SolidWorks 2007 Beta4

Solidworks 2007 Beta4 is available in the subscription site.

 

Has anyone been able to get this to work?
I downloaded it and the installation hung at my serial number even
though my subscription is current?

 

most probably you should ask this on the beta forum

 

Goes to show they even have problems with the basics, still!!!!, lol

 

Neil,
Where is the beta forum?
I called our VAR and SolidWorks yesterday afternoon and neither would
support this beta. The SolidWorks beta contest ended the 9th of June. I
was too busy this spring to test but had a break this week.
SolidWorks told me they had email support but the guy on the phone
could not tell me the email address or the link on the corporate web
site to find email support. I also looked for the forum on the
SolidWorks community site and found nothing.
At any rate I got it installed last night on my home workstation. It
looks pretty good from the little playing I did last evening.
The SolidWorks Installation Manager is new and this is what we will be
using going forward; maybe I goofed it up at the office yesterday, I
will try again today.
Has anyone got any comments on any beta testing they may have done on
this or prior betas?
Thanks for your comments.
Ray

 

not participating myself but should be accessible here
http://beta.solidworks.com/
BTW as a condition of being a tester you are required NOT talk about beta
to the wider world - here, on the usual SW forum, or anywhere else other
than the beta forum.

 

Beta4 is available to all subscription customers plus Solidworks has
announced 2007. The NDA is no longer in affect.

 

really? ok so why is no one talking about it?

 

This could be worth a visit

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/products/SolidWorks_2007/SolidWorksOfficePremium2007.html

John Layne
www.solidengineering.co.nz

 

ok so I just watched the surfacing video and I have some questions )
1.is the push pull actually useful - it seems the polygon control not used
in the example might be easier to use than points? can I see zebra stripes
at the same time? the manipulation points must all lie on the boundary and
on the same plane?so no picking a 3d point and pulling on it?
2.in the past flex has been fairly useless because it messes up surfaces and
boundary conditions - does the new geometry handling preserve the quality?
or is this an overstatement and misrepresentation of functionality?
3.how does boundary surface differ from a loft? does it fail to produce C2
results readily like trying to make lofts with conditions stumbled in the
past?
4.'through out many aspects'...?so it is not fully C2 yet?

 

MAB - You have both polygon control and direct point editing of the
control points

MAB - Yes, as well as the mesh. You can change the mesh density and you
can have Curvature combs on both the mesh isos and the control curves
with thumbwheel scaling and density slider control.

MAB - Neil, not quite sure what you mean here but, there is a technical
limitation currently that you can only pull the points on one control
curve at a time. You can, however, actually move edges of the surface
with the movable edges, or moveable edges tangent option.

MAB - FreeForm is limited to one surface or face only currently. We
are investigating multiple surface. You'll just have to try it to see
if it works for your geometric case. It currently is also limited to
4-sided surfaces, it will not do n-sided (Fill). We are looking into
that also. It does work, however on a great many of the cases that have
been submitted through Alpha and Beta.

MAB - Loft is is for Solids, Boundary is for surfaces only (will not
boundary solids) where you require higher quality and can get C2 in
both directions, Loft can not do that. Also, there are many more
options and controls for Boundary to get your surface just the way you
need it to be. Connectors can be added either direction and they will
affect the boundary surface. You also have options for the directions
like Tangent influence which is very useful for "inflating the
surface, especially when it wraps around corners. You can also pull the
connectors to limit or delimit the actual surface built. You can also
build a boundary surface for a single 1st and single 2nd direction
curve.

MAB - Neil, not quite sure what you mean but sufficed to say, C2 is
not for everyone and every situation. Many times tangency is all that
is required. Boundary will also do better at tangency than loft.
Additionally, Boundary does not exhibit the characteristic of Loft that
puts the influence of the profiles over the guide curves. This causes
problems when you're trying to create as patch surface that "pulls
tight" over four boundaries. Boundary is also better than loft in
that the boundaries are not approximate like guide curves but much more
accurate and you'll see this when it comes to knitting. There is a
lot more to say about Boundary and perhaps I'll put something
together soon for our customers to explain, in more depth, the
differences between Loft, Fill, and Boundary. We have been working on
Boundary over the last 24 months (was supposed to go into 2006) and
I'm glad that we finally can give it to you. It will be the most
important surfacing tool since Fill.

Regards

Mark

 

Sweet Jesus! someone from SW spoke to me!
Man I'm going to frame this and put it on the toilet door for daily
reading...
Praise the Lord brother! Ask and ye shall receive.... )
BTW you don't know the numbers for next weeks Lotto draw by any chance...

Yes I would definitely like you to put something together to show the
capability properly.
As you know I am not a subs customer presently and haven't seen the beta but
if you can impress me enough with new C2 I will consider coming back.
However - it sounds like there is still important work to do and I know
what tends to happen is that we get a whole lot of bugs/changes in new
stuff...I see in the press images splines have improvements as well...I
would be shy of using this release for production until sp5 anyway from past
experience let alone aggressively using new functionality so I might even
let subs lag another release - all depends how stable you can make it and
how much you can impress ;o)
BTW the new mesh import/surface fit up tools are only in the office version?
I think a whole lot of people would like that in the core product.
Congrats to the team for finally getting C2 out the door.

 

also... ) is there multi-threading in 07?...you guys haven't said
anything about this topic at all anywhere or coming Vista. I keep asking cos
I am interested in new hardware...can we have something said about this
officially please even if it is only an expected requirements.

 

ok I have one more wish remaining right?...can recent subs customers please
continue to have access - albeit limited -to SW information through the
portal to keep up with developments - I am thinking webcasts, sp release
notes etc. to lessen the impact of learning about features and functionality
that will be new to them. Maybe an area set aside just for returning
customers?

 

Purely anecdotal evidence here, but we just tested out a couple of our more
likely to fail parts built in SW06 on 64bit SW07Beta4 and they didn't
break. No guarantees for anyone else, but this is the first time that we
haven't broken a major part in a new version since SW99 or so.

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