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Posts Tagged ‘2008’

Extended support for SolidWorks 2008

May 11th, 2009 26 comments

I originally saw this on Grabowski’s blog, and thought he did a rather oblique end run around it. Why do SW users hear about this stuff from the likes of Yahoo Finance and Grabowski, a primarily Autodesk guy? 

Anyway, what does it all really mean? SolidWorks will not stop supporting SW08 part way into SW09, but some time into SW10. Is this big news or news at all? I know more people stuck on SW06 or SW07 than SW08. Nobody stayed on SW08, did they? Why would they? SW08 was admitted to be a half-finished release, most of the changes begun in SW08 were not completed until SW09.

So why this news? On Grabowski’s blog, SW winds up sounding like the good guy here, although in practical terms there isn’t much good news. Here’s a quote from the original Yahoo Finance news release written by Nancy Buchino, SW PR person: 

This means that DS SolidWorks will directly address and remedy any Subscription Services member’s confirmed business-critical issue with SolidWorks 2008 through the announcement of SolidWorks 2010 in September – in fact, all the way to December 2009

This would indeed be news to me, since I have submitted business critical issues which have not been addressed and remedied. No, really, I’m confused by this. This would be great news if it included the release before the stinker, but it just includes the stinker. Why would customers want to continue using the worst release in memory? Why would SolidWorks continue to fix something that has already been fixed with a much improved version (SW09 and hopefully SW10)? If you can make gasoline out of manure, I guess that’s what you’ve got to do. It’s a noble gesture, and better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but like rescinding an increased fee that no one was going to pay anyway, this just looks like posturing. 

I know SW keeps trying to do things that are going to add to the perceived value of subscription services, but why not try adding something that is of actual value? Giving a free certification test with each license was a small gesture. Small, but in the right direction. This lastest gesture makes it look like they are grasping at straws to find something. Yeah, it’s positive, but it’s also nearly pointless, and certainly doesn’t have any value to people who either jumped forward onto SW09 as fast as they could or reverted to SW07.

What’s the problem? I think Richard Welch heard from folks on this blog that you all want options with your subscription, and that one of the things people want is to not have to pay for stuff you don’t use. People want to pay less money by selecting only what they use from the subscription options. But it sounds like his response to it is to give customers more stuff they don’t want. Maybe with your next SW renewal you’ll get an alternator for a ’72 Impala.

I don’t know. You gotta give the guy  a nod for trying, but I’m not sure the effort is sincere because he’s just avoiding the real issue. 

“Let’s be clear:” users want to separate reseller support from service packs and upgrades. Bundling them together is essentially subsidizing useless support. Will this piss off resellers? Youbetcha. Evolve or perish. Offer something of value or people will stop buying it. Hold it, people have slowed down paying for it. Yes, this is a sign to pay attention to.

Grabowski had another good idea – multiyear support cycles. Customers are mostly yelling for a slower development cycle with better quality deliverable, with fewer needs for bug fixes. Just adopt the Microsoft model – bug fixes are free. Support is nearly as bad as Microsoft already, although MS has much more useful stuff online. You can buy an upgrade or a full new version. The upgrade can be applied to X old versions.

SW employees say they need that subscription money to fund development. SW customers say “HELLO!!! You’re not developing the right stuff.” Or are at least spending a fair amount of time and our money on the wrong stuff. Disconnect. This is not delivering a “faster horse”, this is the proverbial “stone for bread”. I know SolidWorks has convinced themselves they know what the CAD market wants better than CAD users, but I don’t believe the results we are seeing are backing up that point of view.

Categories: CAD Biz, CAD Commentary Tags: ,

Legacy options to appease users of all people

April 25th, 2009 5 comments

windows7

Once upon a time there was a big bad software company called Megasoft that thought it ruled the world. So they made changes to the Megasoft software that people didn’t like, so people looked for alternatives. It turned out that a small company called Pear was still defiant and stood up to Megasoft. When Pear stole enough of Megasoft sales, Megasoft realized that they didn’t rule the world at all, it was their customers who ruled the world, and because the customers still had a choice, Megasoft had to back down and appease the rebelious customers. Megasoft is out of practice at thinking like users, however, and the cure might sound worse than the disease.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10227533-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/business/archive/2009/04/24/coming-soon-windows-xp-mode-and-windows-virtual-pc.aspx

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/04/24/secret-no-more-revealing-virtual-windows-xp-for-windows-7.aspx

So let’s get this straight – People liked WinXP for the most part. Enough people didn’t like Vista to seriously hurt sales. So Megasoft replaces Vista much more quickly than other OSs with something that looks like vista – windows 7 – but allows you to run XP. So you have to install Windows 7 and XP on your computer to get all of this. Do you need a new license of XP? Lucky thing terabyte range hard drives are getting cheap. Instead of seeing only the inconvenience and compounded complexity here I suppose there is a silver lining. You can still run your old outdated XP software from other companies and buy new Megasoft software at the same time. 

All of this is dependent upon virtualization, which basically allows you to run one OS as an application under another OS. An example shown on the Winsupersite.com example shows Word 2003 running in WinXP running in Windows 7. Is this a technological leap forward or a cobbled together workaround? In this case, both OS’s are Windows, so why can’t they just build the necessary bits of XP into 7 instead of the added resource overhead of running two completely separate OSs at the same time? The PC wonks in the professional technical press are of course acting as if this is the best thing since sliced bread, but I guess you have to be a lot smarter than the average Joe to see the benefit here: They make an improvement, but the improvement turns out to be overrated, so they bolt on the old way of doing things to the new way and call it genius. It sounds like an extra layer of BS to me. I still do not understand why people will not just keep XP, since the end effect is that you can still run XP, just a little slower than before. Why would you install Windows 7 on top of XP in this case?

Why is it software companies don’t understand basic version compatibility? Or is it that they DO understand, but sometimes tighten the marketing noose a little too tightly, even for their  callous nerves? 

The real question here for me is about how CAD companies that have tied their success to the Windows business model are taking this news. Is it a signal that you should hear ALL customers instead of just the ones that happen to agree with you? 

In a recent Desktop Engineering article, the CEO of one of the major Microsoft-centric CAD companies finally comes clean, and admits to being “market-driven”. I will accept this as fact. You previously heard this as “customer-driven”, even when the influence of competitors was clear. Market = you+customers+competition. Kudos for coming clean on that one. It doesn’t mean anything has changed other than we now have one company being more honest about its motivation.

With that out of the way, what does Microsoft’s move toward compatibility have to say to CAD users of Microsoft-centric CAD? Can we expect some version compatibility? Don’t give me the old “that’s not compatibility, that’s backwards compatibility, which is logically impossible” argument that we have been hearing for years now. No, it is all either compatibility or NON-compatibility. Backwards compatibility makes it sound like an error in logic by the user, NON-compatibility places the responsibility where it should be – with the developer. It would be great if SW finds a less 19th century looking bolt-on solution than MS.

Categories: CAD Biz, General Technical, Workplace Tags: , , , ,

SolidWorks 2008: What’s in it for You? – Part1: Interface

June 18th, 2008 No comments

 

SolidWorks Corp has given “the blog squad” (thanks to Jeff Mirisola for the picture) some advance access to info and permission to post it publicly. This seems to be the first valuable change in 2008. If you haven’t already noticed, the SWUGN site has also linked out to the bloggers. I guess they are ready to admit that we exist. These are both things I have asked for, and I don’t know if that has anything to do with it or not, but I’m certainly glad for the access to info, the ability to comment on it and the extra exposure. I hope this is something that continues. In this case, I’m limited to using existing materials provided by SW Corp (I can’t use beta to create screen shots), but they have issued plenty of materials for us to be able to show some of the more important changes in the new version.                

