Dezignstuff SolidWorks Blog

What concerns me about the mentality SW are demonstrating with this is that is assumes programmers are all knowlegeable and infallible and that everyone else need only be a grateful button pusher.
The whole point about getting the community to beta test SW is that the programmers cant envisage every situation where the tools will be used and test for all of those cases.
This is also why we have ER’s.
Why would any serious programmer declare their work to be complete and always operable for every case imaginable..crazy and ultimately obstructive.

This matter reminds me of a business I visited a while ago to enquire about the min radius an aluminium extrusion could be bent for an arched window they would be asked to make.
I was told by the strategically minded sales person, ‘any size’. Now you and I know thats not true.
Should we accept their word and just allow for anything on our plans and then be surprised, disappointed or angry when they cant deliver?
Should we design things when we have no idea about if they can actually be made or not because we have no understanding or interest about say how a cnc mill works in practice?.
Is that engineering or even very sensible?

If something works everywhere there is no need to document or explain the basis of it since you can pick whatever takes your fancy and it magically happens.
If the programmers were truly able to deliver *the* complete program you would never need to study anything to do with engineering since you would just mindlessly fill out the provided forms and be happy with a general resemblence of the result to your dream.

This reduction is what has happened to rendering recently in SW as well.
We have moved from PW where a fair knowledge of lighting and materials and its application enabled you to craft your own work of art, to PV where you just drag and drop something into a preset scene and push the button and it looks, as Kodachrome, as every picture were a sunny day.
The interface is a bewitching adornment and the options light entertainment.
It relegates the user to a passive and moronic role rather than being engaged and technically empowered.
Sure its quicker if you can eliminate thinking and knowledge from the requirements to use it but is that a substitute for time spent acquiring real skill?
Is reducing every aspect of endeavour in SW to a no brainer state a valid pursuit?
I think you can go too far trying in making something simple and easy to use and defeat its potential and limit the potential of the user as well.

The hallmark of a CAD program is that you are doing something deliberate and intelligent with geometry rather than hanging together random stuff with no conscious thought or reason.
If it really didnt matter what we were doing we would be using Sketchup with Google Earth content instead, or taking to oil painting by numbers on the patio.
Surely the mark of a power user and consequently their worth as a designer is in their depth of understanding of the program itself.
Arent the most empowering programs the ones that reveal their innards to inspection, mastery and customisation?
I want to be prompted and learn something from the UI and the Help about how to take advantage of the built in functionality not be numbed and befuddled by it.
If I dont know very much about how something works or its actually kept secret from me how can I expect to make the best use of it?
Someone is paying for my expertise not my guesses.
Why would someone think that a program is better the more obscure the workings become?

With this proposition people will report bugs when they are in fact just not valid UI choices.
There will be no way to ascertain what those choices really are, you’ll have to wait until your VAR gets back to you.
What happens to best practices for modelling if you are led to believe it doesnt matter how you construct something so long as it is available to pick in the window?

I find this whole intent to remove informed decision taking from the domain and responsibility of the user to be regretable.
I would like to ban the words intuition and discoverable from the SW vocabulary permanently because in their use they equate to conditioning the user to accept a dumbed down existance as desireable.

anyway sorry to rave on – as usual my writing is probably not so good but I’m trying harder these days

Not to get off-topic (modeling challenge) to far…. Niel what you and Mat and others are speaking about are things that people making decisions about software etc. directions need to read. Ok so they probably don’t but hopefully an occasional piece gets through. I think it’s a paradigm shift, not really a shift (I hope) but just another tangent off-shoot, some people don’t want to be challenged (back on-topic somewhat). I’m always looking at questions on forums, blog’s like this etc. as not just a chance to show what I know, it’s much better finding something I don’t know how to do and figuring it out – one more tool in the box. “If I don’t know very much about how something works or its actually kept secret from me how can I expect to make the best use of it?” exactly.
“I think you can go too far trying in making something simple and easy to use and defeat its potential and limit the potential of the user as well.” Surely somebody realizes you do need to close the loop occasionally to see if you are getting anywhere. We would not have software, hardware, any technology if the process of achieving it was easy.
Thanks for the challenge, and the rave’s, and the place find them.

