How to Answer Them?

All,

How would you answer users who are reluctant to upgrade to SolidWorks
2004 because of the fear of unknown issues?

I believe this was the first time that SolidWorks Corp. ran 4
different Beta versions to remove the software issues before releasing
it at SP0.0; also I don't see any outstanding issues that they haven't
already addressed (no known issues with SP0.0).

We're running a forum here at work determine how many users would like
to upgrade and here is a typical reply:

" I believe that we are all in agreement that we need to upgrade to
SolidWorks 2004, that has never been in question. The question
actually is why the extreme rush to do so. Do we really need to be
first in line when the new CD's come off the stamping line? As
we have seen in the past with SolidWorks and other products, there
are ALWAYS some bugs that have not been worked out yet.
Where is the harm in waiting a week or two or even a month or two in
order to see what bugs their are? This upgrading as soon
as something new comes out is starting to remind me of the general
public's fascination with any new that comes out on the
market and everyone rushes to the stores and stands in line for hours
or days to be the first to get one. We will upgrade to 2004
and everything will be just fine. Lets all just be patient."

Any ideas, suggestions or comments would be much appreciated.

thanks,

Navy Diver

 

When I went to the roll-out, they said SW Corp had to improve on quality,
making it a point that they could no longer introduce software versions that
had bugs. They said even 90% success was not good enough. I think SW Corp
has paid more attention to the "bug" issue with this release. There are
still a few around, but nothing looks mission critical from my perspective.

Your co-workers have a point. You shouldn't jump in with both feet on blind
faith, especially in a production environment. Where I work, those of us in
Product Development get the new versions of software first. We run it in
parallel with the older version, basically running controlled experiments
with the software to try to detect anything "bad". In the mean time,
Production Engineering continues on with the existing software. Once the
new version of software had been tested for at least a month, and if it gets
the approval of Product Development, the rest of Engineering gets upgraded.

If there are new features in SW04 that you know will help to reduce wasted
time and make your department more productive, then you should try to
upgrade in the fastest and safest manner possible. If you DON'T see any
improvements that will help out your productivity, then it is always a good
idea to sit back and keep watching this news group for any warning
indicators of the software. Upgrade when you feel confident there are no
existing bugs that will adversely affect your productivity.

 

How would you answer users who are reluctant to upgrade to SolidWorks

I'd say that they're being prudent. Unless there is some compelling new
feature that is required to do your project, using SP0 of anything is just
asking for trouble.

even a cursory reading of this newsgroup points out the inaccuracy of that
statement. In SW's defense, I will say that they appear to have done a
better job w/ 2004 than they did with 2001+ and 2003--there are definitely
far fewer cries of pain to be heard on the newsgroup. That's not to say,
however, that there haven't been any.

Still--personally I got burned relatively badly by both 01+ and 03, and am
reluctant to jump into 04 on faith. At least for me, there are no
sufficiently compelling features that I need to jump in early.

 

details snipped.........

I'd agree with your typical co-worker's comment.

There may be improvements in productivity with the new release, but that has
to be balanced against the loss of productivity if a serious bug is found.
If you convert your data and keep a SW2003 backup, you can revert to 2003,
but what about new work done in SW2004? It is effectively lost until the
supposed bug is fixed.

I run a one man shop, and I like to play with new releases. But I don't do
production work until the new release has established a track record.

Art W.

 

yeah, right. give good ol' bob z. some specifics. bob z. doubts that
*anybody* got burnt very badly on swx2001+ or swx2003.
LUDDITES.

--
bob z.
p.s. there on fire in the corner of the world, there in misery...

"people with less brain power than you are doing more difficult things
everyday"©

 

bob z. would tell them, "quit being a whiney, crybaby Luddite and get back
to work! you will upgrade when i tell you to upgrade and you will like
it!!!"

what if Christopher Columbus decided it was too scary to explore something
new?

