Quality Software?... Oxymoron?

I work in a company that deals with Catia, Unigraphics, and Solidworks
as well. We have tooling applications groups who have to deal with
native customer dies and files. I work in the product group in which
we design in solidworks.

I tell you that to share this mornings ironic software rant by our
applications guys who use UG and Catia. They have just spent some
time upgrading both packages.... Catia to V5R17 and UG to NX5. They
have been using them for about a week now, and apparantly were having
quirks, and issues that unleashed an ironic rant that I've heard in
this forum so many times before. One of the guys was so mad he was
practically yelling his rant so everyone could hear.

But I couldn't help but remember the last loud ending to the rant and
I quote. "I can't believe we have to work with this shit!" It's like
they don't even test there own software!"

Aparantly we are not alone.... just thought I'd share.

Don

 

When you have users who will not push a CADCAM company to fix the
basics what do you expect? A CADCAM company is going to get away with
what they can get away with and put obtaining new users ahead of
existing users. It's should be beyond clear to users that solid
modeling software creates complex relations. It should also be beyond
clear to any user that rolling back in the FeatureManager isn't the
way to manage / understand all the complex relations that a part can
often have. Despite this FACT we have zero users that really care
about this problem.

http://machinedesign.com/ContentItem/68359/HowwasthatmodelbuiltSoftwaretellsall.aspx

I'm sick of hearing that CADCAM companies are the only problem. Users
are at least 50% of the problem.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA

 

You really should have some training on many new releases
before switching over. Works a lot better if the new release
has major changes, many new features, UI changes, etc.
Even just getting copies of the release notes.... and having
all read them well.

 

In your case 99.9999%

 

Hey asshole,

Theres a reason for this. First, most Soldworks users make simpole
machine parts, and dont give a shit about history or rolling back 4-5
fewatures.

The other reason is that this seems to be your new bandwagon, and peopel
just automatically don't care about your bullshit.

Daisy.

 

After decades of using software, my only concern is when those bugs
are not fixed pronto, in the high end programs, where I rely on the
software to make a living.

Bo

 

hmm,...the measure of quality,.. a relative offset of sustainable
values,.. or maybe,.. a submission to ones limited realities within
ones perfect balance of attainable social-economic needs, ..?

f&#k that sh*#,.. just give us something with performance and is
consistent!?

ah,... never mind... my hope brain cell was acting up again.

...

 

I had a thought the other day about the recent versions of swx and I've been
hashing out what it might be like to go back to using
maybe sw2001. I worked on a particularly large assembly back then on a
P3-750 with 256RAM.
If I were to load up that assembly now in sw2007 with my P4 whatever and 2gb
RAM, etc., I'm thinking it would be too slow to realistically think about
doing drawings and the other usual work.
My theory is that sw2001 should seem lightning fast on a modern PC and the
speed would more than compensate for a few "time saving" features that have
been added along the way. I do machinery so the curvy stuff features
aren't a concern. I think the delays with sluggish software have a
strongly negative influence on a person's focus, blood pressure, etc that
kill productivity.
There's a fair percentage of my work that doesn't involve swx files from
customers, although I do work with customer's parasolid files pretty often
and occasional step files.
The biggest drawback I can think of is being out of the loop on library
stuff. With access to a late version, I suppose one could export library
models into x_t or whatever for the old version. I'm not sure sw2001 would
be able to load x_t files exported from sw2007.
Anyone know of this being tried at all?

bill

 

Bill, you may be onto something which might actually have a chance of
working. I know they upgrade the ProE & Unigraphics format over time,
but IGES might pull through.

The 2nd thing would be for SolidWorks to implement.

Why is it that every single improvement needs to be in the main
program with its silent overhead, when you don't need it? If a user
like you, me and others are doing a project with prismatic solids, why
couldn't we choose to leave out surfacing and any other modules, which
we don't currently need, so our work flow improves. We could simiply
uncheck "Addin" modules we don't currently need.

Obviously that is easy for me to say, and not necessarily easy to do.
Still, Pro E & Unigraphics have a lot of addins they sell.

Hence, I think there is a reasonable chance that speed and stability
could improve if we loaded only what we needed.

Bo

 

we,.. they,.. us,.. them,... solids,.. surfaces,..

ok,..I'm seeing the pattern.

The undertones of separation and prejudice runs deeeeep...... in the
solids only world....

... 8^)

 

That little?

 

If only there was a way to assure that any new bugs are in any new
features only of a new release (where they might be most expected)
and not ever added to old features & capabilities ..

 

are you one of those radical curvists?

 

I'm telling you, there is a reason I still use 2004.

TOP

 

truth be told,.. the cult I belong too prefers to be called...
swooshist.

... ;^)

 

you don't need to use swx files from others (pretty much the biggest concern
for me) ?

bill

 

Not usually. If I do, and it is mainly vendor parts, I can always use
a newer version and create a dumb solid. You can do quite a bit in an
older version and then convert at the end if necessary. So I would say
use the older version for productivity and switch to a newer version
if needed.

TOP

 

You're using sw2004, I believe. Are rebuild times noticeably faster on your
machine than on new versions?
Is your machine kind of older or pretty up to date?

Bill

 

Let me put it this way. For a lot of conceptual stuff I am using a
laptop I got from a VAR. It was fine back in the 2001 era. It runs
2004 just fine for small assemblies and reasonable parts. I tried to
put 2006 on it and it choked during install. 2008 is out of the
question. For one thing it is running software opengl because is has a
puny 8mb ati graphics card. My STAR benchmark was developed on it and
is pretty slow.

So since this laptop could do usefull work in 2001 thru 2004 but can't
for 2008 my conculsion is that performance has dropped like a rock. To
put it another way, if 2004 was run on a machine that was fast under
2008 it would be blazing fast under 2004 (and more stable).

I never thought I would see the day when SW was competing against
itself.

TOP

 

Interesting. Has your swx2004 had any trouble loading a dumb solid export
from recent software?
I think I'm going to give it a try. As I remember, the final SP's of 2001
were pretty solid. I don't remember being too enthused about 2002 or 2003.
I think I still have the SP files and everything for 2001 (I hope).
If 2001 is too primitive in some way, I could bump up to 2004 and still be
fast, it sounds like.

I've seen it suggested a number of times that swx should offer swLite, which
could essentially be an older (faster) version with less capabilities, but
modern file compatibility. Maybe one of these days, an open source group
will do that
Thanks,
Bill