That hyper marketing stuff is not part really of the culture here so I guess dont relate to or engage with it.
May be thats the value of being an outsider- I dont know and follow rules that may be perverse.
Of course we have our own failings here..
It is perplexing to me that peoples thinking could become so conditioned and warped that an engineering program would need to be a marketing whore first and technically useful as an after thought.
It sounds very shallow and corrupt. I feel I should ask for a moments silence in memory of fallen values and wasted lives.
Because of the economic circumstance I think many people may go through a period of grounding and realignment.
Despite that discomfort it may not be such a bad thing.
For sure there are now many users of SW globally but does that mean that the more there are the dumber the program should get?
I thought this was a program for well educated engineers..strange logic..bad result.
I still have faith in SW staff to do the right thing and not be slaves to the corporate machine.
I think if they get their priorites right the ‘product’ can be both powerful and easy to use, and be a reasonable price.
I dont think we need move on to another store.
Presently they seem to misunderstand how to go about winning on merit.
It doesnt hurt to give them a few pointers from the stands to improve their game.

Why can’t a product be simple to use, easy to understand yet immensely powerful? Why do we equate power with “hard to use”? Sorry I just don’t agree with that sentiment. Define power. Not every designer and engineer wants to spend time delving into software customisation. I certainly don’t. I want to spend my time optimising the thing I’m designing and making sure it is right.

You can take this analogy across any industry. Look at automotive markets. If you were of a mind to you can spend £50k on a lightweight sports car, with all the guts ripped out, no radio, configurable suspension, tweakable engines etc etc. Or you can spend the same on a saloon with automatic transmission, surround sound, built in telecoms, climate control etc etc.

With one you may have a purer driving experience, they other may be less exciting but for day to day use more useful. In reality both need support from the dealership to maintain – unless you happen to have the experience to fiddle with components and electronic settings – not to mention the tools and machinery needed to do that.

I see SolidWorks as the 4 door saloon. I can do everything I can in that that I can in the sports car – just maybe not as fast. You pays your money and takes your choice. Or, you buy both. The sportscar for the sunny days and the saloon for the daily commute.

Sorry, I meant to add.

With regards to PhotoWorks vs PhotoView 360. At the moment we have both. In the future we will have a PhotoView 360 that will be more akin to what you can do with Modo. This is actually one area where you really can have power with simplicity. The new kids on the rendering block have shown this. Do I want to return to the old days of rendering a scene for days, then finding it is not quite right? No way. I’ll gladly compromise tweakability for speed and “generic” quality.

I tend to use flat extruded surfaces for planes when I am having any sort of issue creating one. I then name the feature as a plane in the tree so it is easy to see what I am using it for. I have been using this tactic for a few releases now and find it much more convenient. Especially when you run into having to create a point, then an axis, then a plane, etc…

@Kevin Quigley

Kevin some of us by nature are technically minded thats why we are involved in engineering and such.
We are the type of people who tune rally cars after work and thrash them in the weekend.
We love the sound of a v16 earthscrapper engine at work.
Being in the back seat of a chauffered pink limo with auto everything is not satisfying.
SW are going too far with their well meaning patronage rather than providing real information and allowing users to make decisions for themselves.

@Neil

whoops only one ‘p’..

Matt why dont the replies get placed after the post?
Is that an option? Its confusing to have the latest at the top or um.. randomly as they seem to arrive..

Matt, I will try and show most of these planes you have listed when I get my IT guy to turn on the SW2010 license.

BTW, I was setting next to Mark Biasotti in Concord when he mentioned the forum discussion. I laughed and told him just to tell you to stop bitching and keep modeling.

Steve

@Steve Calvert
thanks a lot Steve I guess thats why we dont make any progress with them

Hi Matt,
The issue of work planes is an interesting one; needless to say if I were modeling in AutoCAD there is NO work plane position I could not place. Simply because, as work planes require only three points to define them, being able to work with both 3D and 2D tools simultaneously means I can always satisfy the 3 point criteria. But they are NOT parametric planes.

In a similar discussion – relating to defining work planes in MDT and Inventor, with Autodesk – as yours relating to SolidWorks, I made the suggestion, all that needed to be done to solve their work plane issues was to ensure MDT and Inventor could place work planes with a ‘3 point option’ and that a switch (on, off) be provided to determine whether the plane created was independent of the ‘points’ used to define it or ‘tied’ to them, potentially then, being parametrically controlled.

