Soldworks update

I've been doing quite a bit of work since my "Design Approach help" and
"Solidworks is a Dog" threads of about a month ago. I thought I'd at least
owe the group a short update.

I'm happy to report that Solidworks and me are at peace now. It hasn't
crashed in weeks. And files haven't been exploding into a million pieces or
growing out of control at all. How?

[1] I do not use ANY external relations whatsoever.

Each and every part is designed as an isolated entity, as though the sofware
did not have the ability to do in-context or external relations.

If an in-context bit of geometry is needed, the relevant points or sketches
are brought across with external references turned off.

Yes, if you move a hole in one part you have to remember to manually move it
on all affected parts. Same thing if you change the diameter. Same thing
if you alter any geometry that would otherwise be linked through external
relationships.


[2] Any library or toolbox parts used get saved locally. A copy is saved
within the directory structure of the part/assembly. No external (to the
directory structure) references are allowed. Any part or assembly must
survive the "zip test": Zip the design directory. Send it to someone with
SW. They should be able to expand and open the part/assy without seeing
nuts the size of a SUV or any other anomaly due to library issues.


[3] Exporting geometry back out to DWG/DXF for CNC was solved by purchasing
Kent Contract's excellent utility.

[4] Lastly, a little more understanding of what Solidworks likes and does
not like.


The tool is very useful, of course. The ability to crank out twenty sheets
of blueprints (some people still need them) from a model in two hours flat
is just amazing for those of us who actually learned to draw isometric
projections and cross section views by hand, without computers and with
judicious use of electric eraser guns (raise your hand if you still own
one).

At the same time, it's a damn shame that SW, the company, doesn't seem to
address some of the imporant issues the software has. Not being able to use
in-context/external relations for fear of making your life a living hell is
truly sad. This is supposed to be one of the key advantages of this sort of
sofware.

Also, their customer service and support --so far, and for me-- leaves much
to be desired. I've had a support problem filed with my local VAR
(GoEngineer in Los Angeles) for over a month now. They escalated it to
Solidworks corp. and we have not heard a word back yet. Thankfully I --not
them-- figured out a way around the issue and was able to finish my design
on time. The prototypes will be out next week. I fully expect to get an
answer from SW then. Just to make the whole thing nicely ironic.

When I get the time I'm evaluating ProE. Just to avoid living in ignorance.
Hell, I might even take a look at this VX thing!

Thanks all for your help.


-Martin

 

Wow!

That is amazing. Good work.

I've been a Swx user for many years (since 96) and 2005 is far and away
the worst version I've ever experienced. I had been using 2003 up
until about 3 months ago, and I would gladly trade the few really
useful new features (not just menu changes) for the stability of 2003.
2005 not only crashes to desktop with regularity (multiple time a day)
but lately the added benefit of hanging resulting in the three finger
salute and shutting down SolidWorks. I've been keeping a log and it's
pretty impressive thusfar. The only way I've found to minimize the
hanging is to make certain that it has completed a command before
picking another action. This has significantly slowed me down in
development, but it's better than constantly losing work. I haven't
found a way to reduce the crashing to desktop. Your notes may help
that.

One of the designers here had to redo a part from scratch because it
got to a point where he couldn't do anything with the model with
SolidWorks crashing. It's sad.

Chris

 

What SP of 2005 are you on?

I've been running SP2.0 for a few weeks with very few problems.

 

Not just "Very well said, Martin!", but a hearty thanks for taking the
time. It is tough, as I recall doing these sorts of "Beta Testing" in
the 90s. It was gut wrenching at times.

Your hard fought battle report has given the rest of us the guts to
"Just Say No" to 2005 until these features are stabilized in a later
2005 Service Pack.

2004 SP5 is remarkably stable and productive for me right now.

I just don't have the free time to screw with relations that bust in
building parts and then going to mold cavities.

Many Thanks Again - Bo

 

Thanks for the update. I'm really glad to hear that you were able to get
your work done. And really sorry to hear that you had to completely blow
away your external references. I'm quite sure that many of our problems and
crashes are due to external references. But I also think that we have some
problem assemblies with no external references at all. So you might be just
going through a bit of calm before another storm.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

Yeah that's definately one of the new "features". I'll bring a part
into an assembly. I then move it and a bunch of my existing mates go
zowie! Nice!

I just upgraded to sp2 today, oh by the way, thanks to the coding team
that came up with the BRILLIANT idea that I have to have my original
install CD's to update the software! It seems to be a little better
today, but I'm not getting excited.

I also like the new feature that some mates don't show up in the
feature manager tree unless you choose the tree display->mates and
dependencies mode and then choose the part with the mate. Nice!!!

