Where can I request helper programs for solidworks?

I use solidworks a lot and I often feel like most parts of it written by someone who has never designed a mechanical part in their life. I've submitted plenty of improvements to solidworks but...

On the other hand I can't quite justify paying for custom programming for little things in a small company with 3 engineers sharing 1 seat of solidworks.

Here's something I'd like to see. Any criticism is welcome.

A website devoted to collecting small solidworks helper program ideas and connecting programmers with customers. It would work somewhat like this:

I post a helper program idea: I do a lot of dual units work so let's say I request "A measure program that will automatically display in the status bar the shortest distance between two selected entities in millimeters and inches (or if the single selected item is an arc, display the diameter and radius in both units)"

Each person visiting the site browses through the project ideas and if they see one that looks good, they "vote" with what price they would be willing to pay, # of seats, and an email address.

A programmer browsing through the site would see what projects had the most support by the cumulative dollars offered for the program. If they decide to write the program (or already have written it), they can post an offering (a link to their website).

The programs with the most support would more likely get made. Programmers would get a better feel for what was needed.

This leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

On a more complicated program the specifications will be more in number and detail. Which makes it less likely a large group of people will agree that this is what exactly is needed. How do you mediate the process of refining the specifications?

Just because you *say* you'd buy something doesn't mean you will at the price the programmer offers. It's a free market after all. But part of the idea is to spread the costs for the "customers" and spread the risks for the programmers.

I'm sure the rest of you can poke more holes in this...

What do you think?

-Traveler Hauptman Mechanical Engineer Barrett Technology

Reply to
Traveler Hauptman
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I submitted this as an enhancement request a while ago. It would be wonderful, It would save me so much time and frustration selecting and deselecting things in the measuring tool sucks. I couldn't figure out myself how to control what is said down there though.

I think a site like that would be beneficial. I have many times wanted to make a few bucks on some of the work I have done, but it is hard to materialize on. And everyone balks at custom work because of the cost even though sometimes it is well worth it because of all the man hours saved by automating monotonous tasks.

Corey

Reply to
Corey Scheich

"Traveler Hauptman" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

Well, there ARE several apges out there, like the excellent one from Philippe

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or my own site at
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There are plenty of free macros, add-ins tools, and also some low price shareware programs, which are indeed complex time savers.

I get a lot of feedback and also some request for little tools or macros, but in 5 years I got 0 (zero, null, nothing) donation for the freeware ... and that's not really encouraging.

For me it's okay, I do the programming not for my living but to help paying online cost, webspace, tools for programming and documentation.

What's about the other way round? You buy a program for a fixed price a custom programmer would take and then you offer it for free to the world and hope someone is willing to join in and pays some of the fees to you ;-)

Just my 2 cent, Stefan

Reply to
Stefan Berlitz

In my experience, very few users browse the web for solutions to their problems. Users go to their VAR, who is not interested in selling tools below $1000. So the best place for the process you mention is here. I watch for the requests made here and consider them interesting when supported by several people. The problem is then to sell more than a dozen licenses of a tool before SW also implements the feature...

I could add dual dimensioning to the "Spliner" measuring tool in less than 1 hour

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problems are:

1) out of more than 200 downloads, nobody purchased this $99 tool yet 2) I'd wait for SW2005, maybe the feature is there, who knows...

find the project, find the "large group of people" and I'll care of the rest ;-) The hard part in CAD projects is not specifying/developing, but testing. Customers should be ready to pay some money, and spend a lot of time finding bugs, which will cost them more. If you want reliable and correct software, you must test it. Developers can't do it right.

Reply to
Philippe Guglielmetti

I got 6$50 in 1 year for free tools! They won't be free any longer.

For me it's not okay, I lost tons of money developing addins, I'm broke.

Good idea! I'd develop anything on a contract basis and leave all rights to the customer to resell the software.

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is the place to work this way.

Reply to
Philippe Guglielmetti

I've got a few macros on my site that are free for downloading. These are not full fledged applications, just little macros for specific tasks.

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go to the macro library page

matt

Reply to
matt

Perhaps one idea would be a central page listing various programmers' offerings. It would be easier than trying to track down multiple websites.

Reply to
TheTick

I wish I had paid closer attention to Phillippe and Stefan a few months ago.

I started a website, esoxrepublic.com, with the > >

Reply to
TheTick

Let me try to restate what I thought I was saying ;)

Basically I'd like to see programmers get paid and I'd like to see those of us who don't want to learn the API get some use out of the "programibility" of solidworks.

I am willing to pay money for solidworks helper programs that make my life easier. It's a hard sell to a manager who asks why such an expensive piece of software (nevermind it's one of the cheaper ones) doesn't already do everything I need it to. But I can reasonably squeeze out $20 per app for things that save me mouse clicks.

Now, $20 doesn't cut it for something that took you 3 weeks to write and debug. But assume that what I'm looking for is also what 1000 others want also and are willing to pay for immediately. That's closer to a living wage...

How do you know if we want something now? I'm guessing you scan this newsgroup and you also get the occasional contract or request.

And how do we know if it's out there? Well, we go to the two pages you listed and scan the solidworks code repository.

It would be nice if there was a site where we the customer could see each others software requests and say "Yea, that's a great idea, I'd pay for that!" and you the programmers could see both the project requests and the support each one had and say, "Yea, there's enough willing buyers that this might be worth my time!".

-Traveler Hauptman Barrett Technology

Reply to
Traveler Hauptman

"TheTick" a écrit dans le message de news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

yup. I registered

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exactly for that purpose, then discovered
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which does pretty much the same. Another way would be to suggest SolidWorks to add "small tools" to the "Partner Solutions" link in SW / ? menu. I know they were thinking about this some time ago.

Reply to
Philippe Guglielmetti

I'd go for that idea. I pretty much gave up on making money CAD programming years ago, with the exception of those in-house apps that they ARE willing to pay for.

Reply to
rocheey

In the forums section of my site you will find the few macros I have posted for free:

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You are certainly free to open up a new topic within that forum specifically for the purpose of soliciting such small API projects. If the local user group members don't take an interest in them, I will forward the ones of most universal value onto the API development group of our software partner.

DesignSmith

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Reply to
DesignSmith

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