 

Thanks bob z.
I seem to learn something new every time you post (and it's been far too
rare these days).
http://www.gober.net/victorian/reports/luddites.html

We did a "What's REALLY new in SolidWorks 2004" presentation at our user
group meeting last night. Pouring through the "What's New" manual, I found 2
full hours worth of new features and functionality that in my opinion make
this by far the best SolidWorks release ever. <simple, prismatic, big ass
chunks o' steel disclaimer right here>.

I haven't been this excited since Smartmates and the Hole Wizard were
introduced. If you haven't done so yet, read through the "What's New"
cover-to-cover and I'll bet you find yourself jumping back and forth from
the book to the box trying out all of the new, nifty, way cool functions.

sorry...couldn't contain myself


Richard

 

Navy Diver wrote on 19.9.2003 15:20

Well, I jumped on 2004 (after being part of the beta process) and I love it
(as I love my cactus... Carefully).

It certainly is not without problems, but so far none have lost work, only
lost time. For my small business I a willing to make the trade for now.

However, if I were in your position with a large bunch of users, I would
wait for SP1. There are, in fact, a list of SPs that are are being fixed for
SP1 ­ so there are issues.

I think the big difference is that unlike 2001 and 2003, you will not need
to wait for SP3 before it is usable. I think 2004 has benefited
significantly from the beta process, and I think SW learned a lot by
trusting the user base for this feedback. Hopefully this will be the process
they use in the future. I prefer to have a new release that is usable when
it is released rather than 1 year later just when the next one is
released...

I normally do not play safe with new versions, but in your shoes, I would
wait 1 SP and look again.

And- I think your users will also be happy when they get their hands on it.


Daniel

 

bob z. must first apologize to the original poster for 'highjacking' his
thread. sorry!

Richard,
yeah, good ol' bob z. has been busy at work and has started a new hobby
(just a little hint: bob z. takes a specific gravity reading before, during
and after). this new hobby has bob z. spending a little time in another
newsgroup, but bob z. can not leave the group that started it all!

bob z. did the solidworks beta program. bob z. figured he wouldn't have any
room to complain if they offered a free ride on the train. seriously, why
would complain about the war in iraq and you did not vote for president!?!?
bob z. can not believe the stuff that is going on in 2004. swx is kickin
ass. bob z. has told a few of his co-workers that this release of swx is
big, very big. much bigger than anything in the past. bob z. now has to
figure out how to convince his boss and the IT genius (bob z. uses the word
'genius' in the most sarcastic manner possible) that swx2004 is a MUST HAVE.

thanks, Mr. Doyle for all of your kind words in the past and present.

bob z.

 

ok--you caught me bob z. I was just making it all up out of fear of
progress. Every minute of the last two releases has been pure bliss.

I'll try to think of some bleeding edge technology I can purchase as penance
for my sins....

 

see, bob z. knew this!!! :~)>
bob z. can read minds long-distance!
--
bob z.


"people with less brain power than you are doing more difficult things
everyday"©

 

For some of us, the chance to use the new functionality is much too
appealling verses having to wait for problems to crop up, especially
after having used it for 2+ months now beta testing for SW. It went
through 2 beta cycles and 2 pre-release cycles. The only difference is
that this release was the first release where SW made the beta's
available to the user base. In the past, only resellers and developers
have had access to the two beta releases. Then, they would make
pre-release1 available to subscription customers. I can't remember a
release that didn't go through 2 and sometimes 3 pre-release cycles.
Their thinking this year was that if they made the beta available to
the user base and had a contest to find the most bugs, they would get
more valuable QA done on the product. I think it was a good idea
overall, other than, there is now a perception out there that the
product has gone through 4 beta cycles, which makes some people uneasy
for some reason.
As for reasons to upgrade: if a person is concerned there are bugs in
SP0 and hesitant to upgrade, let me dispell the fear with this fact:
there ARE bugs in SP0. There will be bugs in SP1. There will be bugs
in SolidWorks 2012, as well, when it ships. Are there critical bugs? I
don't think so, because usually when something globally catastrophic
is detected, a version x.1 service pack is issued immediately. SP0 has
been available now for 2 weeks and no emergency service pack has come
out.
I believe that in general, the software is moving ahead, not backward,
so I would be assured that 2004 provides more enhancements, and fixes
more existing known problems than it creates; myself personally having
2 major issues resolved with the upgrade.
Since SW2004 is the new, released version of the software, I would
highly recommend moving to that version (I see no point in waiting for
Service Pack 1, for example). However, we must wait for the CD's to
arrive rather than to install from the download, since with the new
Windows Installer, you must install from a CD in order to be able to
upgrade to future service packs. The download version was simply
provided as a stop gap for people who are eager to put it to use right
away and don't mind having to reinstall once the CD's arrive.