Ready or Not, Here it Comes

SolidWorks 2008 is coming. To me, this is a mixed blessing. I always love to get my hands on the new software, and I’m generally excited to see what is new. This release has a lot of very good news in particular for people doing assemblies, but the biggest changes are coming to the interface, and will touch everyone. An interface change always means a bit of a learning curve, and maybe some retraining. It will be up to you to decide how useful the changes are.

When will SW08 officially be released? As a guess (not official info), I would guess August, with SP0 DVDs arriving late August or September.

So, What’s the Big News?

The big news in 2008 is the interface changes. Let’s take a look. No, I don’t expect you to see it in the image above. Click on it to show the full image. It will open a new window, so you may need to tile or arrange windows so you can read while looking at the image. I’ll use details of this image to talk about the specific areas of the interface.

The first thing to notice is that the CommandManager has a new look and function. Instead of Icons in the old Control Area, it now uses tabs hanging off the bottom of the toolbar area. Some folks don’t use the CommandManager. It took me a while to warm up to it a couple of releases ago, but now (in SW07) I use it a lot, and like it. One of the things I like about it that is missing in this new interface is that the icons in the Control Area can be used as drop downs. The tabs don’t offer the ability to drop down. Minor point, but it’s still lost functionality.

Next, I think in the detail screen shot above, SolidWorks is trying to demonstrate that you can use icons with text under, text to the right or no text. Or maybe they are trying to emulate blog tags (as shown here on the right at CADJunky) that vary the text size of a tag by the tag’s popularity. The official SW handouts say “Common Operations Stand Out”, which can only be talking about the fact that some of the icons take up more space than others. Interestingly, there is a loss of functionality here, because the icons themselves cannot be shown in two different sizes as in SW07. Even when “Large Icons with Text” is selected in Tools, Customize, the icons are the same size as the small icons. 

In any case, what I see is a disorganized mess. The good news is that you can make your interface consistant, regardless of which way you want to see it. But the bad news is that you will have customize it right out of the box because the default install combines all modes. When you scan information, it is difficult to shift between words and icons. Whatever you use, use it consistantly, don’t jumble it up. It is just too hard to read. When I look at this, I can feel myself mentally changing gears, shifting from graphics to text trying to understand what is going on.

The CommandManager in SW08 now takes up the entire row. This means that you cannot put other toolbars on the same row as the CommandManager like you could in SW07. For example, in SW07, I put the Standard Views toolbar on the same row as the CommandManager because I have a 24″ wide aspect monitor, and the CommandManager never takes up the entire width. Notice in the image to the left that there is a vast expanse of unused space now in the toolbar/CommandManager area that goes unused, and you can’t put anything there unless its in the CommandManager. …unused except for the new DS logo which is placed here… 

Additionally, many SW07 users placed the CommandManager vertically on either the left or the right. You can’t do this anymore either, more lost functionality. Interfaces should be flexible because everyone uses them differently. SW08 is far less flexible than SW07.

The official SW materials for this claim “More screen real estate to design”. I don’t know about that. I see a lot of blank unused toolbar area and toolbars put into the graphics area. I would call that wasted space and a cramped work area.

On the plus side, adding new tabs to the SW08 CommandManager is easier than adding new toolbars in SW07.

Next notice that the Minimize, Restore and Close buttons have been moved from the Menu bar area to the graphics area. The buttons have been moved because the Menu bar is no longer there. You can access the menu using the arrow to the right of the SolidWorks name in the title bar, and the good news here is that the menu can be pinned in place to keep it open. A set of commonly used icons has been added to replace the menu, even though you cannot access all the commands of the menu from the toolbar.


I use the Avant web browser, and Avant enables you to put the menu bar in the same row as the toolbars, and actually allows you to put the Minimize, Restore and Close buttons on the same row as well. Click the image above to see this. This saves a lot of space, and doesn’t cramp the web viewing area. I personally think SolidWorks is being inflexible and obtuse by placing these controls in the working area. It’s a bad idea also because of all the other tools that are competing for space in that upper right corner of the graphics window. Come on guys, this requires a little more thought. I can see why the controls had to be moved, but not why they had to be moved there.

Notice that a new toolbar (which cannot be removed or edited) is also taking up graphics area real estate at the top center of the graphics window while there is this huge area of unused space in the toolbar area. This extra toolbar completely duplicates what most users have on their View toolbar already, plus it has buttons you (or at least I) never use, such as the rotate (middle mouse button), zoom (Z or Shift-Z) and pan (Ctrl-middle mouse button), but doesn’t have other buttons that you may want, so you can’t get rid of your View toolbar. What happens to all of this interface mechanics when you tile windows? Does it overlap? Disappear?

I think SW development in early beta forces users to deal with some of these issues just to get the feedback, knowing full well that they are later going to have to backpedal significantly. At least I hope that’s what’s going on. This toolbar, stuck in the middle of usable graphics space, is an unconscienable faux pas, particularly if it is forced on users. This thing has to go.

For the time being I only have one more comment on the interface. This is in regard to the new incarnation of Right Mouse Button menus. Essentially what they have done is to remove the most frequently used selections from the RMB menu and put them in a little toolbar above the menu, using only icons, no text. Remember the discussion above about the CommandManager and mixing graphics and text. Here it goes one step further. You have graphics only, graphics and text combined, and text only. Talk about shifting gears! Beyond that, it has some of the same problems as the new CommandManager in that in the new RMB menus you have to scan the vertical column as well as the 2-dimensional grid grouping of icons.

How many of you can identify all of the icons in the group? Probably no one, unless you’re a beta tester or SW employee. Can you spell “Tooltips”? If people are accessing tooltips to identify menu selections that you used to identify by sight (text), that is an inherent waste of time. First you have to scan the menu to see if the selection you want is in the menu, the phrase “most frequently used” being vague enough that it could mean simultaneously anything or nothing, besides meaning different things to different users. You find that what you are looking for is no longer in the regular menu, so you try to find it in the toolbar above the menu, but it has a new icon, and you don’t know what it is. So you use tooltips. The tooltips give the reassurance that you are selecting the right thing, but hovering is a waste of time. Why not just put the damned text back into the interface so it is immediately scannable.

I think the intention with the icons in the group is to shorten the RMB menus, and to minimize mouse travel by creating a higher density of commands per pixel. This is a great problem to try to solve, but it’s a bit like putting a bicycle lane on the interstate to improve gas mileage. Bikes aren’t used like that, somebody’s gonna get hurt. Great intention, wrong solution.

So, I think SW08 will be the great equalizer. Power users will be brought to their knees by this interface. Beginners will be on equal footing with the rest of us. Is this really what SW wishes to accomplish? Before this release, SolidWorks had over 500 icons. With this release that number goes up significantly, and now it matters if you know them or not. Also with this release, the interface is far less flexible – there are areas where you used to be able to customize where you can no longer do so. I get the feeling we are being fed one very pedantic view of interface design, and that there has been a lot of criticism which has been simply brushed aside, because the “powers that be” are not open minded about the criticism, and are completely wedded to this this wacky and wasteful arrangement. If the SW07 interface were translated into Swahili, I would eventually learn it and become used to running it, and maybe even like it. The new interface couldn’t be more of a change if it were actually translated into Swahili.

So in case you were wondering, no, I’m not too impressed with the new interface. It is a disorganized mess, and requires too much mental gear shifting between scanning for graphics and text, in 1-dimensional rows (toolbars) and columns (menus) or 2D grids (new toolbar and menu functionality). It will become more important than ever for people to simply memorize the interface, and I know this will cause me to make more use of hotkeys than ever.

I think CAD admins responsible for large installations are going to seriously balk before rolling this out to a large group of users. What are the benefits that come from these changes? Are they real or wishful thinking? Are they change for the sake of change, or does someone really expect this to be something positive? Initial productivity is certainly going to take a hit across the board. SW is betting on the changes being or becoming ”intuitive”, which I very highly doubt.

