SW Corp programmers, fixing/breaking code,... what a scam!!!

TOP,not sure you meant to send this to my email rather than the group..not that I am a genius at debate but as a reply..

well I think you are not drawing a good comparison when you liken the CAD industry to the problems that beset the US automobile industry. That industry was overturned by the Japanese who met the consumers real needs about the time of the oil crisis and concentrated on quality and technical superiority as a way to gain market acceptance in a market hostile to foreign products, there were also a lot of union unrest worldwide as I remember. It also should be remembered that the modernisation of Japan -and then Korea and now China- was very well organised and the impact on global manufacturing was inevitable. Ford was merely feeding and shaping the great American dream of the time as it had for quite a while in unexamined isolation and reality caught up with it. They pioneered and explored the form of the car for the masses and along with the other big players brought industrialisation to America.Other nations following along the industrial path refined it into a compact and useful appliance and in doing so set the standards. The automobile industry is still facing up to the realities of global markets. SW came along and did the CAD world a favour by making 3d accessible to the engineering masses at low cost and a lot of people have benefited but really they have no where to go in this form except make a more attractive VW bug each year. It would take another new player focusing primarily on quality to emerge to shake up the establishment.. I don't think SW is necessarily bloated. I think it probably is in need of a rewrite to clean up patched code after years of development or has a structure that hasn't lent itself well to extension in the way SW should have been able to take it. Possibly the code is so convoluted now that it can't be added to without breaking things or requires programmers who have been in since the beginning to oversee it. I think the SW people have the best of intentions but simply can't deliver what we want especially in the 9 month time frame. While they allow their agenda to be set by side looking competitive anxiety they are not going to make progress. I am not a programmer but I think 64 bit presents itself as a really good opportunity to redo things. Large RAM support, multi cores, functionality that puts it at 3/4 point rather than midway, and they should relax the development cycle to 12 months...I wouldn't even necessarily expect the new SW to read old files but would itself have backward compatibility or even an industry standard format. Probably some SW people if they are reading this are having a good laugh at my ignorance but well there you go I tossed some ideas up for people to chew over :o)

My comparison with the original VW Beetle (Bug) was meant to draw out the fact that rather than changing the general appearance of the Bug every year or two, VW concentrated on a rather small set of tweaks every year that improved the Bug. Ford on the other hand tended to change not only the appearance but size of their vehicles till they were nowhere near what they started out to be.

The VW Beetle for instance used the same motor transmission interface from 1949 to the demise of the Beetle in the 70s. And this same interface was also common to many Porsches. They got it right and let it be. With a total disregard for appearance and what others where doing they sold more Beetles than any other car. I am not sure if that record has ever been beaten.

Let's face it. SW is just a front end for parasolid. And parasolid can do a lot more than what SW can do. Just look at UG. I have long viewed SW as an easy to use interface. But that opinion is slowly being eroded because of the incessant redesign of an interface that already works and very little expansion of the capabilities of parasolid.

Oh, I probably clicked > >In other words had SW done what Volkswagen had originally done and sold us

The thought that SW needs a rewrite has been batted around since 2000 and the 3Amigos visit to SW. I think parts of the code have been rewritten so many times it would take a computer to keep track. The fact the SW beta tests with such a large base of users and that those users uncover as many problems as they do should tell you something.

I think they have budgets and targets. And that dictates reality to the code writers and everyone else. I think Dassault milks the cash cow regularly and that always takes away a lot of the freedom SW once had.

I doubt SW could commit to true 64 bit. Look at the long list of licenses they now use. All those players would have to come on board. And if they came on board for SW they would be available to the competition.

I'm sure about that comment, but laugh might not be the best choice of words. We are all in the dark/ignorant when it comes to knowing just what is going on in Concord.

Well I am not so sure. Despite the publicity given to having thousands of beta testers involved and the success this is, I am of the opinion that not many actually do useful testing. If you have seen the list of persons and points awarded would surmise that testing is really only done by say less than 100 and probably 25 are really trying hard -and they most likely get a poor return for the time they spend even though they may get a prize. I don't believe they actually do any better than having a systematic in house bug hunt by a team of 50 would do over a couple of months - and get paid appropriately for their expertise. The truth is sp are still much the same size as they ever were and just as likely to break something else and this is why users remain hacked off. All said and done it does not bother me any more what SW do at Concord. It is now up to them to improve independently of my subscription that they have a product worthy of consideration when I am next in the market for CAD.

The web based register is an excellent idea!

Kman

There were a lot more people than that testing 2006. And there was direction on what to test. There was direct access to SW personnel to clarify and be held responsible for conculsions. But there were a handful that just seemed to be doing nothing but testing the whole time. I was at it for at least three months and got a Beta T-Shirt out of it.

