not downward.

Bo

MM wrote:

previous

I personally use Terminex. Seems to get rid of the bugs every time,

100% guarantee.

Bo

Cam,

That's understandable, within limits. The point is that "now" it's way out of balance, The resulting problems are compounding too fast, and spiraling out of control. If it keeps up, it's just going to get more difficult to get new, or keep old customers.

Regards

Mark

Good question. I don't know that enough time passed between when I left and when they were purchased. Shortly after I left, another very large microscope company bought them, and rolled the technology into their own microscopes (interestingly enough, we were working on a top-secret machine that used the same technology for beam generation that this other company had. It would have been KILLER). If you are familiar with scanning microscopes, you know that a wet sample must be dried; once dried, it must be coated with a conductive surface to keep charge from the beam from building up on the surface. A very high vacuum must be pulled as well so that there is nothing in the path of the electron beam. With our microscope, we actually INTRODUCED water vapor into the sample chamber and created a new type of "gaseous amplification". This had tremendous benefits, the most important being that a sample of anything could be put in, wet, dry, uncoated, didn't matter, and within about 30 seconds be imaging. The "problem" with this is that the beam spread (from hitting the gas molecules) effectively lowered the surface resolution. So, instead of our sales people pushing the benfits of our machine, they were always fighting the question of resolution. Anyway, this was a brilliant system, and I'm happy to think back to those days. The "job" sucked, but the "work" was fantastic. I did a lot of lightpipe/photo-multiplier and low-noise amplifier designs. Now, I design and manufacture toys... ;^)

Mike Tripoli

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 20:45:23 GMT, "Michael" wrote:

MM - Most of your sentments shared here.

SolidWorks had a really good history of blazing a clear trail and developing some really awesome new stuff. The upgrades are very often times meaningful and great new functionality gets rolled out.

Then BANG! They stop refining it and it gets stagnated. We long time users and the day-in-day out users feel that stagnation most. That's the down side. There are other areas where the lack of funtionality is so obvious to the daily user and the stall point so unbearable that it really filles one with "piss & vinegar" and a lingering feeling that "they" as a company just don't care.

In a nutshell:

They are Great Innovaters, but Mediocre Refiners.

We as Daily users need the Refinement badly, but we also need the "new" stuff too.

I personally would love to see a 20-30% redistribution of output (or percieved input) towards refinement and a little less on the new stuff. Frankly, robustness and fillling in the missing blanks are very very improtant to daily users, this one in particular. New features are also needed and appreciated, but not if things get worse to support that effort.

Later,

SMA

Not that I'm an expert, but I do a lot of work in Asia. Perhaps you've had bad experiences with "code grinders" from Asia, but I have to say, all of the ones that I have dealt with are very professional and experts in their field. They go through much more "professional training experience" there, than here. I'm not being defensive, but I wouldn't blame it on the coders per se. Like anything, if the management of a project is bad, no amount of engineering expertise will save it. I would *guess* that the boys here in the states are writing the spec's and directing the future of the product, not the guy doing the coding.

Mike Tripoli

I am also not optimistic about SW2006. How can I be? Things that were working in past releases are broken in the current one. I have an SPR for a particularly aggravating drawing regression that hasn't been addressed in 2 sp's since it was issued. I thought regressions were supposed to get highest priority.

My picture has been used to promote SWX for mold design in a lot of the trade magazines. I have been getting some good-natured flack that one would expect from that sort of thing. I have also had 2 brief, but unpleasant encounters with people who have bought the software-partly as a result of my case study who are not happy campers. They got on-board with SW2005, and are really un-happy with the drawing module. I can't blame them either-so am I. When I get back from my up-coming vacation, I am going to call my contact in marketing and ask him if there is a way to get those ads pulled. I'm just not comfortable being seen as promoting a product that seems to be going backward in so many ways.

I have been able to do some really good work with SW, but it's just a tool for me-not a religion. My support contract is up the end of November. That should give me time to evaluate 2006 and decide whether to save my subscription money so I can invest in a different tool.

jk

The quality control is what matters, not where it is made.

You ever notice that Hondas and Toyotas made in the USA are very reliable while Fords and GMs made in the USA are not?

Stefan,

I keep tellin you eastern Euro guys, You gotta work on your english swearing skills. Sounds real lame man....

