Want to upgrade to SW 2005, manager wants to know how it will make us money (short-term).

"Short term thinking yeilds short term results"

1) You will need to be able to justify the learning curve for new features. Do this by showing how new SWX-2005 features are required to produce your end result "more profits".

2) You will need to show how SWX-2005 can "save money = more profits" Do this by showing that software improvements will make your productivity increase. a) Examine software performance improvements b) Examine more automated tasks, (hole charts, auto B.O.M., import other formats).

3) Most Important thing to analyze is compatibility!!! a) Does your customer drive you to upgrade to stay compatible? b) Will your company lose profits due incompatibility issues? c) Is it worth cost to stay compatible? d) Does moving to SWX-2005 make you incompatible (can't roll back!)?

Think Hard about these issues... Consider a subscription to upgrade service and justify its cost. Let the numbers do your talking... sounds like your manager is focused on numbers and does not want to be told how cool SWX-2005 is.

Prove to him a return on the SWX-2005 investment...& project the time frame.

Good Luck ;0)

The short answer is it won't. 2005 is significantly less stable than

2004 at this juncture. SP2.0 is better than 1.1, but I'm still crashing and hanging on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis.

I couldn't in good faith recommend to anyone to upgrade at this point.

My $0.02 worth

I have a feeling that's not the answer you were looking for.

Check the thread names "Solidworks Update", and a similar referenced earlier thread by Mike Trippoli, as I recall.

I'm not going to load the 2005 CDs until the an SP gets here which is "clean".

Each year the hype starts and the Betas are released and the hype goes up on the official SP 0, and then a lot of bitching goes on until about SP4 or maybe even SP5, while their regular users do hair pulling public unpaid beta testing.

I'm sticking with good old reliable 2004 SP5

Bo

Well, we pay to yearly subscription fee. The cost im talking about is the time to test/implement/learn new features.

Looks like 2005 isnt worth it according to the other post. I liked some of the features I saw @ SolidWorks World 2004...guess we will have to wait. :)

I wouldn't read to much into the people that talk about instability. Some of us are really liking SP 2.0 (like me). It's a machine by machine basis. As has been said a million times before you need to test doing your work on your machine to know if it will work for you.

2005 SP2.0 has been great. I haven't crashed or hung in 2 weeks. But my machine is pristine. I don't let the IT guy touch it and nothing get's loaded unless it gets approved by me first. I also don't let the anti virus scan my SolidWorks files at all either.

KM

I really like SP 2.0 also. The last service pack did something that helped make a really big assembly that I am working with run faster. Since faster means cheaper, that may be something to look at. Also, I too have fewer crashes that I did before the SP 2.0.

If you're paying subscription and not taking advantage of a new version, you're losing money because you're paying for stuff you're not using. His answer to that might be "stop paying", which is a choice, but I think the wrong one. Plus, if you already squandered the opportunity for the free What's New seminar that most VARs put on, then you lost even more money in potential free update training.

There are a few things in 05 which would take some getting used to like the "Task Pane", library features, the new icons for sketch mirroring, box selection/crossing selection, repeat last command and sketch trimming. Those will be things you may be forced to deal with in some way.

There are others that if you use them you will really want to be on 05, such as splines and lofts, Design Journal (documenting design intent in words and screenshots), multi-user environment, huge improvements in PDMWorks, copy settings improvements, entire model deformation like twisting, bending, tapering, stretching, twisting during a sweep, weldments with curved elements, exploded assy views, and a lot of small improvements in drawings.

SP0 is always a scary thing, but SP2 in this case is pretty good. People who are crashing a lot have other issues. Lots of folks using SW05sp2 with good success.

"SW Monkey" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Do you ever have a need to exchange models? That is the only reason I give as it is the only one I need when justifying the upgrade.

I'm strictly sheet metal and I don't know of one useful feature that relates to this aspect of the program which was new in 2005.

SW M> Anyone has any suggestions on this? We want to upgrade to SWX 2005

I also must say that sp2 has been pretty stable for me. I had been having crashing problems on previous sp's, but am doing pretty well on sp2. Also I just pushed it really hard with a good end result. Had a very complicated mold design which i had finished in the previous service pack . Had several crashes per day. After finishing it, I knew I had to do another mold with a slightly different part. Was able to mak a copy and incorporate the new part into the geometry wiht no difficulty. Still a number of re-build errors to fix, and was kinda holding my breath, but not one crash during a real intense 8-hour session.

That being said there is a new drawing bug in sp2 which is almost a showstopper for me. I submitted it to my VAR, and the guy I spoke with confirmed it and submitted it to SW 3 weeks ago. No word until yesterday, when they sent me the reply from some poor harried soul at SW saying it wasn't really a problem. I could tell from his reply that he must have looked at it for all of a minute. My VAR confirms that they have not understood the problem, but doesn't know what to do to get it looked at. This thing is an obvious regression related to the display of section views. I don't have anywhere to post it so that people could download it, but it's a real pisser that I went to the trouble to submit a regressive bug, and can't get any interest in fixing it. total denial.