Even so, I agree with your conclusion that if SPs don't deliver what you want in terms of robustness and capability improvements it makes no sense to stay in the pool unless you are growing and will need more seats every year or have to share files. I don't think there are a lot of places in the US that are growing fast enough to justify that.

Upgradeitis. It's a nasty habit that is very tough to kick.

Black Dragon noted "Upgradeitis. It's a nasty habit that is very tough to kick."

I would offer a corollary: "With great coders & inhouse rigor on testing & then good redundancy backups and archives with users, upgrades can be automatic and painless." My Apple upgrades over the OSX process have been virtually painless, and none of them ever 'bombed', and I never had to read 2" thick tomes to understand how to use the OS or their bundled applications (or MS Office for that matter).

I suggest what is getting SolidWorks in trouble is that there is way too much change each and every year. I don't think the average 3/4s of the users learn all the new features or know all the existing features.

The coming SWks2006 and then LongInTheHorns OS are both going to tax my time and patience. I might just have to sit tight until something around 2008, as I've not heard of anything shaking the world in "SWks

2006". I have no desire to go through the pain of wringing the knots and nots out of the next Windows, regardless of the the nerdy glowing statements from Redmond about the 'Future is Here'.

I personally do not have the luxury to just sit and study for weeks or more each year, and I doubt most other SolidWorks users do either, and if you then couple the new SWks study with weeks more of debugging drudgery and couple that with mandatory hardware changes and a new OS, it is just painfull to think about, let alone do it.

Bo

I believe SW2000 or SW2003 were the peak of the software's ability to provide a simple, clean, effective modeling and drawing platform for mechanical engineering and design. Graphic interfaces were simple and intuitive, crashes were reserved for very large and/or complex assemblies, and the help files could get you through almost any problems. Since then we have witnessed an exponential rise in bells and whistles that few users have any need for. Many time tested GUI's were not only changed, but require more layers of dialog boxes, mouse clicks and keystrokes now and do not work as well. Some instructions in the help file are now impossible to decipher and do not match what comes up on the screen.

Eventually, the addition of these bells and whistles (hundreds of enhancements per release by their own touts) is going to make the SW Professional test a daunting task if they require a working knowledge of more of them. These enhancements are cluttering up the works and causing a general depletion of the software reliability. The 3 disk circus that we now need for service pack upgrades is another idea whose time has gone. What's next - dongles?

It appears that the raging success of SW has allowed them to hire too many programmer/code writers who now have to justify their existence by coming up with endless "enhancements" that enhance nothing but their job security. I have started to lobby the company I work for to let me go back to SW2000 for new projects. The 7 other seats can convert the modeling to the newer version if necessary.

Regards,

Dennis

We already have the dongles, here in the UK!, lol

I am sorry but I am not convinced that the beta testing competition is that successful. I don't think that 2500 people set about finding things as you did. Points awarded quickly went down from 800 to 100 over a spread of 25 or so and participation in the forum was fairly meagre as well... As you say the people who won 1,2,3 must have been virtually full time on it. I doubt many people could afford to do that. It is nice you have a t-shirt as a memento after donating 3 mths of your spare time to the greater good... The most conspicuous thing the contest achieves is to shift the prime responsibility for the quality of product onto the customer. To me this is quite wrong.

During Beta we were issued SPRs. They are just like the ones you get through your VAR. Some will be fixed and some won't. This was my third or fourth Beta program and from what I could see it was the best run as far as interfacing with testers.

I hope I didn't come across as trying to convince anyone it was successful. That remains to be seen if your measure of success is the same as mine. Minimal overall bugs.

Should the next beta by run like this one I would sure hope as many people as possible get a chance to interact with quality and development types as well as the software. My approach was to take a small project at work and run it through. It hit on some of the new stuff and a lot of the old. And hopefully the glitches I ran into will be fixed. My small contribution to the real world if it happens and oh well if it doesn't.

Yes, sorry TOP..I am sure everyone appreciates your contribution. I was directing my critical gaze at SW rather than the people who generously participated and did their best. What SW manage to do with the info supplied to them is a different matter and this is the issue I was referring to when I say it is not successful. I would much rather you got paid for your effort or were given a free years subs than a t-shirt. though :o)

anyway probably this post has run its course..it's all been said before anyhow. cheers neil

We were told participation was a benefit to paying subscription. Hmmm, wonder if that make sense? Can anyone help me sort that out? :)

TOP -NEIL

NICE VOLLEY. Lost of 10,000 feet stuff. Good reading - very good.

Thanks,

SMA