To be fair, I have talked to a couple of optimists among the blogger group who said that at first they didn’t like the new interface, but it grew on them over time. I’ve talked to one SW person in a very influential position who asked not to be named, but said he secretly dreaded the effect of the changes on the user base at large. I’m trying to be fair. If I say something is a disaster, I say why, and try to give examples. I don’t think I’m just being a stick-in-the-mud curmudgeon simply opposed to change in any form, I agree with what I think are the reasons for the changes, I just disagree with the conclusions they reached on how to do it. I don’t want to be thought of as bashing SW, but offering constructive criticism, including reasons and alternatives. This is a rational rather than an emotional rant.

There are several other interface changes which I can’t talk about at this point because they weren’t covered by the press release. Additionally, there were things that changed between beta 1 and beta 2 which roll back some of the changes to some extent. It was unclear whether the changes were intentional or bugs.

These interface changes are also interesting in light of John McEleney’s presentation at Charlotte, NC which I attended. He talked about the web interface book called “Don’t make me think”. John quoted the book as saying “Eliminate unnecessary words”. The author seems to be making the point that an interface should be visual and graphic. I would agree, making the additional point that if you are going to mix metaphors, it is ok to have text menus and graphic toolbars, but mixing the two is a bad idea. John also spoke about the differences between how kids use a computer interface (for example, Cosmic Blobs, check out the interface) and adults. “Kids just jump in and start doing it. Adults want to know where the File menu is.” From the sounds of all that, aparently, SW thinks most of their users are in the 13-19 year old gaming demographic. Taking an academic look at the future is one thing. Building usable engineering software for the present, it seems, is entirely another.

Of course it is not the least of my worries what this new interface is going to do to the next version of the SW Bible. I’m going to have a pretty extensive edit on my hands!

Anyway, my idea of efficient interface design is clearly different from the folks at SW, at least in this latest incarnation. There will be additional parts to this report, focusing next on RealView Scenes and Appearances, Assemblies, Drawings and Sketching. I got most of the bad news out of the way first. In my opinion, Assemblies is the area that received the most useful enhancements.

Categories: CAD Biz, CAD Commentary, CAD admin Tags: ,

SolidWorks World 2008 Presentations

April 20th, 2008 10 comments

Well, “they” told us not to give out links to the SolidWorks World 2008 presentations, like I did last year. If you make more silly rules, people will just find silly new ways around them. Might as well just make rules that people can live with instead.

So, since the material on the website is not copyrighted, I downloaded it all, zipped it up, and uploaded it to my FTP. 1.3 GB of powerpoint data on a bunch of topics. If the traffic kills my server, you will know shortly enough.

In previous years, SolidWorks put the name of the presentation in the file. This year the file names have been improved and they just contain the day and time of the presentation, which I think you will agree is the information you are really looking for if you dig deep down and just admit it. You can find people by last names, but you’re on your own for the topics. You can find the agenda to match the time to the topic here.

Not all of the presentations are here, because not all of them made it to the SW website. Mine for example. I was too lazy to submit it, and it wasn’t written until a couple of days before the conference (and the submission deadline was weeks before that). Anyway, this is all I can do to try to keep the SolidWorks Community informed. Have at it.

Categories: User Groups, sw world Tags: , ,

SW and MS: Parallel Universes

April 15th, 2008 5 comments

Read this bit from Yahoo! news. Wow. Microsoft might have to cave in to users. Deja Vu all over again. Vista is a useless step backwards. There are no compelling reasons to move “ahead” into Vista, when XP does what you need it to do without upgrading your hardware. Another blow to those who seek empty change for the sake of needing more money.

Sound familiar at all? SW08 has bogged things down with (mostly) useless interface changes, and has obsoleted a lot of previously perfectly good CAD hardware. Who needs that? What compelling reason do you have to move to SW08? My customers still aren’t moving. I’m still doing most of my paid modeling work in 2007.

The adoption rate for SW 2008 I’m going to guess is currently in the 40-50% range right now, based on talking to a lot of user group users, and the 2008 release life cycle is well over half done. That’s dismal.

At this time last year, SW08 beta was available to customers. So SW’s 9 month cycle has slipped to 11, 12, 13… Users have been demanding this, so maybe they are caving in a little. Maybe Jeff Ray isn’t as utterly full of bovine ordure as that starched and spit shined exterior suggests. As I’ve said before, “the proof is in the pudding”. We’ll wait and see.

These software companies trying to horse around the user are clearly out of touch with their customers. They’ve got the cart before the horse. SW continues to claim that they are customer driven, but I don’t believe a word of it. They are driven by competition, and internally by career oriented politics. There is very little customer driven about this company.

C’mon, where’s that next big thing?

Categories: CAD Commentary, General Technical, Hardware, Rant, SW Interface, SW Quality, User Groups Tags: , ,

A lot of great functionality has been overshadowed by the 2008 interface flap

February 19th, 2008 No comments

It must be frustrating to be a programmer who worked on some of the great functionality added in 2008. All of the publicity has gone to the interface disaster rather than to the useful stuff. It may be hard to prove from the 2008 publicity to date, but there have been changes other than the interface in SW2008. Here are some of my favorites.

Scan To 3D

If you work with point cloud or mesh file data, the changes to Scan To 3D in 2008 are a must. The 2007 version of the software was pretty weak. It may have been released just so they could tell investors it was released, because it didn’t do much for users. The 2008 version is functional. Some of the functionality added includes merging meshes, getting an intersection curve between a plane and the mesh, and many improvements in the quality of finished surfaces.

FeatureManager filter
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The FeatureManager Filter may be the most useful improvement in 2008. It is just the area next to the funnel image above the name of the part in the FeatureManager. When you start typing in it, it sorts through the features in the FM or the parts in the assembly tree. It can sort on a lot of different types of data including custom properties of parts, or feature descriptions. This tool is fast and easy to use, and will save you tons of time when looking for stuff. This is a great example of what can go right in SolidWorks. As I understand it, the credit for this function goes to Jim Wilkinson. Thanks, Jim! I use this one frequently.

Spline on Surface

Sometimes you just have to do it. You don’t want to because you know it’s gonna hurt, but you do it anyway. Sometimes you can’t avoid drawing a spline on the curved face of a part. In 2008 it still hurts, but it hurts a little less. With 2008 you can now sketch across edges between faces with a Spline On Surface as long as the edge is tangent or c2. Don’t ask why, sometimes you just have to do it. I’m glad its there. It’s not just feature bloat, it’s a useful function.
Cosmetic Patterns

For those sheet metal perforators out there, put that Geometry Pattern option down, and step back from the mouse! Cosmetic Patterns are now available as Real View options. Of course that means you have to have the hardware to use RealView and put up with some of its less savory quirks, but its an option.

Split Lines

This is one I haven’t tested out yet, but if its true, it will be huge. Split Lines used to completely rename all of the edges of faces that they split, and could really cause havoc if you rolled back a part and applied a Split Line. The What’s New says that doesn’t happen any more. Great news if it is true!

Insert and Mirrored parts

Have you ever created a mirrored part and then wished that you had the ability to copy the features and break the link to the original? No, well listen up anyway, this might still be useful. The image on the left shows the PropMgr for the Mirror/Insert Part feature. They are really the same function, but the Mirror feature adds a Move/Copy Body feature at the end of the feature list. Interesting and magical use of the Move/Copy since I didn’t know it could mirror.Anyway, the image in the middle shows the result if you keep the inserted part linked to the parent, and the image on the right shows what happens if you break the link. Of course the REALLY big news here is that you can bring over sketch data instead of just solids and surfaces and ref geometry. These are important functionality additions.