And finally is anyone else's confirmation corner turning itself off
when editing an existing sketch? I've had to just about give up using
the confirmation corner. It's a pain when doing 3d sketches because I
don't have a 3dsketch icon so, how do you close a 3d sketch without a
confirmation corner?

Can I get overtime pay for all this Beta testing?

CD

 

"At the same time, it's a damn shame that SW, the company,
doesn't seem to address some of the imporant issues the
software has. Not being able to use in-context/external
relations for fear of making your life a living hell is
truly sad. This is supposed to be one of the key advantages
of this sort of sofware."

VX has issues. All software does. VX addresses those issues
one hell of a lot better than SolidWorks Corp. does as long
as VX feels it's an important issue to them.

VX does not put the highest priority on it's UI. They do put
a tremendous amount of effort into their tools and making
thier tools work easily and quickly. I'm very happy with
VX's latest release, 10.81. VX likes to be a complete
solution. VX has their own CAM solution, VX has their own
reverse engineering solution, VX doesn't rely on feature
recognition technology as *the only* tool , VX allows
wireframe geometry to exist in model or assembly...there
really is no difference between model and assembly in VX as
it's not modal like SolidWorks is. VX has something called a
multi-object file.

Why not download VX and try it ?

I'm more than happy to discuss VX with anyone ready to be
honest about SolidWorks many limitations and pathetic 10
year track record. That includes things VX doesn't do well
and needs work on.

This newsgroup badly needs more SolidWorks users who are
sick of SolidWorks Corp's never ending bullshit and are
willing to look at other solutions *AND TALK ABOUT THOSE
SOLUTIONS IN THIS NEWSGROUP." rather than product loyalist
idiots who resemble exactly what I saw on Autodesk
newsgroups.

jon

 

Martin,
Please take a serious look at VX.

Our company just went through serious demos and evaluations of:
1. ProE with ISDX $4500
2. ThinkId $18,000
3. VX $6000
4. SolidWorks $4000 with surfacing add-in $1000

FYI, as a background, I have 7 years of SolidWorks experience in small
device engineering, typically smaller than a tennis ball. I was hitting
the limit of what SolidWorks could do in terms of free form organic
shapes. We needed a robust surfacing solution.

Our budget allowed up to $20k for a Solids/Surfacing package. I
initially wanted ThinkiD because it was the most expensive Reason
being that the most expensive is usually the best right? (Insert
Sarcasm)

Well I was wrong! After importing several different IGES files into
each of the above packages, VX came out the winner. VX's imported
models were the best.

When creating simple but memory intensive lofted surfaces from scratch,
SolidWorks and VX came out the fastest. They tied in terms of speed.
ProE and ThinkID were SLOW to the point of being frustrating!!

VX and ProE were the best in terms of complex surface creation. VX
being easier to create the target surfaces. SolidWorks only dreams of
being able to make these surfaces!

Core and Cavity design - Thinkid came out the winner with VX a very
close second. SolidWorks has novice core and cavity functions. ProE has
a $7000 add-in that was not evaluated.

Straightforward User interface - from best to worst:
1. SolidWorks - It could be my 7 years SW experience
2. VX - not as bad as people say, I like it a lot.
3. Thinkid - pretty looking but not very friendly
4. ProE - ugly and not consistent from one tool to the next

In the end we went with VX. VX 10.91 just came out last week or so. Our
copy of VX is arriving to our facility via DHL scheduled on Friday!

I encourage you to call VX and arrange a guided web demo. They do not
use sales guys like Pro E. The ProE sales guys always had to ask their
spplications guy for the answers to my questions. Your VX contact will
be an experienced applications engineer, NOT some smooth talkin' sales
guy! No pressure sales from VX.

Best of luck in evaluating modeling software!

 

My confirmation corner used to disappear all the time. More
importantly my sw2005 sp1.1 and 2.0 where crashing 7 or 8 times a day.
I found out several things.
First I tried to uninstall SW but noticed I couldn't use the
add/remove to uninstall Sw. I had to get an MS utility to uninstall
SW (I don't recall it's name it's on my work comp) .
I then was wondering if MS office was going to have the same problem.
Sure enough the add/remove didn't work on office either so I had to
use the same utility. Apparently something with XP SP2 and the SW
installs screwed up some fundemental components of my computer
(windows installer?).
After cleaning all the MS programs and all SW programs, (dbworks
included) I reinstalled everything. In the meantime I found an issue
(actually my VAR found the problem) with one part file that I use in
many of my machine designs. It was a simple representation of a light
curtain. Something in the Custom properties of that file got
corrupted. How? I don't know if it was SW, DBworks, or me, but since
we found that file, reloaded everything important, it's like I have a
new machine. I have had a few CTD's but compared to what I was
getting I'm content for the time being. It's a shame to have to
settle for some level of instabiliy. It doesn't seem right!

