SWX Documentation-Matt Lombard Nails It

ok here's another one

... and MS seem to be working on this stuff as well... is all? some? none of this useful in CAD? will it be incorporated in the o/s anyway and just be used as a matter of course in SW...? does it just need CADifying to be ok or is there nothing actually good about it other than it can be done... dunno.. I guess the only way users can influence decisions is to get in early with their views You know it's a little ironic to be defending SW direction when I spent a lot of time poking eyes. In fact the most noticeable reaction from other users is to put me down for being outspoken about bugs etc. If you guys want a specific direction you actually have to be active about getting change. Sitting in silence as most do isn't going to deliver what you need/ want. Really I'm the wrong person to be asking for justification or explanation or to be forecasting the adoption of technology ...except I do seem to pick em sometimes which is a little unnerving.. You need to discuss the future with SW themselves..first stop may be your VARs earhole..

and now I really have other stuff to do so I'm disappearing for a few months- bye all - happy 08ing ;o)

I don't know for sure but I suspect that one of the motivations why the documentation is so poor is because this is a major source of income for the VAR's to "sell" training classes.

I also believe that there is a fairly simple solution to solve the documentation problem and this would be a complete set of training classes on DVD. But, there must be a decient index system so that it doesn't take half an hour to find some little procedure. I have really found the wav. files from Mountain Wave to be very useful and a complete library would be fantastic.

Some VAR's have already made fairly good video libraries but they typically have a poor index/ search system and are expensive so these efforts are almost useless. If SW made a complete video documentation system of 100 hours and the cost was in the area of $1000 per hour, (just an estimate) the total cost would be $100,000. This sounds like a lot of money but when this is divided over the

600,000 plus SW seats this is only $6 for each of us. Who of us would not be willing to pay $6 for an effective documentation/ training system. Even if SW charged an extra $30 for one of the future releases, WHO WOULD COMPLAIN? And given these estimates, even at the reasonable price of $30, the profit for SW would only be in the area of $14M. The user base would be much happier and while no other CAD program has anything like this, what a fantastic sales feature. Hmmmm.... what should SW be doing?

Such a thing would be a win, win, win but the goofy SW marketing department is either sitting on their duffs or they just arn't bright enough to see the advantages.

Furthermore, the SW programmers work very hard to improve every release but a lot of the time, us users don't get the benefits because most of us don't find out about some of these features for quite a while. I'm about 2 releases behind in reviewing all of the new features myself but a couple hour video covering these upgrades would be quite helpful.

EdT

The best tutorials by far are by igetit at

I got a subscription and its well worth it, way cheaper than VAR training and much more convenient.

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By the way Jon, if you can find out where your temporary internet files are stored, not hard, you can keep the videos for future reference.

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Not that this is a solution but this is mainly why I started

If we all get in there and add to the Wiki there potentially be a good user manual made by the users and will include the stuff that SW will never include in their manuals such as flaws and workarounds. Now I understand that there is not much there right now but if you have something to add ADD IT! If we all just add a tidbit it could be a great resource. Currently we are approaching 500 registered users if each of use added one thing to the wiki would already be a powerful resource.

Ben

Dear Group,

Actually, instead of accusing SW for not giving us a manual just remember this: SW2004 had a downloadable pdf reference manual written by SW corp. Almost 1000 pages. I find it very useful still today. A while back SW said that there were a really "underwhelming response" to their manual, so it is not worth doing. Apparently too few people downloaded it. They forget to mention that it actually wasn't advertised anywhere properly, however it was possible to find it in some hidden place on the SW website. I guess it really pissed of the VARs, but of course this cannot be said openly. Maybe they were just testing their VAR network response. So they gave us something already, anyway. We should ask for the update of this manual. They don't have to write one from scratch. But saying that it never existed obviously helps people to sell 3rd party stuff.

Regards Attila

his latest entry covers a topic that has