Split Part

The Split feature has been much maligned. It had some problems that made it sometimes blow up some of your parts. No big deal really, you’d just lose all of the features in parts that started from a Split. Anyway, one of the 250 new enhancements turns out to be a massive bug fix that required reworking this function significantly. I’ve done some basic testing to make sure the feature works, but I haven’t actively tried hard to break it, so I’m not 100% on if the goal here has been accomplished or not. The problem with this was that using Split to make an assembly from a set of solid bodies was just far too convenient to ignore.

They have left us some room to grow with this feature, though. One of my favorite enhancement requests is to be able to split surfaces as well as solids. Always whining about something, huh?

Weld Beads and Sheet Metal

How many people have I heard ask for this?!? Finally! I haven’t worked with it much myself, but it still sounds great.

What are your favorite new (non-interface) enhancements?

Categories: Review Tags: ,

SolidWorks World extends to the plane ride home

January 23rd, 2008 No comments

I always dread the indignity of airports and being herded into planes. Plus, I’m a little socially claustrophobic. Airlines know this and put me in the last row on the plane in a middle seat – as trapped as you can get. In my trip to San Diego, of 4 flights, I was on the absolute last row on 3 of those flights. Somebody needs to show me that secret handshake.

Anyway, on the flight from San Diego to Atlanta, I was wearing a SolidWorks shirt, and the stewardess stopped to say “SolidWorks! My husband loves that stuff!” I don’t usually get people I meet out in the everyday world recognize SolidWorks, so it was kind of cool to make a connection like that.

I noticed the guy next to me was reading everything in French, so not being a French speaker myself, decided to let him fly in peace. But later in the flight he started the conversation in English. It turned out that he was a SolidWorks reseller from France. I didn’t catch his name, but we talked about the relationship between SW and DS, and also how the French were happy about the #2 at SW being Bertrand Sicot (hope I’m getting that right), who MCed the main stage during the general session one day at SWW.

We talked briefly about the SW08 release. He was in general very excited about the new version, but said that they as a reseller were in some hot water with their customers because of problems with the software. His impression was that SP3 and SP4 were going to fix the biggest problems that they had.

I had one SW07 Bible left in my carryon bag, and gave it to him. He hadn’t heard of it before, so I figured it could only be a good thing to spread the word a little.

I didn’t envy my French friend because he was boarding another flight at 8 pm to fly to Paris to arrive at 11 am after the ride from San Diego to Atlanta.

Categories: SW Quality Tags:

Everybody loves a train wreck

December 13th, 2007 No comments

 

Who knows why, but my business and my blog both seem to thrive on other people’s disaster.  The number of hits on my blog has tripled in the last week, and one post had 6X the traffic I normally get. Everybody loves a train wreck. 

When models go south or file management practices blow up, I get a call and get to help people out. When SolidWorks melts down in a new release, I’m right there to welcome the news. When the SolidWorks forum needs a kick in the pants, I’m lucky enough to be the guy who gets struck by lightning for the 8th time this year. Several people recently have reminded me of my symbiotic love-hate relationship with the SW Corp and software. I guess I’d be nowhere if they were consistantly good at this. On the other hand, I guess they’d be nowhere if they were consistantly this bad at it, but an occasional train wreck is good for business.

Am I gloating? Well, yes. Now that sp1 has hit (and been removed and replaced unexplainedly with sp1.1) everyday users are starting to see for themselves what SW08 has in store, which is for the most part, you guessed it, another train wreck. This is kind of an unfortunate train wreck, though, because it is masking some other enhancements that look good on paper.

In various places, I’ve heard people say that their reseller said that SW made these interface changes because all of the mid-range CAD products are starting to look the same (I wonder how that happens when SW is copying as much Inventor functionality as they can hack together). That is completely believable. It means that marketing is driving the bus, and the UI changes were not customer driven at all.

Another person said that a SW RTM (regional technical manager) said that SW is driven to change because of the competition. This was a commendably honest answer for an employee. If I hear one more person say “SolidWorks is a customer driven company”, I’m going to puke. They are driven by competition, not by customers. If they were driven by customers, they would take a release and just fix things, or come up with an alternative OS solution, or not release software until its ready, or enable SW2005 to open SW2008 files.

Instead, if there is a particular function you would like added to SolidWorks, send an enhancement request to Autodesk, you have more chance of seeing it.

Categories: CAD Commentary Tags: ,

Is There a Crisis in the SolidWorks Community?

December 5th, 2007 No comments

I just went to the first SolidWorks user group meeting in Richmond, VA tonight. A couple of weeks ago, the 100th US user group was started in Augusta, GA, so this is probably #101. Sometimes I feel like I live in a bit of a bubble because I work for the most part by myself, but I try to stay in touch with other users, and I do a lot of stuff with user groups. I know what I do can’t be classified as “real” because the book writing stuff is pretty idealized, and most of my modeling work is pretty far removed from what most of the users I run into do. It’s easy to get caught up just in the little corner of the world where I live. User groups are a great place for me to re-connect with reality.

So I had my presentation ready to go, a general tips session on SW07 and 08. When I started I asked how many people were using 2008. Out of about 40 people, 2 raised their hands. When I asked why people weren’t using the new software, I got answers that fell into two categories: because of the new interface, and we have enough bugs in 2007, why do we need more?

Something in the air

There is something in the air in the SolidWorks community these days, and I hope SolidWorks has the ability to see it for themselves and do something about it. There is a lot of increasingly vocal discontent. I have been approached off-line by three high-profile people active in the SolidWorks community this week with serious misgivings about the direction of the product. This is not imagined. Go to the SolidWorks forums and look for the frowny faces and thumbs down smileys. There have always been people who complain about the software, but there are two changes in the tone of these complaints – the people doing the complaining are not the typical screamers, and the underlying noise has been turned up a notch or two.

Reason #1: Users want quality software

One of the questions that came out of the Q&A session at tonights user group meeting was how do we get SolidWorks attention when it comes to product quality? That, my friend, is the $64,000 question. I’ve been involved in quality initiatives of one type or another, and they all start with an explanation of all the things that they are doing to catch problems, and they all end in the same place we started. SolidWorks is convinced they are doing everything they could possibly do, but we don’t seem to make much progress. I have to say that I’ve never felt that anything I have ever participated in has ever resulted in less buggy software.

I should probably qualify that a little. By my non-scientific measure, crash bugs are way down compared to say 2001. That much seems clear to me anyway, and it is a notable acheivement, but it comes at a cost. The cost is that the number of little annoying bugs seems to be up. Given the choice, the current situation is preferable to crash bugs, but still, the situation is unacceptable. SolidWorks is treating the software as if it is a retail consumer commodity, with more attention to quantity than quality.

Visualize whirled peas

One of the group members looked a little puzzled when some of the others were talking about specific little things that are clearly wrong. I don’t doubt that there are users who rarely see bugs. I visualize the whole problem kind of like this:

This is basically how I see SW bug structure. The center ring is the really core stuff in SolidWorks – extrudes and revolves. This stuff gets the most attention, and it is rare to find a real bug in the first two rings. As you get further away from the center, you’re going to find more and more bugs. There is far less traffic out in the Yellow, Orange and Red bands. When there is little traffic, SW allows more bugs. Granted, that’s an efficient way to handle things if you don’t really care what the folks out on the fringes think of you. Unfortunately, I spend most of my time in Yellow and Orange, making a conscious decision to avoid anything in the Red, because out that far from civilization, you are truly on your own. Support people don’t know what the software out there does, and you’re frankly lucky to find anything that works reliably.

Most users stay inside the green circle (3rd ring counting from the center). This is well trodden safe territory, and most of the kinks are worked out of most of it. Do those of us who work in the outer rings really have to accept inferior software? Well, yes, it seems so. SolidWorks cannot be all things to all people, they prove that pretty strongly. Maybe folks like me get pushed to Rhino, a software that focusses more on those Yellow and Orange rings.