Indeed I made the point, whilst the existing options – for defining planes worked – in reality the ability to select 3 points and use the ‘parametric’ switch is all that is needed; all other options are just another way of doing the same thing.

So from the perspective of your ‘Challenge’; as well as looking for ways that planes cannot be defined – to add – why not pursue a ’3 point option’ to be used whenever a user encounters a situation were they are unable to define a plane using other combinations they could ‘fall back’ and use the ‘3 point option’.

Mark said; “What about starting with the premise that you should be able to create a ref plane thru ANYTHING that a plane can go thru.” This statement defines the ‘3 point option’

Neil said “I think you can go too far trying in making something simple and easy to use and defeat its potential and limit the potential of the user as well.” The reverse may be true when applied to defining work planes. I personally think, plane definition was made unnecessarily complicated at the beginning by developers trying to second guess all the options. Had the 3 point option existed at the start – and maybe the only way – there would have been no plane definition not possible and the options could have be refined, over time, based on user response detailing the combinations they used mostly.

Neil, they are listening. Maybe that’s why we get this really cool tool to create planes with, I know I sure wanted it.

Remember all the B’n and G’n going on after SW2008 came out. They heard the users. Give them some credit.

Steve

I often do exactly the same as what Tom mentioned above—simply extrude a flat surface as a plane wherever I need it. This works particularly well in a model I know I’ll have to fine-tune and tweak many times with edits, since the sketch upon which the flat surface (plane) is based is fully parametric and easily/quickly tweakable.

You can also extrude several surfaces in one feature (like a “W” or “X” form), so this clears up the feature tree fairly well. Fast, easy, and editable.

@Steve Calvert

well yeah you wanted it…but Matt and I arent so enthusiastic about the UI..and when they ask about it you tell them our concerns are ‘bitching’…
ok so they ARE listening but who are they listening to and what are they hearing?
..anyway enough..

Well I’ve learned something here about planes. Was that not the topic? I started using SolidWorks with release 95 plus and I’m just learning surfaces now. I’ve done very well in the world of solids and surfaces is a whole new ball game for me. I like the idea of using surfaces as planes when planes can’t be created. Thanks Tom and Jeff for that tip.

I have a model where a spline was created when I did a sweep. I know that part of that spline is a straight line but it is still a spline. The flat part of the surface that was created from that “spline”, well, you can’t derive a plane from that or the straight part of the spline. It would be nice if SolidWorks would recognize the flat part of the surface or the straight part of the spline.

I have had to learn how the software works on the solid side and now I’m learning the Surfacing side and how to use then both together. There are may ways to skin a cat and many ways to make a model. Some ways are better than others. I believe that there are ways of doing things in SolidWorks that they don’t even know can be done. I think SolidWorks is still the most intuitive and easy to use, from an engineers point of view, which is there main focus. “put an easy to use 3D CAD package on every engineers desktop at a reasonable cost” I’ve got mine.

Mark W.

@Kevin Quigley
You mean Google?

2010 Interface Planes are identical to the 2009 3D Sketch plane UI. I noticed this when they released the Functionality for regular Reference Geometry Planes. The first problem I found was that the On Surface Tangent and Normal planes could still be created but it wasn’t the easy toggle that it used to be by checking normal surface option.

SolidWorks refused to call this a bug. because the Tangent plane could be switched to Normal by deleting the Face reference and selecting an internal Axis. Easiest method is to Delete the Face reference for selection 1 and add internal axis as ref 3.

I never really considered the Plane position being screwed up cause in 3D sketch you can sketch a line and that becomes the horizontal direction for the plane.

As for Horizontal and vertical lines I’m not so much a fan of them Parallel and Perpendicular achieve the same result. They can also be dimensioned to set the Horizontal direction or vary it. If you have Instant 3d active you can select the Sketch or it’s feature in the Tree and use the drag handles to reorient it. Maybe creating a Surface plane on the new plane will help set direction. Planes between two lines should be possible but SolidWorks disallows it because what would happen if the lines no longer intersect at a point. Your feature would fail. If they added an extra option to set Horizontal Direction it would be very welcome. Try creating all the same planes in a 2009 model then Opening a copy in 2010 and do redefine to see how those come across from a reference standpoint.