Mark

Mark They appear to be locked in an arms race with Autodesk - churning out releases faster and faster and competing on the transfer of the 2D market to 3D - The basic operations that you use when first start on SW or Inventor work fine and it's a revalation compared to detailing 2D drawings, so productivity goes up... Solidworks claim a larger share of the transfer 2D market and crank out another version with more bells and whistles that appeal to the 2D transfer market to keep up with Inventor... This was definitely the impression I got from the recent SM2005 show in the UK... Meanwhile, people who have been using Solidworks for longer than 6 months and the new converts to 3D that realise that it's way more than a new form of drafting are pushing the envelope, creating larger assemblies, more complex geometry and being asked to do this in less and less time to keep cranking the productivity up.... and trip over the loose cables left by Solidworks in it's rush to get the latest version out. But by this time we've all shelled out our $8000 (that's how much SW is in the UK at the mo!) or whatever and are pretty much hooked - it's a big jump to make to shift to Inventor, Pro E, SolidEdge or whatever, as long as they don't make a real howler, we ain't going to shift. Hopefully this arms race will run out of steam when the 2D to 3D transfer market has been exhausted and there will be a period of first stabilisation (tidy up the loose cables, clear the decks) and then real innovation - I don't see much change in the methods of doing stuff since my last visit to the show in 2001. Whether this will happen with SW2006, I don't think so, but by SW2008 (which will be out in 2006 natch.!) maybe... Where the blame lays for this - market forces. Autodesk are a pretty formidable opponent - it appears that something similar is going on on the viz/rendering side - Autodesk are pushing Alias and Softimage pretty hard - again the intake of new customers is the key area, once they are on board, it's going to take a real F-up to get people to move. The recent (ish) huge price drops by first Alias and then Softimage are a bad sign I think - I can see one or the other getting squeezed out of the market. That's my take, based on intuition and observation over the past 4 or 5 years - might be complete and utter B*****ks though! Cheers Deri

Entertaining but not too educational I get a kick from his one on one conversations with industry heads, Do well with me and I'll treat you well, but if you fail to correspond by personnal phone call from your office wait untill I write up my big piece in a news group!. Hah, hah, hah what a joke, what a joke.

Three top German universities standardize engineering instruction using SolidWorks software

Mälardalen University purchases 500 licenses of SolidWorks Education Edition to launch students' engineering careers

Four university teams win SolidWorks' 3D Design & Analysis Award for race car designs at Formula Student Competition

14 Universities Worldwide Choose COSMOSDesignSTAR for FEA Education

NASA Tech Briefs, an industry trade magazine, recognized NEiWorks as its Product of the Month and placed it as a finalist in its Product of the Year competition. NEiWorks is a design analysis tool fully integrated within the SolidWorks 3D modeling environment.

John

It's a sad question - as it indicates that something IS very wrong. Answer to it is, unfortunately, even more sad: I don't believe it will, given the track record.

I've brought SW to my two previous companies (one way back in early '96, other in 2001), but am not anymore sure that was all good. We're in the marine propulsion industry and, yes, there was nothing I couldn't model (though should have gotten a PhD In Workarounds as many of you), but assembly and drawings performance and stability penalties... are just not worth it. Release after release would screw up anything that was done in the previous. Tremendeous time wasted in fixes/maintenance instead of developing. We've even evolved to make couple of our guys official "maintainers" of the "legacy" data - done by a previous release!!! In case someone wanders why, it is because our products have 15-25+ years lifespan and all the time there are incremental improvements and many, many configurations, so "old" stuff is accessed on a daily basis an it has to work.

Our var used to punch their chests because they got my company on their users list, but these days are not daring to mention us as a referee to potential customers. Why? Because we/I can't recommend it anymore. Sad, isn't it?

Bug reports, product improvement... I just don't see it as part of my job! Not current rate and extent. Way to much var interaction that's wasted time as I come to learn. *I* know how to deal with it, but I got another 12 guys that get lost on a daily basis. All of them very good to excellent engineers, but not necessarily software savvy. They're all stressed and restricted once the projects hit assembly and drawings stage.

Currently, I'm holding my breath to see what will shift to 64-bit do. My hope is that there will be a re-write. A complete one, not just a port. If not, then SolidWorks, that I picture as a skeleton, with way to many vertebrae, that sags and swings unpredictably will have to be extinguished and replaced by a healthier and stronger built UG (we have

2 advanced CNC seats with all the modelling features) or go Catia since UG is a dog to run. Powerfull, but a dog - especially to all my *excellent* engineers that want their job get done.

SolidWorks is used here as a compromise, not as an all rounds winner.

Cheers all, anms

As I understand it, the shift to 64-bit is more like a re-compile than a port. It certainly won't be a total re-write. That's just not going to happen. That would just re-introduce bugs anyhow.

The best benefits from the move to 64-bit will be some more performance (more registers), a little more stability (sleaned-up OS, I hope), and support for lots more RAM.

*re-compile* is the word I should have used. Not *port*. ... looks like not much is gonna change: short legs and elongated torso remains. No need to say it, but, aren't we all like it (almost) other way round? Lara Croft comes to mind. Geez, this is getting too personal - metaforazing SolidWorks to women... That's it, I'm out...

Cheers, amns

The english have a slightly stretched and better version PLONKER

Cheers

releases. For

released with

They're a

engineering

hungry

Stefan,

How will 2006 be better?

Kman

Eventually,

SW 2006 will have:

-10% more features that you won't use

-5% more crashes while in the features that you DO use.

While I hope the above is wrong, it is fast becoming a SolidWorks stereotype.

I'm stick> Stefan,