Reason #2: What has happened to the interface?

A lot of long time SolidWorks users feel that the rug has been unceremoniously yanked out from under us with the SolidWorks 2008 interface. You can still find some people who say that after working with it for a while they were able to get used to it, maybe make it almost as good as it used to be through what settings remain, and some even say they prefer it. So far, all of these folks are the early adopter risk takers or the blind optimist types. I have yet to see anyone take an analytical look at the interface changes and come away with a favorable impression. In case anyone has been under a rock and missed what I think is wrong:
- CommandManager has fewer options: can’t undock it, can’t dock to side, can’t put other toolbars next to it, is not easy to add complete new toolbar
- CommandManager tabs are small and hard to click
- scrollbars and screen splitters have been removed presumably to save space
- heads up View toolbar is not flexible enough to be usable (limited tools) and yet is not easy to get rid of
- all of the interface elements that are running into the upper right hand corner of the graphics window are causing an inexcusable train wreck: confirmation corner, task mgr tabs, window control icons, heads up view toolbar all potentially overlap with one another in the corner.
- the Office 2007 ribbon interface is widely reviled, no sense in immitating something so widely despised – instead of looking for a tool in a line of icons, you have to scan a 2D area of icons and text in various positions, which is a big mental shift
- taking apart the RMB menus I think turns out to be a bad idea. I can never find the thing I’m looking for. For example, the Hide Body tool is no longer under the Body heading in the RMB menu, it is shown as an icon in the toolbar area of the RMB menu. So I first have to determine that its not where it should be in the 1 dimensional list, and then I have to scan the 2D toolbar for something that could be a Hide function, look at the Tooltip and then click the button. This takes WAY longer than just going to the selection in the RMB menu. The alternative is to re-memorize the entire RMB interface.
- possibly my biggest complaint has to do with the choice of defaults on install with 2008. They are trying to force feed you the most radical settings by default, thus forcing you to deal with the interface right up front. This is reason enough to avoid installing it. If they had chosen more “default-ish” defaults, I think they could have avoided so many reactions that are so negative, but they are forcing the issue. Bad plan, guys. Very bad plan.

They seem to be treating the software as if it is some research project and they are simply presenting their results. I’ve got news for you: people are using this software, and you need to understand their needs. These people are paying to use this software. The software doesn’t need to be so self-promoting, it should serve the needs of the people who paid for it.

SolidWorks interface development people need some hard lessons in software implementation and CAD management. Even without seeing things through the eyes of real end users, if they just looked at the implementation and management aspects of what they have done to literally hundreds of thousands of users, they might have chosen a different path. The changes in 2008 are irresponsible.

I personally believe that one of the causes of the current situation is that SolidWorks is an increasingly bureaucratic company. It was inevitable, really. Falling as a victim of their own success. I’m sorry to see this. I hesitate to say much, because I do count some SW employees as friends, but here and there you see careerism take precedence over user needs. Its frustrating when you know you are talking to the right person, and you know they are hearing you and understand the issue, yet nothing ever happens. The question is never seriously raised.

Conclusion

What can you say after that? Users are frustrated. They feel that the company and the product have taken a sharp left turn with the 2008 release. Another focus group? Hire a consultancy to get to the root of users frustration? No, how about some good old fashioned common sense. It would make a nice change, anyway.

Categories: CAD Commentary, SW Quality, User Groups, favorites Tags: , ,

Interface Proposal

September 18th, 2007 No comments

So I’m sick of complaining about all of the interface problems with SolidWorks 2008. I want something flexible. It doesn’t have to be sexy, it doesn’t have to be trendy. It doesn’t have to have a corporate logo in it. It doesn’t have to be different every third year. It doesn’t have to take a lot of getting used to. I just want it to be flexible. People who do drawings work differently from folks who do assemblies, who work differently from me (I mainly do just parts). We all have different needs for our tools, and for the work area. Beyond different types of work, we also are just different mentally – people think or visualize or problem solve in different ways. Restricting the interface to all work the same for everyone doesn’t make sense.

It seems there are people who like the new 2008 interface, but clearly it’s not everyone. I think most of the people using the stuff now are the early adopter types who are more amenable to change, and as the mainstream masses start using it, we’re going to hear more grumbling, or just have more people stay on an older version. Getting real statistics on how real people really feel is almost impossible. People are too polite, or simply don’t think their input matters much in the scheme of things. The only people you wind up hearing are the ones who scream deleriously, not the common joes who make up the vast majority.

So, here is my idea. Throw darts, whatever, but be constructive. This is how I would set my interface up if I could, and it addresses most of my current complaints. I think it also offers enough flexibility that if you wanted to use the interface a la 2007 you could. You could also get more radical with your set up. I cobbed this screen composite together with Snagit and Powerpoint, with a little help from Kim in Photoshop. I don’t have any delusions that this is anything other than part of a discussion, but I’d like to add something to the rest of the people thinking about the same thing. Plus, doing this has helped me figure out what it was that I thought was most valuable. Click on the image to see one that’s large enough to read, or right click on it and Save Picture As… to open it on your local computer with your own image viewer software.

Anyway, the main ideas are:
- multiple CommandManagers, features on one, and tools on another (ignore spline tools used on both)
- sketch toolbar is separate because you switch to or from sketching so frequently, it just needs to be separate, I think
- toolbars when docked do not obscure the entire row, only the space the buttons take up
- sketch toolbar docked regardless of rectangular shape
- docked mass of toolbars can be moved en masse to second monitor (toolbars snap to one another even when not docked to the window, also toolbar names can be turned off)
- “ManagerPane” bases all of the manager windows which have traditionally been placed on the left, with all of the Pane windows which have traditionally been placed on the right into a single mass of flyout panes. The FeatMgr is the base of it all, and it has all of the tab icons (PropMgr, ConfigMgr, as well as Task Pane stuff) all attached to the right side
- MgrPane can be detached from the SW window and be moved to second monitor
- Other managers and panes fly out when necessary or when you click on the tab icons – this addresses a huge problem because SW has these backwards right now. The FeatMgr disappears exactly when you need it in many situations. If you start a new sketch by selecting a sketch tool first, then selecting the plane, as soon as you click the Line tool, the FeatMgr (where you can select a plane) is changed into a ridiculous dialog telling you to pick a plane, but you can’t because the message just blocked access to the planes. I hope someone at SW hears this. I’ve been complaining about this since the PropMgr started usurping the FeatMgr… Big workflow problem.
- If you hit the tab icons, panes keep stacking, FeatMgr, PropMgr, ConfigMgr, Photoworks tab, Library, search, TaskMgr, etc. all of these can be flown out and pinned if you like, and best of all, the whole stack of ManagerPanes can be moved to the second monitor.

SolidWorks acts like the reducing mouse travel game they’re playing makes sense. It doesn’t. Reality contradicts what they are trying to do. SW is trying to put all of the commands in the middle of the graphics window, but users are getting monitors that are bigger and bigger, and they’re getting multiple monitors. I’ve got a 17″ widescreen laptop monitor next to a 24″ widescreen lcd, with a 20″ normal aspect lcd for other computers. You can’t keep the mouse restricted to the center of the screen.

My idea to counter that is to allow programmable hotkeys that snap the cursor to the center of definable interface elements or even definable pixel locations. Press S to snap to the center of the Sketch toolbar. Press Alt-F to go to the FeatureMgr. SW has to figure out how to efficiently use MORE screen realestate rather than less.

More ideas:

- Status bar is where SW issues warnings and messages, slightly taller than it is now, but doesn’t take up the whole width.
- Window management buttons in upper right do something more sensible than 2008, could even be moved left right next to the menus.
- The flyout menu at the top of the screen was just a bad idea. very annoying. If you argue that it is saving space, well, the space it saves is just wasted anyway, so losing it doesn’t really save anything.