Final answer is use sp2 at your own risk-especially if you're expected to create drawings.

jk

Unless there is some unbelievable feature that you must have in your line of work cannot then maybe it is worth the upgrade. Otherwise, it is next to impossible to accurately take into considerations all the factors necessary to calculate a realistic payback. Example, how much did users really save in time when they added normal plane to line? How much did they loose from software regressions SP to SP, learning curve, workarounds, etc...

Kman

jk,

The way to go about getting SolidWorks to get in gear with a show stopper is to get your local SolidWorks Regional Technical Manager involved. Tell your VAR to get in contact with him. He can, if he sees necessary, escalate the SPR to get fixed ASAP. I bust my local Regional rep every chance I get. He's a great guy. If it is that big of a deal to you move it on up and get a chance to talk to your SolidWorks technical rep. Find out when the next time he will be visiting your VAR so you can stop and introduce yourself.

KM

SW Monkey,

1. Are you the bottleneck in the product development process? (i.e. In the product development schedule, if you finish your job 2 weeks quicker, will the product be to market 2 days sooner?) or
2. Are you paid by the hour to finish a project?

If the answer to either of the above is yes, then moving to a version of SW that you are the fastest at can save the company money.

SW M> Anyone has any suggestions on this? We want to upgrade to SWX 2005

That's a good idea. I have actually done this in the past, but the regional rep that helped me out a few years ago got himself promoted and works in Concord now. I'll need to find out who the new guy is .

What's funny about the bug I was griping about yesterday is that while I was typing the above rant, I heard an incoming e-mail arrive in OE. After posting , I went to look at the new e-mail and it was from my VAR telling me that he finally had gotten through to somebody at SW. They have assigned an SPR (264106) and admitted that what I was seeing was indeed a regression.

All's well that ends well, I guess. I'll keep your suggestion in mind the next time I feel like I'm running into a stonewall.

jk

-Edit-

SW Monkey,

1. Are you the bottleneck in the product development process? (i.e. In the product development schedule, if you finish your job 2 weeks quicker, will the product be to market 2 weeks sooner?) or
2. Are you paid by the hour to finish a project?

If the answer to either of the above is yes, then moving to a version of SW that you are the fastest at can save the company money.

We are still on SW2004. There are a couple of reasons:

1. Retraining cost. I just spent about 10 hours this week carefully reading throught What's New in 2005 (238 pages) for the enhancements/changes that would effect us. It will take another 20 hours to try to understand the things I think we ought to learn as a workgroup. Then probably 5 or 6 two hour sessions to get the rest up to speed.

1. Or if we just Do It, I will be spending a lot of time as the need arises helping people get up to speed and there will be spotty use of the changes/enhancements.

2. There are a few benefits that might help.

1. We are more performance limited than anything else in what we do. I just got done running benchmarks on SW2005 on the part level and see a significant slowdown over 2004. I am talking about a decrease on the order of 10%. Add to this the less than snappy response of the "new" user interface which can't easily be measured and performance becomes a real concern.

2. We have had one instance of getting in files in SW2005 format. In that case it was a vendor and we just used 2005 to write out a parasolid and converted it to 2004. We could have worked with parasolids and have been done with it.

1. Some of the multi-user environment stuff would be a big help to us, but the hour long rebuilds of some drawings and assemblies just plain rule out going to something slower.

So my questions to you are:

A. Are you dealing with large assemblies or complex parts with long rebuild times?

B. What do you see as the major benefit to you in upgrading?

"If you're paying subscription and not taking advantage of a new version, you're losing money because you're paying for stuff you're not using. His answer to that might be "stop paying", which is a choice, but I think the wrong one. Plus, if you already squandered the opportunity for the free What's New seminar that most VARs put on, then you lost even more money in potential free update training. "

Matt,

That was the biggest argument I had to overcome in NOT upgrading. CADALYST came to the rescue with an article mentioning that 2006 would be released in 2nd qtr 2005. The late availability of a stable SP, slower performance and the 238 page What's New and subsequent retraining costs turned the tide. The other thing that kind of bothers me about paying subscription (and I do support my local VAR and SW this way) is that things like Salvador's sweep error toggle remain unfixed.

I would just rephrase your statement thus, "If you're paying subscription and" _ "taking advantage of a new version, you're losing money because you're paying for stuff you're not" getting like bug fixes and performance. I am not trying to be cynical. This is just another way of saying, evaluate the ROI on an upgrade as carefully as you would if you were making a new purchase. I would recommend that people have in house ways of evaluating these things like assemblies, parts and drawings that are known to tax SW, and like lists of problems that can be checked from release to release. Having in house test cases and benchmarks helps to insulate the user from the "hype" effect so prevalent when new releases are introduced. They also provide objective issues that VARs and RTMs can comment on.