Anyone tried using the latest PhotoWorks decals?

Anyone tried using the latest PhotoWorks decals? I refer specifically to
attaching a decal to a cylindrical surface. I have been fiddling around
with these %^#@*& decals for 2 days now and have yet to get a satisfactory
image. My VAR was real helpful too, he said you just have to tweak and
experiment with them to get it to work.

This would not be so bad, but I am dealing with 2 thousand parts that no
longer display their labels or artwork properly

I wonder what kind of drugs the programmers were on when they did this new
version of Photoworks?

 

Tried it, don't like it, complained about it and so far it has gotten me
(us) nowhere. Makes you wonder what the hell is going on at SolidWorks??

 

Trying to map to cylindrical faces, especially strings of them, is a flat
out abomination. Even planar mapping to cylindrical faces from current
view, which used to be a snap, is unbelievably aggravating and unreliable.

One of the hard things to get your head around is that the PWx-2 mapping
units are exactly backward of what they should be. To move something to
the Right, you have to DECREASE the Horizontal offset; to move up, you have
to DECREASE the vertical offset. From the first time you used a grid in the
third grade, going to up and to the right always indicated the numbers were
getting bigger, but the *&%)#@$^Y(@ got it backwards.

Also, if you map a single decal to multiple faces, don't expect it to stay
put. We have several files that, when opened later, the decal moves.

I need to check, but I suspect in my gut that the only reliable (if you call
it that) way to map decals to cylindrical or multiple faces will be to map
to the model as a whole and use masks to trim it out. I'll have to give
that a shot in the next couple of days and see how it goes.

BTW - SWx knows that there is a problem, and has known about it for a long
time. But here we are, 1.5 years after the early beta program for this dog,
and still no fix even though these problems were some of the first they were
made aware of. For Shame.

I know it sucks to lose even more time, but be sure to take the time to get
your VAR to report this as a bug. Don't accept no for an answer, because if
you can't use the same numbers twice to get the same results, its a freaking
bug. If the help doesn't say exactly how to plant your decal in the right
place, on the first try, every time, its a SPR for documentation. The most
attention goes to the issues that get the most noise, and they need to hear
on a daily basis that folks are being unproductive (=losing money) because
of this not-at-all-thought-out-nor-tested interface.