Does this look like anything else? Not that I know of. Does this follow any trends? Probably not. Those aren’t things that really concern me. Lemmings. All I know is this is the way I would set it up if I could, plus or minus.

You want to reduce mouse travel easily? You know those prompts that show up when you click the Close Window button? Why do they pop up in the middle of the screen instead of near the cursor? Why does the ESC key not work to dismiss simple warning or error messages? Why can’t you do simple things which have a much larger impact rather than rearranging the entire interface for a rather questionable impact? Speck vs mote and all that.

Categories: CAD Commentary Tags: ,

sw2008 and Vista follow up

September 12th, 2007 No comments

 

I’ve had a couple of comment questions on the setup. First, SteveO asks about the Task Pane. There are more panes available… give me more pane, mamma always used to say. In the images below the right is XP and the left is Vista, both SW08. These are taken from different computers, notice that SolidWorks Search is on the Vista box and not the other. I think the File Explorer portion of it has the same options. Below it is shown with all of the options checked. Recent Docs, Samples, Open Docs, local comp, network, etc. It looks like the Wiley and Public folders are favorites folders, with just about anything in them you could want. These appear to replace the My Documents folder.  

The RealView tab at the bottom of the tabs on the left is new, or at least changed from a set of tabs that used to be to the right and take up a column of interface space. Now instead, the Task Pane tabs interfere with the Confirmation Corner icons when windows are tiled. I think the shuffling of stuff around the screen was careless with 2008. There is no other word for it.

The RealView tab allows you to apply scenes and “appearances” (materials) to windows or parts respectively by drag and drop from the pane. It should be noted that backgrounds are now document properties, so you are at the mercy of other users, and can’t set up a consistent background for yourself unless you want to simply turn off RV backgrounds altogether, which isn’t a bad option for real work.

Ricky asked about Software OGL. No. I am not running Software OGL. The graphics functionality is pretty good, even with the RealView fluff turned on (reflections and shadows) which will probably be turned off as soon as I’m done writing reviews. My video card is the nVidia FX3450, and the nVidia site has a Vista specific driver available, which seems to work ok (no problems yet).

Jeff says he’s not selling pencils. Maybe we can vote on this later. No doubt he is giddy from all of the interface interference between SW08, Vista and Office 07. Geez Louise, no thanks.

And of course HoffY rants about the Open dialog. I tend to agree. SW needs to spend more time on details, less time shuffling things around. Maybe HoffY could benefit from SteveO’s suggestion of abandoning the Open dialog in favor of the File Explorer. I would miss the ability to sort and change icons with the views in Open, but I’ll give it a shot. I’ve heard other people doing the same thing.

Ok, I’ve shown mine, now you show me yours. I want someone who likes the new 08 interface to show me specifically why they like it and why it makes them faster, and give counter points to my description of why I don’t like it. That would be valuable for me. People just say “it’s faster” or “there is less mouse movement” or “it takes up less space”, but I would like to see someone prove it, because I think I have proven that it is none of those. Maybe I’m just not using it correctly. Really, I’d like to see someone do this. Any takers?

Categories: General Technical, Review, Tech Tips Tags: ,

SolidWorks 2008 on Vista

September 12th, 2007 No comments

 

Too many new things all at once? Yeah, probably. But still, I have to do it. I mean someone has to. Jeff is off selling pencils or something, and so there’s nobody left to do reviews.     

Anyway, SolidWorks 2008 (not yet endorsed by Chicken Little) and Windows Vista (also not yet endorsed by Chicken Little). So if you are meek and mild, this may not be the thing for you. You can live dangerously vacariously through my disdain for my own safety and comfort. I’m really asking for it. Maybe the sky will really fall this time. I must run and tell the king.

I’ve been trying to use both Vista and SW08 with the default latest-and-greatest settings. This is mainly to see if I like the new SW08 interface any better now that it has been out for a while, compared to my reaction to it from beta testing. I’m still not a fan of the context bars. Sure you don’t have to move your mouse much to select things, but you (I) spend so much more time with tooltips that any time gain is lost immediately.

Of course, Instant3D and RapidSketch are two gimmicks that get turned off right away. Quicktips help and those warnings reminding me that I haven’t saved in the last 60 seconds are next. The fly-out main menu is still distracting, and will get pinned permanently. The Heads Up View toolbar I’m trying to ignore. It seems that with the release of sp0, SW changed their strategy with toolbars shown in the default installation. Now it is only the new CommandManager and the Heads Up View toolbar. Here is a great shot of the “space saving” capabilities of the new CommandManager:

Saves space by making it all blank. Makes you use the flyout instead of using available space, and then covers over stuff you might want to see in the FeatureManager even though there is this entire blank toolbar. Ah, don’t get me going. This is supposed to be about SW08 together with Vista. Remember, this is a put-your-best-foot-forward default setting.

   
The first thing that struck me about working in Vista (shown on the right) was that the colors seemed to be different. Maybe this is just a prank being played on the colorblind, who knows? The color for selected items is blue instead of green. Also, the dynamic highlight color is orange instead of red, and the sketch relation icon background is green instead of blue. Sometimes. If you still have SW07 installed, then your 2008 colors will be just like they are in 2007 (as shown on the left). If it is a fresh installation, you’ll get the colors on the right. The value of changing colors, regardless of the reason, seems dubious at best. Anyway, what it comes down to is that Selected Item 1 and Selected Item 4 have been swapped, and the Selected Face Color and Dynamic Highlight have also been changed for God only knows what reason. After working with this for a while, it seems like a completely unnecessary change, although it’s a little unsettling, I don’t think there are any real consequences (or benefits).   

***Update*** It turns out that this is just a setting, but it still looks like someone at SW sent out this version (sp0 ev) with a different default setting from usual. As mentioned above, the colors can be manually changed back to normal defaults if you want, but in this case, there are three saved color schemes for highlighting colors – Green Highlight, Blue Highlight and Orange Highlight.

    

In SW07, the color scheme had several schemes like Blue Horizon, Hazy Day, In The Spotlight, etc. that used background images and color settings. In SW08 the new RealView Scenes made those kind of redundant. Still, the 07 schemes and the new 08 highlight schemes were both in the drop down list as late as pre-release. In sp0, only the highlight schemes remain. I think someone made a mistake by using a registry setting with the blue highlight defaulted on.

Much thanks to Anna Wood for calling my attention to the color schemes.****

 

Another difference between the images is that the Vista cursor doesn’t have an indicator for the type of entity it is hovering over. The indicators are really there, something odd just happened with the screen shot.

       

Another jarring realization is that the Open dialog is drastically different in Vista. Some of that can be set back the way it was by setting Windows to use Classic Folders, in the Folder Options, but I’m going to try to get used to the new stuff to see if it has any benefit. So far, I notice that the little preview is missing in Vista, which to me is a big deal. On the plus side, though , Vista allows 4 sizes of thumbnails – small, medium, large and extra large. In reality, that’s only slightly more convenient than XP which required a registry edit to change the size of thumbnails.

Add to that, however, the fact that SolidWorks 2008 on Vista enables the “Show Thumbnail Graphics in Windows Explorer” by default, and grays it out so you cannot change it. What this means is that there appears to be no way to show a Detail view of a folder where the small icons show part or assembly icons instead of invisible thumbnails.

Some of this I’m sure is due to the interference of the new OS. Still, I’m hoping SW can get the preview/thumbnails/icons working in Vista the way they do in XP. Having to redevelop new ways of working with the SW interface every couple of releases is getting old. The enhancements that are supposed to bring more productivity in this release will inevitably be obsoleted in a year or two.  It just seems a little disruptive. I have still not forgiven SolidWorks for dropping the support for the QuickView functionality available in NT 4.0 from the Windows Explorer right mouse button menu for getting thumbnail previews. It seems they just can’t settle on anything. Oh, nostalgia has no solace in the computer world.