There may be improvements in productivity with the new release, but
that has
to be balanced against the loss of productivity if a serious bug is
found.
If you convert your data and keep a SW2003 backup, you can revert to
2003,
but what about new work done in SW2004? It is effectively lost until
the
supposed bug is fixed.
I run a one man shop, and I like to play with new releases. But I
don't do
production work until the new release has established a track record.

 

One has to make a decision if the new features are really productive
and how will they be used. Some features we use everyday and will have
more of an impact on productivity. Other new features get used on rare
occasions and have little impact on overall productivity.

Re-training every new release is lost productivity as well as all the
baggage that goes along with each new release. I have experienced what
2003 did for our engineering department and the benefits of a few nice
features didn't out weigh the lost productivity from the problems.
Some of the issues were training, user error and of course software.

Having to learn a new release once a year is a big deal and takes
time. Users make errors learning the new release and this makes it
difficult to differentiate between software and user errors when
everyone is trying their best to get the work out the door on time and
correctly.

Kman

 

very well said. all of it. bob z. just snipped away some just for
bandwidth reasons.
there is no reason to wait for sp1.0 with this version of solidworks. no
reason whatsoever.
--
bob z.


"people with less brain power than you are doing more difficult things
everyday"©

 

swx2004 has a feature that will save bob z.'s company TONS -O- MONEY. a
fully parametric hole chart. can you say 'un-holy pure wanton desire'? oh
yes, this is how bad bob z. needed a parametric hole chart. this thing will
save time and money. can you believe it? time and money together!
honestly! they are back together again after all these years!

 

I sure have to agree with Mr Bob (Zee)....what if Columbus was afraid of new
challenges. I'm well aware about the fact that some users can't afford to
use bugged versions, but if no one try out the new verions they will never
get unbugged. If everyone was waiting for Sp4...it sure would include as
many bugs as Sp0. So the question is...who's gonna try it out....and who's
gonna look like the fool who did it. I've been one of those brave guys so
far , but this year I simply didn't have the time....I tried to participate
in the beta programe...but never really got the time. So far I've had a
brief look at the SW 2004 and it looks really good to me. A lot of new
timesaving features.

Krister


Navy Diver <> skrev i
diskussionsgruppsmeddelandet:
....

 

I WILL!!!

Richard

 

ME TOO

Krister

 

Here's my nickels worth...

Being on the BETA team (whatever you call it), I think this release is
great. Bugs? Sure, there are bugs. What software has no bugs? Don't reply
with any M$ products, because they all have a nagging issue to somebody...

I was burned somewhat badly with 2001-plus, so the hesitation was there on
2003. But, I did as others and ran co-installations of SW to see if major
gothca's were there. Same for the entire 2004 BETA. For what I do, I only
dumped to the desktop once, which is amazing in itself.

And here is my biggest thinker, if everybody is "told" or "cautioned" to
wait for awhile, who IS left to test it live? If everyone on this NG waits,
then are we going to all see a message from someone new that says it is okay
now, or just wait for SW to release sp1.0?

If we all wait for SP1.0, then if I were SW, I would release SP1.0 on the CD
they are going to send everyone. Problem solved ehh?


Have a day,

Mr. Pickles

 

bob zee quipped:

my 2001+ spontaneously combsted in my hand.

so there.

I got burned by 01+.

-nick e.