SWks Causes "Amateur Night"

Matt Lombard Noted the following, with some justification, but I have
a different take. Below Matt's note, I point out 2 institutions who
have not done their job in helping their customers to do their best
with the world's best PC based solids CAD.

"Message 1 in threadFrom: matt (m_lombard@frontier_net.net)
Subject: Amateur Night  
View this article onlyNewsgroups: comp.cad.solidworks
Date: 2004-03-05 21:01:07 PST "

"Congratulations to all the new users using SW, and welcome to the
news
group. There is a lot to know about the software, and this is a great
place to learn some of the finer points."

"However, rather than asking basic questions here, you might consider
reading the help or doing a couple tutorials or even searching google
for
your question. The main thing is that you'll get an answer faster by
trying to help yourself."

matt

I just sent off some Enhancement requests last week to Solidworks
about simple things which are not done right, especially for newer
SWks users, those who are stuck/blocked on an issue or those looking
for new information and can't easily find it:

I'll do a quick summary:

1. Help (built-in): Without multiple word searches and booleans, it
is very difficult to find some Help page you want sometimes. This is
usually when you want to try some aspect of SolidWorks you haven't
used before, in spite of using Solidworks for 5 years. (Not everyone
is a compulsive SWCP)

Without a SWks user's ability to add his own comments to the Help
file, the damn thing is as crippled as a 1st grade reader. I am
decades past "See Spot Run". (Can MS say "Adobe Acrobat" without
choking and pretending that they are irrelevant because they are so
small?)

Help Searching may be a function of the limited ability of Windows, &
if that is the case, then SWks ought to design their own functionality
or simply use Acrobat. Why should the best PC based Solids CAD in the
world be dragged down to the lowest form of functionality by the most
generic OS capabilities in the world designed to fit "everyone"?

We SolidWorks users deserve better. Any ...nix OS: Unix, Linux,
OSX...I don't care, but anyone who tells me that Windows is a
"professional" OS software doesn't see it like a designer/engineer
does (or the scientific world). I see so many flaws and
inconsistencies, it continually makes me cringe. I keep wondering how
much MS has to pay IT directors to smile and look straight into the
camera an proclaim their fealty to the One. Given the recent report
of some $80m to SCO, I think we have a clue.

2. Outlines of key SWks Functionalities in 5-10 lines: An overview
of the words and functionality at the top of each major heading or a
list of such headings would help new users with familiarization. The
SWks Help pages are obscure on some things.

Top Down Assembly work is not so clear and neither is Linking
Properties of various types if you haven't seen it done. This makes
me think a programmer integrally involved in interface & programming
wrote much of the Help, but no one with a lower level of understanding
takes a look at offering a form of Help organization for the user's
level of understanding at the time he first sees a new piece of
information.

Sometimes functionality you know exists, but you don't know the single
term to allow you to find it in the Help file. Sometimes an obvious
thing is NOT possible, and the outlines should be willing to note that
(Circular References and other common or known issues).

3. Sometimes the term changes (RapidDraft = Detached Drawing). Other
times the Help file uses word wrong and it is confusing (Load vs Open
with RapidDraft files in SWks 2003). If there was more checking of
features against the Help file, some of these inconsistencies would
get fixed early.

4. "The Obvious" sometimes eludes even the brightest person when a
mental block ocurrs. I broke out in a literal sweat in the 4th grade
when in a spelling test, I was asked to spell the word "of". Uv, ouv,
ov...damn.

Later - Bo

 

Bo,

I agree wholeheartedly with what you have said!! I hope they fix it all
- at least multiple word searches in 'Help'.

In the meantime, if one wants to take the time (and suspend SWX), one
can go to the recently offered 'Reference Guide' in PDF format.

Sincerely,
Jerry Forcier

 

(Bo Clawson) wrote in

This reminded me of the MySQL online documentation. They have an annotated
version of the HTML documentation that people can contribute to (e.g.
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/SELECT.html -- at the bottom of the page).
They must have to moderate it pretty heavily but you can clearly see the
advantages of allowing users of the software to enhance the documentation.

Joel Moore