This part is about 32 MB, built in SW05. As a test, I saved this file out as a STEP file in 08 Vista, 08 XP and 07 XP. All the save times were within a couple seconds of one another. The part has 249 features. The rebuild time was 13 seconds in Vista, 15 seconds in 08 XP and 16 seconds in 07 XP. This isn’t an exhaustive or scientific test, but on first blush, things appear to look good for vista.

The computer this test was run on is a dual boot XP/Vista desktop, manufactured by Boxx, AMD Athlon 64 FX57 processor, 3 GB RAM and a nVidia fx3450 video card. The computer is not quite 2 years old.

In case you’re wondering, this is a part I did for Rubbermaid called an “Institutional Wringer”. Jails have to mop the floors, but they have to wring their mops with out metal parts that can be removed from an assembly. So this is a one piece mop wringer. Looks more like a big lettuce strainer, I thought. Ribs, draft and fillets…

And for all of those people who like to use the dancing dinosaur cursors…
     

This is the new hourglass equivalent. The little ring circulates. Not a big deal, just different.

Here’s a little head scratcher. The pop-up shortcut bar that shows up when you select a mate from the FeatureManager has the Normal To option on it. Huh? When you click on it, it asks you to select something to be Normal To. Even the Zoom To Selection seems out of place, although it actually does something (it zooms to one of the parts of the mate, but not both). The shortcut bar is supposed to have the “most commonly used” tools on it. I’m sorry, I’m slipping back into bashing the interface.     

Here’s a little game you can play at home. In SW08 you’re going to have to know all of the icons for all of the RMB menu picks in addition to all of the toolbar icons in order to get the most out of the new productivity enhancements. Have you ever seen the movie Johnny Mnemonic, where Keanu Reaves gets computer data dumped into his brain? I feel a nosebleed coming on.

Anyway, we’ll call this game Johnny Mnemonic in honor of that pre-matrix cyber-punk memory master. Name all of the icons shown above. I was able to get 8 of them. How many can you get without looking at tooltips? (hint: this pops up when you click a part in an assembly)     

Categories: General Technical, Tech Tips Tags: ,

Experience with Vista

September 4th, 2007 No comments

 

The new book has to be written in Vista because it isn’t going to be updated for 2 years, and I’d like to avoid it looking outdated before it really is. So that meant I had to get Vista. The thought of going through the learning curve with a new OS wasn’t really appealing, but it was one of those things I just had to do.

So.

I’m going to let you follow me around for a while while I get acclimated to Vista. Just so there can be some benefit from me going through all of this.

Which Version

The Which Version question seemed easy, until I got to the store. It was clear that it had to be Ultimate or Business, from the SW website. SolidWorks does work fine on XP Home, when XP Pro is all that is recommended or officially supported. I’ve never seen support denied or the software just not work because of using XP Home. When you see those cheaper numbers, it’s very tempting to cut a corner here or there. The Vista Business edition did have one feature that helped me choose it. This was the Remote Desktop function, which if you’ll remember from posts about a year ago was my ideal solution to my multiple monitor/computer problem. Vista Ultimate was $100 more (for a grand total of $399 – yes, that’s for an operating system).

Then there was the question of whether I wanted to upgrade or just buy a whole new version. I had heard horror stories of upgrades, where you had to reinstall the old OS to verify activation, and then upgrade it. Yech. What I really wanted to do was to install onto an external drive, and then just detach the external to get a dual boot system which maintained my clean XP, and allows me to ditch Vista easily.

Ok, for this test, it is Vista Business, the $299 version, and the lowest recommended OS for SolidWorks.

The Setup

Like most folks in this field, I’m pretty much self-taught when it comes to system maintenance and stuff like that. I’ve learned mainly by recovering from mistakes. Windows XP was an easy install unless you had to mess with something like installing scsi drivers during the install. It still wasn’t too bad. I’ve heard bad stories again about Vista installations with missing drivers, so I thought I was prepared for that.

I started the install from an active session of XP, and it told me I had the option to install to either my older 320 GB external drive or my brand new 750 GB external drive. So I told it to install to the 320, the 750 would be used for backup and storage. When I actually tried it, though, Vista decided neither external drive was worthy, and cancelled the installation and restarted it automatically, without those two options available. It should be noted that neither drive worked when the OS was finally installed, and searches on websites show that my brand new Western Digital 750 GB external drive is not compatible with Vista. Whooda thunk. In the end, I had to enter the product key 3 times.

Anyway, the second go at installation seemed better. I had a 300 GB internal drive with some space to install to, which sufficed. The system is still a dual boot, with XP on C and Vista on E.

The test “Boxx”

I should make note that the computer being used for this installation is a Boxx workstation, with an AMD 64 FX-57 single core processor, with an nVidia nForce chipset, a FX3450 graphics card, and 3 GB of RAM. The computer is not quite 2 years old. It was a very nice workstation 2 years ago, and is still more than adequate for most of the SW work I do.

The installation seemed to be ok until the first reboot, when it wanted the OS disk, and took another 20 minutes to install more files. Then it rebooted again. After a few reboots, it seemed satisfied. I learned by accident that any USB device attached would cause it to hang at reboot. I couldn’t get it to see my thumb drive, external drives or my USB wireless adapter. I had to rearrange things and get a hub close enough for a wired connection to work. Once I had the wired connection, connecting to the internet was no problem, but seeing and being seen other computers on the network was not as straight forward as XP.

Contrary to many reports I have heard, I was able to get a Vista specific driver for my nVidia FX3450 video card, and it seems to work well with SolidWorks 2008, without the slowdowns I’ve had in XP with the FX Go 1400 using the fancy Real View features in 2008.

For drivers, my bad luck at this time is restricted to a Belkin wireless network adapter and my nVidia nForce audio.

The Confirmation

Oh, and the confirmation. It seems everything you want to do system wise requires a confirmation. I have not yet looked for the switch to turn that off, but I assure you I will. It’s like having a paranoid Victorian nanny at your side at all times.

“The Experience”

The much vaunted “experience” of running vista is just a bit of a barrage on the senses, in particular the sense of sight, since my audio card doesn’t hav an available driver for Vista. Everything has a chalky pastellish kind of color, or the look of polished translucent polycarbonate. Dialogs fly, and zoom, and fall back, and there is a lot of transparency. There are warnings for just about anything useful, including overwriting files.

Windows Explorer is significantly different in Windows Vista. It will be hard to say if it is better or not until I’ve used it for some time, but I am getting used to it. I still haven’t figured out some simple things like displaying file extensions.

Overall, I must say that the interface is pretty snappy, meaning that it reacts quickly for the most part. There are times where it seems to hang for a few seconds for no reason, but overall, I think it is faster. Of course this is a fresh installation without much clutter added yet (ftp software, SolidWorks, Avant Browser, snagit, BitDefender).

For the book screen captures I have to run at 1024×768 resolution with specific display settings, which is more than a little annoying, since it does not make the best use of the interface. Still, it allows me to get a feel for the OS a little.

Summary

This isn’t much of a review of the functionality of Vista, but it should give a little flavor for what it’s like to get started with it. I will follow up in a later post with the experience of running SolidWorks in the Vista interface.

Categories: CAD Commentary, Review Tags: ,

SW08: What’s in it for You? – Part 5: Matt’s Faves

June 28th, 2007 No comments

 

Here are some of my favorite things in 2008.
.
Centered rectangles are a nice addition. This is something I used to use a macro for, and may continue to use the macro because it also automatically puts dimensions on the centered rectangle, but it is an enhancement that has been a long time coming, and is certainly welcome.
   

The one nice thing about the new CommandManager is that you can make a new tab on it very easily.


