first of all, excuse the wrong english translation of many terms, but i'm not too keen on technical terms related to cad design --this is why i ask so few things on this newsgroup :|-- yesterday i've attended my var's presentation of swx 2004. well, i must be sincere: this will be the worse expence i've had in the past 5 years. they told us that 8 of the 10 most requested features have been added and explained some of the new amazing things swx is now able to do. i'll try to believe somebody is so stupid to ask such dumb features, but i will also ask myself how it is possible nobody --or only few users, like us-- asked for: - a better 2d environment. well, actually a *decent* 2d environment and a terrestrian way to treat sections and interrupted views... is it possible nobody has ever had to create drawings for "long" parts? never had to work on 3 or 4 or 5 meters-long parts having small details on both the extreme sides and in the middle of the part? details are *not* always the solution for this problem. i guess why we still can't interrupt twice a view of a part. and i guess why the heck i can't draw correctly the axes of a couple of holes without re-composing the view and the interrupting it again. and i't likt to know why it is not possible to interrupt 2 related views at the same time and in the *same* point. if i'm drawing the side view of a 2.8 meters mast of the stacker, it's *easy* that the front view will be 2.8 meters long, too, and it would be *nice* to be able to interrupt them at the same time. damn, i'd like to take a couple of the "engineers that design for engineers" at swx corp. and to see them drawing almost everyday *big* things in 21" screens without going out crazy. - a better way to treat soldered assemblies. we were waiting for a decent way to have an assembly containing some parts that will be soldered together. swx continues saving every soldering on its own and asking you a name for it. very useful. and confortable. expecially if you have a pdm... damn... aren't they able to save *inside* the assembly i want those parts soldered and the solderings' parameters? a soldering is *not* a part, it's a feature of the assembly, it's something i will do on the assembly when building it. it's something i will never ever ever ever ever reuse in any other assembly. it has no sense saving it on its own. - sheet metal. i'm not asking our software to be able to bend 35 times a random-shaped multibody sheet metal. i'd simply like it to be able to create some of the things our carpenters do. we manufacture electronic pallet trucks, stackers and whatever moves goods inside companies. we're not able to build a 3d model of our forks. they're made of 1 sheet metal, laser cut, with 5 bends and a couple of solderings. is it possible people at swx company is not able to improve the sheet metal engine? we'd like to be able to add a flange to fill a gap or whatever. - the manuals. actually, 100 euros for a 130 pages paper manual is a price a little bit too high. i'd expect to have a couple of manuals with a multithousanddollars software, but if they can't afford printing us lusers, they could at least sell them at a reasonable price. the api interface, expecially, is thinner than most of the magazines you find in n.p. kiosks and costs 100 euros --something around 120usd--. well i sincerely believe we're going the wrong direction. i use to buy 1.250 pages books from microsoft press or addison or any other company for 60 to 80 euros: swx printed manuals seem to have a too high price... - who the heck asked for that stupid office-like-assistant? if we wanted crappy software, we'd buy microsoft's applications. swx is a software dedicated to professionals and if a customer doesn't want to pay for a 5 days course "how to use swx for marine invertebrated monocellular organisms" this doesn't mean everybody else has to pay in terms of performances. i begin to be disappointed i have to change our workstations to have zero *really* new features and tons of ms-like aesthetic appeal. - new multibody soldered parts (don't know the english for this). now you can do a wonderful thing: take a sketch and overlap this sketch with unified profiles taken from external libraries and build a complex part. ok, who will use this? tell me *why* i should build an assembly in a part? and why should i build an assembly in a part if i know i will convert it to an assembly when saving? and why, supposing i want to do all of this, should i want to have the dimensions of the parts deriving from this assembly to be related to the original sketch? one of the advantages of working with parts is reusing parts in other assemblies. when you cannot change freely parts' dimensions, you loose the advantage of working with parts. or not? our var told us that most of the people was disappointed by having to give a name to every part of every assembly "because they didn't work this way when drawing with pencil", but i cannot imagine a different way of working. what made me sad is, expecially, that they spent so much time showing the way the assistant works, the easier ways to work for dummies and/or newbies, and the amazing new multibody soldered part. and what about things developed for people *working* with cad? just my 2.400.000 eurocents.
