Everyone stop upgrading, dammit!

*sigh*

We're starting to feel the pressure to upgrade from 2001Plus to the latest
version. We have a couple of customers that have upgraded so we can no
longer work directly with their files unless they send us dumb parasolids.

So I'm hereby requesting that every SW customer out there stops upgrading
from now on. We'll bite the bullet and upgrade to 2004Plus but that's it.
No more.

Please...?

Ah, well it was worth a shot. Maybe I'll have better luck with MS Office
customers.

Joel Moore

 

Ahhh... No! I don't think soo!



Regards,
Scott

 

I'm sure SolidWorks or whatever would be glad to stop *making us
upgrade*...as long as we kept paying maintenance every year.

Ken

 

Upgrading would not be a problem for anyone if the file formats didn't keep
changing. I remember a number of other cad system who would keep thier
formats the same for a number of years. Of course, nothing much ever seemed
to change in these other Cad packages either.

Jay

 

Do you remember any _parametric 3D-CAD_ that has kept the format
for several years?

 

I could (& have in the past) written a lengthy bit on virtually
mandatory upgrades, but I'm going to just summarize my (& mine only)
opinion on this (20 years in CAD & 40 in design).

1. God did not have an eleventh commandment that software must be
upgraded every 365 days (ohhh...well maybe he did if God is the CFO
of Swks).

2. End users should have software that is as flexible as possible for
routine bi-directional communication (as not everyone can afford the
man hours to upgrade & train every year).

3. End users have limited amount of time for both debugging, upgrade
relearning/training (other things than Swks need attention, too, no
thanks to MS).

4. Productive End Users do NOT have time to serve as paying Beta
Customers on a virtually mandatory paid upgrade program (I never start
working on a new Swks release until Service Pack 2-4).

5. I'll be willing to bet the best Mexican food meal in town (because
if I loose, at lease I'll enjoy something) that the CEO & CFO of
SolidWorks do not use and upgrade and learn on their own each new SWks
release & subsequent Service Packs, or they would quickly go nuts and
seek a 2 year upgrade program.

Bo

 

Actually ProE had some capability to do this when their model files were man
readable. It was a simple edit to the file that made this possible.

 

I think this has been discussed in one way or another, and I think one of
the major questions that kept coming up was, how would one go about
implemeting what is new to be represented in the old? (ie multi-bodies) And
that is something that is kind of an easy solution. (ie has to come back to
a previous version as an assebly, possibly) But there are some very much
more complex operations that would require SW to code to complete this. And
as it is we are having too many problems with the code as it is (ie
crashing, bugs, what have you).

Another question I would ask is, how far do you go back? What is the cut off
for how many years that backwards compatability is supported? As it is, SW
as program is weighing more and more (as in the programs size).

I am not defending SW by any means. I am just pointing out some things that
I know would become major issues. Could they do code now so that they can go
backwards for the future...who knows. One thing about the future is that you
never know what new and improved thing that you will be implementing.

Idunno, My 2cents

 

Makes me think of HTML. Even though browser developers often added
"enhancements" that introduced unsupported HTML elements, for the most
part you could trust that web pages would display properly in any well-
designed browser as long as you stuck to the core HTML standard.
Revisions to the HTML standard are not taken lightly.

There are also thousands of XML-based formats being developed out there
that are designed to promote cross-application compatibility. Could
something like this work for CAD data?

One problem with this is that CAD developers would obviously feel
constrained by a rigid, open-source data format. It would make it
difficult for them to add features to their software that give them a
competitive edge. So it would be up to customers to let them know that
adherence to a common file format is more important than gee-whiz
enhancements.

A second problem is that there are current format standards that haven't
really done any good. Any CAD package worth its salt supports IGES, DXF,
and probably STEP yet there are often issues with working with these
formats. Why? Are the formats flawed? Are the software developers just
lax in implementing them? Maybe there should be some sort of
certification that tests a program's ability to handle these formats.

Maybe someday someone will develop a killer CAD app, release the native
format to the control of some standards body, and then other CAD
companies will have no choice but to support it or suffer.

Joel Moore