WF 3

WF 3 is finally released. Here's the announcement:
http://www.ptc.com/appserver/wcms/standards/textsub.jsp?&im_dbkey=35768&icg_dbkey=21
Ought to be pretty good after almost a year in pre-production. Hopefully, a lot of
testing got done and a lot of bugs got fixed and they finally made it to 50% of
functionality converted to Dashboard.

 

The questions I have at the moment:

Will it be good enough to retake seats lost to SaladWorks ?

Will the CAM end be fast enough to compete with say Gibbs for
production work ?

Will PTC continue to offer massive discounts and include CAM ?

Is 50 percent of functionality converted to Dashboard good enough ?

Jon Banquer
Phoenix, Arizona

 

Will he ever know what any of it is?

 

All 35 of them? No. If those 35 had it to do over again they'd switch to
Alibre because it will do what they need for less than $2,000 US.

That is, of course, a facetious statement but unless you can provide some
substantiated or at least industry accepted numbers what's the point of the
question? To create an illusion?

Compete in what way? "Compete" is a word the ignorant love to use while they
are incapable of comprehending the nature of the competition. Instead of asking
something so vague why not initiate a discussion polling Pro/E users about their
experiences regarding native vs. third party applications for a specific type of
"production work"? Anything offered by non-users; e.g. "I looked at it once",
"I used it years ago", etc., is worthless. When it's all done and collated you
will still be just as confused by the big picture but you can at least examine
the details for relevant tidbits.

That's an extremely stupid question. Anyone knows it depends on goals never to
be known by end users and market variables not yet defined.

Another vague, stupid question. Wildfire and Wildfire 2.0 converted enough
functions so an archaic UI won't contribute to the terminal intimidation of new
users; be they from the grassy pastures of AutoCAD users grappling with
parametric 3D as well, or those bumping the low end capability ceiling. WF3 is
probably the culmination of a focused effort to modernize the UI. What happens
next depends on the goals and variables mentioned above.

Based on the nature of your questions I forecast you will not be impressed by
WF3. Microsoft considers the learning impaired sector of the market worth
developing for. High end design and manufacturing software vendors can not and
will not.

BTW, What IS a Banquerite? It appears to me you're comprehension of the subject
matter would be rivaled by an intelligent fifth grade student.

 

Anybody want to tell him?

Sound reasoning.

 

tallywhacker wrote a lot of stuff apparently related to the Cliffy and
Jon show:

Well, although I can't see the beginning of this thread, apparently
because my two least favorite posters (who I seem to have successfully
filtered out entirely for quite a while now -- yay!!) were the
participants, the flavor of this post is such that I'm tempted to filter
this person out also. If someone will confirm that the author is either
Cliffy or Jon I'll *plonk* this person also. I'll warrant that the less
we hear of this kind of stuff the happier we'll all be.

'Sporky'

 

Who cares? Plonk anyway.

I wonder, though, why you'd read a post titled WF3?
You don't really think you will learn anything about it reading Usenet, do you?

See above and I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly..

 

Babbleon Jon asked:

Of course. Since the CAD/CAM market is saturated, any new sales have
to come from somewhere. This is truly a zero-sum game, especially in
the US. The corollary is that it will also be BAD enough to lose seats
to Solidworks. (BTW, lose the stupid "Saladworks" moniker. While it
may have been cute in '97 it is trite now.) And since all the vendors
count their total sales FOREVER as their number of "installed" seats,
PTC/Dassault/UGS/ will be able to PROVE to you that they have increased
their market. They will never start subtracting seats from that total,
say for companies that go out of business.

production work ?

Um, yes? It will also be slow enough for Gibbs to compete with PTC.

No, PTC will discontinue all promotions and discounts. This is the
best way to achieve market penetration. Just kidding of course. And
the "CAM" that PTC includes is Prismatic Milling (aka "Expert
Machinist") which no NC department worth its salt would use due to its
limitations. The "Complete Machine" option is required.

A moot point; it is essentially all you will ever get. I have heard it
personally from the highest source at PTC that the Menu Manager will
never, ever, ever competely go away. They have already hit the point
of diminishing returns and there are some features that are so arcane
and little used that expending the effort to do a Dashboard conversion
is a waste of resources. Once the NC side has been mostly converted
(don't be fooled by WF3, they only changed the Mfg Geometry features,
not the sequences) that will be it.