2005 Looks & Tastes HOT

I saw my first hands on view of 2005 at the Anaheim MD&M show last
week. Very, very, impressive. Smart snaps and aligniment seem much
more evident.

Admitedly the demos were highly practiced, but they showed off the
advanced points very well. I also went around to the individual guys
outside the demo, and when I asked how certain things worked, they were
very competently explained and demonstrated.

Things I definately liked:

Advanced sketching over imported sketch images
Simple Cosmos Mold fill for single gated parts built-in was nothing
short of extraordinary for "free"
New Tools: Indent where a component can be used to create a recess in
a part with a given clearance created = absolutely fab. Other tools I
don't have a list with me.
Gear train constrained movements was great.

Well, I have put everything off to now. Time to get a new hard drive,
format for Win XP Pro SP2, add all the antispyware, and antivirus and
load up Solidworks 2005.

This is the most excited I have been since SWks 2001.
Bo Clawson <first name @ my domain>

 

What I have always done is to ask the VAR to commit to the fact that
the current release and SP are stable before plunging ahead. They get
all the phone calls and have a pretty good idea of what is happening.

BTW, how much time do you think it will cost you to do your upgrade,
reinstall everything and then learn the new software? I'd be interested
to hear a blow by blow account with dates and times.

 

Good idea about asking the VAR to commit...haven't thought of that.
Anyway, your only talking about a day for a complete re-install of your
entire system...if you have backups of everything, it's even less. If
you only unintall 2004 (no formatting of the hd), then install 2005
than it would only be a couple hours.

As far as learning...it is still solidworks. For the most part it
still works the same. The differences, although big differences, don't
take that long to get use to. We switched right after the 0.1 sp with
few problems. I was back up to speed in a couple days. Even a bit
faster w/ some of the neat things added (new trim tool options, repeat
last command, etc). I do not have a blow by blow with dates and times,
but like I said...I was back up to speed within days.

SxWx

 

Indeed I will keep track of the complete reinstall on a new Hard Drive
and time everything again.

I have done this before, in order to get a larger hard drive in my Dell
laptop, and as I recall, it took me the better part of a day, but I'll
keep track of the time this go round.

Getting a new hard drive and starting over allows me to achieve a
higher sense of security and backup stability, in that if ANYTHING goes
wrong on the new hard drive, I can just boot on the 'old' one.

Currently there are little 'glitches' in my swinging Gate's XP Pro SP1,
so I do not feel good about the outcome of an SP2 upgrade. I think
some other users have found out similar things on the OS.
Bo <@ my domain name>

 

Just did a 3 hour intro to Sheet metal in SWks 2005 at my VAR, Go
Engineer last night. JK above was skeptical about SP1.0 EV, but I must
say that not one of 10 machines was rebooted in 3 hours.

My first time using SWks 2005 didn't cause more than momentary
slowdowns to find new positions for things and new relation symbols in
sketches and how to flip them On and Off.

Us 10 students didn't seem to have a problem following Mark from
GoEngineer as he led us through part creating and the dozens of
subtleties he noted.

Mark (& poster "P" above) was of the opinion that upgrading to WinXP
Pro SP2 was still something that has created a few glitches with
Solidworks 2005, so he recommends you hold off on SP2, unless you
absolutely need it for some other reason.

SWks 2005 is a go now for me. I ordered a new 60 gig 7200 rpm HD for
my Dell M60, and will do all the OS & Dell & other software & hardware
updaters, BIOS update, etc. before the SWks 2005 install. There are
probably 10 Dell updates. I don't even know how many MS updates there
are for XP SP1.

Onward - Bo