Gianni, Regarding your 2D broken (or interupted) views: You CAN interrupt 2 related views at the same time and in the *same* point. Here is how: 1.) Create your first view. 2.) Add the break lines to the view. You can add any number of break lines to a view; however, all breaks must be in the same direction. You can add breaks only to an unbroken view. 3.) Right click on the view and select 'Break View' 4.) Create a projected view of your broken view. The new view automatically inherits breaks corresponding to the parent view. 5.) ***Now here is the trick*** Right click on the new (child) view and select properties. In the view properties window, check the 'Align breaks with parent' option. This will keep the breaks in the child view lined up with the parent even if the parent view changes. You can also apply this to views you have already created, as long as they are projected views with the proper parent-child relationships. All you need to do is apply all of your breaks to the parent view and insert the same number of breaks in the child view. Then do step #5 above, rebuild the drawing, and the breaks will line up properly. This method has been available in SWX for quite a while now (as long as I can remember).
Don't let your minor language errors stop you from posting. Anyone who can't accept them is not worth regarding.
just wait a few months for '04+Hey, kenneth! This is the first I have heard of '04+. So apparently there will be an '04+ before '05??? How did you hear this? What is the rumor?
i totally agree with your comments on 'new' welding. there are absolutely useless. if i use them, i've got 6 different parts in my drawing and 40 weld part. stupid. i continue to draw oldschool way. i draw them in my final view. +++
i heard from a reliable source. to be released sometime around april of next year. that's all i know.
im happy with all the new features. But i dont want any new features until the ones already in solidworks work flawless. but my feeling is that there will never be a flawless release. if there was a perfect release then a lot of people would not get subscription service and just sit on that release. i dont know if solidworks world has already happened. but everyone that goes should ask for a perfect program and no new features. if solidworks did achive a perfect program. proE,Inventer,mechanicalDesktop and others would come running over to solidworks. the program has all the tools. now just make them all work.
[...] thank you *a lot* never heard of that. i'm happy i ranted this time i think i'll make a phone call to my var soon... regards.
Gianni, Don't worry about your English. It's better than some of the "locals"! And it sure beats the hell out of my Italian, which is limited to types of pasta and ciao! For what it's worth, you probably mean "welding" instead of "soldering". Soldering is what we do on electronics assemblies (although there are mechanical parts that are silver soldered, similar to brazing) and welding is what we do to big chunks of steel. Thanks for the nice description of why some of us aren't too happy with SolidWorks lately. Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems
that's enough to eat and meet girls "wine" corresponds to "vino" and "a room for tonight" becomes "una camera per stanotte". now you can live in italy i got it, thank you. you're welcome. thank you for your explanation of soldering and welding. i hope to remember it from now on. cheers.
: On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 20:07:37 -0800, "Jerry Steiger" : : >it sure beats the hell out of my Italian, which is limited to types of pasta : >and ciao! : : that's enough to eat and meet girls : "wine" corresponds to "vino" and "a room for tonight" becomes "una : camera per stanotte". : now you can live in italy : Viva Italia! For the food and the women!
Thanks also for the great tip! I just used it on a few drawings, but it's typical for the current situation and Giannis (and my) frustration: it does not work RELIABLY. When dragging the break lines, the views sometimes become out of sync, you have to click on view and unbreak it and then break it again. Also, some imported radius dimensions are sometimes not at the arc but rather a few mm off in the space. This, however, is a general broken view problem, at least here. Same for the location of the dowel pin symbol when it's placed on a sketch entity of a part. I can't understand that SolidWorks can get along with such issues present for many SPs, so I assume I'm about the only one having these?