That's interesting about the external references. I wonder if locking
them has the same effect. If so, does anyone know of a macro to
traverse parts in an assembly and lock external refs?
Mike

 

No, I guess I didn't think of that. Really, I just wanted to get back to
doing my work. The easiest was to go for isolated parts and do the
part-to-part intelligence by hand.

The other tool I wish existed was one that you could use to purge all
references (or selected ones) from a design. Sure, you can disable them. I
want them gone. Not a trace of any of it in a file. The only way I know to
do this is at the moment is to start from scratch.

-Martin

 

I think we've gone over this before. It's the old (and sad) "no time to do
it right" problem. Having said that, the time wasted messing with SW issues
would have more than paid for the purchase of both ProE and VX (whatever
that costs) not just using evaluation copies but the real deal.

In general I'm pretty angry at what SW claims to be vs. what it delivers.
I'm also happy that I figured out how to make it work for my current needs.
It's a "least worst" scenario. I'd love to hear from someone at SW and try
to understand if they believe their won BS. 'Cause it's an undeniable,
demonstrable and repeatable fact that the sofware has huge problems, bad
ones.

-Martin

 

Martin,

It's not the cost of the product but how long
it takes to get proficient with it and find out
if the software can really do what is claimed.
When the software can't then the costs
skyrocket and many look for and try every possible
workaround, etc. in an effort to justify the
product and all the time they have commited to
it. From what I have seen objectivity then
completely dissapears.

SolidWorks has become a really slick marketing
organization. SolidWorks could have been more
than this but they got lost and set their
sights on making sure they were better than
Autodesk Inventor and nothing else mattered.
When you set your sights that low the result
is what your experiencing and what I bitch
about on a constant basis... the lack of real
world tools and an exceptionally poor hybrid
implementation. At one point, SolidWorks
thought it was all over for PTC / Pro/E.

Without a doubt SolidWorks Corp. does believe
their own bullshit. They wrote SolidEdge off
and I hope they are wrong about that. They don't
even think about VX, thinkID, etc. because they
don't really care about the needed technology...
just what / how Autodesk is doing.

So...you did what you had to do. Obviously
the problem is that what you had to do
negates much of the functionality that you
wish to have. I don't work with large
assemblies and I'm very curious to know how
VX does in this regard. VX handles the in
context referencing I have done very
well. I would like to know how VX works on
bigger assemblies but I don't work with them.
If VX can't cut it on large assemblies, I wish
this to be out in the open. If VX can handle
large top down assemblies then that should be
out in the open as well.

What I can tell you is that VX solid and
surfacing tools have so far proved to be
powerful and easy to use. They truly are
seamless and unified in their approach to
modeling. I still need more seat time but so
far VX has done everything I wish and has
done it quickly. VX seems to be coded very
efficiently... from how long it takes to load,
to it's graphics. On larger models, I have
noticed that it does take longer to regenerate
the history... that is the only thing I have
found so far that I wish was a little faster
Maybe that is the nature of the beast ?

I really hope you make the time to evaluate
VX and post honestly about it. I'm probably
much more interested in specific examples of
what you don't like than I am in what you do
like. LOL

jon

 

How many complaints & whines have you filed with them
so far?
How many fixes did you get?

Have you invented the wheel yet?

 

There was some crazed loon posting a bit back
(for years on end) whining about UIs and how
poor so many of them were.
Rather confused he was.

Perhaps you & he should have a talk.
Watch out for the nose.

HTH

 

<snicker>
A new buzzword .....

 

"4. SolidWorks $4000 with surfacing add-in $1000"

....but surfacing is not a chargable add-in with SW, at least not in the
UK.

 

Bing suggested:
http://www.gvetchedintime.com/­Personal/aboutpersonal/aboutpe­rsonal.htm

You still banned in those groups? Where the people that
post actually *use* the software for their purposes?

 

Here you go AGAIN, jb (You could not
understand it the first time):

[

Here you go, jb.
A little test fot you.

Create a solid cube, 10 X 10 X 10.
Define one surface/face as the "top".
Use constrained parametrics for X, Y & Z dimensions.

NOW: Replace that top with a planar surface with
10 X 10 conrol points.

You still have a cubical shape, right?
Move a few control points (NOT on the edges).

NOW try to change the X or the Y parametric dimensions.
Try changing how "high" that "top" is in Z.

What happens to your solid?
]

Clearly he does not wish to discuss it <VBG>.
But we all love his endless BS, right?

 

Not UG?

Have you told jb about 3dinkies?
He'll have a fit & call you names .....

 

That's actully not much of a test.
Too many variables, such as the IGES options
used and the sending system, etc. And the skill
& knowledge of all involved.