The FeatureManager Filter is probably my favorite enhancement in 2008. This thing is going to make life in long trees much more livable. This just shows features in the tree that correspond to the keyword you type in. I’ll be finding new ways to use this every day I’m sure.

The Context Toolbars are toolbars that pop up when you select something. These are going to take some getting used to, but are going to be a big time saver. It’s gonna take some time to adjust my workflow to take advantage of them, but they will be highly useful. As always, an option to turn them off would also be nice.

The Shortcut Bars are customizable, and come up when you hit S. These are flexible enough that they may be useful, but in general, hitting a key to bring up a toolbar seems like a waste. Why not just have the function you’re looking for on a hotkey? Anyway, it may be useful for stuff not on hotkeys.

It sounds like they’re running out of words to describe parts of the interface, because both Context (RMB context sensitive menus) and Shortcut (shortcutmenus, keyboard shortcuts) are words that are used elsewhere in the interface. It may become difficult to keep these things straight.

The Browse Recent Documents and Browse Open Documents each shows thumbnails of the documents, and makes things easier to identify quickly. It does take a little getting used to with the Ctrl-Tab, but that will be effort well spent, I think.    

Another favorite is the ability to dismiss the “Don’t ask me again” dialogs. Now these won’t come back until you go and find the message and turn it back on.    

3D Sketch symmetry? If it works, sign me up! I think it is restricted to when you are working on planes in a 3D sketch.

Auto Trace is a cool tool that will trace over a sketch picture. This is something that I will certainly try out. It has the potential to be very useful. Tons of people ask for this kind of thing.

There is a new ability, not sure what it is called, that enables you to move between sketches more easily. This is potentially a very useful feature. It has had some problems with sketches being shown in the wrong colors, and it certainly has the potential to be abused, but once this is figured out a little more, it will making editing multiple sketches much easier.


Spline On Surface can now span across tangent edges! Yippee!!

The FilletXpert is something I have been rather indifferent about, but now it is offering some options with mass edge selection which will certainly save me time. The example that they used in the bloggers web meeting was a part I had done for Rubbermaid. I remember spending hours selecting edges on ribs and intersections of ribs on that part. This is a function that will save me time. In case anyone has forgotten, why not fill out an enhancement request for a function that finds the maximum size fillet that will work on a given selection. That’s the FilletXpert function that I’ve been waiting for.

Cosmetic patterns – save performance. Not sure what it does on a drawing. It’s a RealView function.

The Split Part function has been revamped a little to allow connections between parts to be reattached. This has been a big problem for the use of Master Model technique for a while. The jury is still out on this one to see if it was fixed correctly, but if it was, this feature may have received a second life.

The ability to sweep a solid body to create a cut is another function that a lot of people have been asking for. This is pretty complex functionality, but the results seem to be “accurate enough”. Inevitably someone will complain because it is not exact, but for a “looks like” model, it is plenty good.    

Any time you have a base or mirrored part, you can now bring forward sketches and features, and pretty much everything from the original model, even sever the link. This was another popular request, and will be highly useful.

Isolate was such a big success in assembly mode that it has now been brought into part mode for use with bodies. Body visibility management has needed a revamp since multibodies were introduced in SW. Maybe this will be the ticket.

Display states are now independent from configurations! Excellent!

Finally, Animator has been moved down to the base-level SolidWorks, and has been integrated with Physical Simulation and Cosmos Motion. All three are still available, but they have been combined into a single Motion Studies interface.

DriveWorks Express is a great idea that I hope catches on. This is entry level rules-based engineering. It now comes with SolidWorks, like Cosmos Express.

eDrawings has some interesting new functionality. First display states in eDrawings, great combination. Second, you can view STL files with eDrawings… Maybe most importantly, 3dxml  (xps) capabilities. 3D is going to become as ubiquitous as 2D images are now. The Vista OS contains a viewer for a 3D format, and will enable you to put 3D images into documents just like you put 2D images in documents now. You don’t have to go to Vista to do this, you can get the Dassault Systemmes 3dxml viewer and do the same thing today. eDrawings will use some of these xps documents.

You can put weld beads in the corners of sheet metal parts! Excellent!    

Batch processing through PhotoWorks!

Obviously there are lots of other things, some more useful than others. These were selected just because they are my favorite enhancements in this release. If you don’t like my list, start your own blog and make your own list. Anyway, as you can see, there is a good bit of good news in SW08.
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SW08: What’s in it for You? – Part 3: RealView

June 20th, 2007 No comments

 

I’m getting the controversial stuff out of the way first. The interface is going to be very controversial, especially as the software rolls into the general SW using public.  

Somewhat less controversial will be the new incarnation of RealView, and how it has been applied to scenes and materials. The bad news about the new RealView functionality is that it is highly reliant on new hardware technology. If you have video cards that are more than about a year old, your cards are probably on the “works but not recommended” list. What this means is that your video performance may be choppy if you try to use the cool new features. The cards I have are both nVidias, one in a laptop, FX Go 1400, and one in a desktop, FX 3450, and they are both a bit choppy in RealView mode with reflections and shadows. For most of us, that makes up our mind for us, “Ok, so I just won’t use the cool new features”. But you will. You know you will. You will have to just try them out because they are so damn sexy. You’ll probably turn them off as soon as someone else comes in your office, but you’re gonna try it, so just go ahead and get it out of your system.

Background and Scene Settings

The first thing to say is that some of this has changed through the beta versions, so if you saw an early beta, things are a little different. At first, the System Options settings for Background Color had been removed. I panicked when I saw this. This was a worse disaster than the interface changes. I don’t know if it was a mistake or just a test or what, but in Beta 2 the System Options for Background Color were added back in. This is important to me when creating images for documentation and you want to make the background of an image transparent, I usually make it some obnoxious yellow, and it can easily be removed from the image. Anyway, the settings are shown to the left, from Tools, Options, Color.

The one thing that should stand out immediately here is that you can now use a document based scene instead of the system based background. This is what is new about the background. This means that your template files will now have a scene saved in them. There are 3 different kinds of scenes, and the way the scenes react is dependent upon two settings: the Use Document Scene Background setting shown above, and the RealView Graphics setting toggle. If you don’t have a recommended graphics card, the RealView setting in combination with a reflective scene will cause choppy performance.

The 3 kinds of scenes are:

- Basic Scenes: static background image. These have names like “Warm Kitchen”, “Courtyard”, “Factory”. It isn’t obvious how the name relates to the image. This is equivalent to the existing, but little known functionality in SW07 called Select Color Scheme, although in SW07 it is a System Option rather than Document Option.
- Studio Scenes: a reflective floor image that rotates with the model and appears to find the “bottom” of the part much better than Photoworks floors
- Presentation Scenes: a reflective 360 degree wrap around image that rotates with the model, almost as if the part is floating in space and you are walking around it, seeing the room from different angles as you walk around the part

  

Personally, of the three I prefer the Studio Scenes because they are simpler and somewhat more convincing. The basic scenes are pretty much just gradient images, and the Presentation Scenes are a bit creepy to me because the part doesn’t seem to be connected to anything in the 360 degree image. Still, if you are working on anything that taxes your system at all, you are going to want to turn off the document scene and use the plain or gradient backgrounds, especially if you don’t have a recommended card.

Scenes are found in the Task Pane, on the RealView tab, and can be applied by dragging the scene into the graphics window. Once a scene has been applied you can access it and edit it in the “Lights, Cameras and Scene” folder in the FeatureManager.

Another change in SW08 is that RealView materials are now called “Appearances”. Whatever. Seems like an awkward name, but it was probably done to avoid confusing RealView materials with the physical materials applied for mass props and FEA properties. Appearances can also be accessed from the RealView tab of the Task Pane and dragged onto the model.

So RealView does a couple of things for you. It gives you reflective materials (appearances), and a reflective background with shadows. I see the wheels turning already. Reflections, shadows, what else do you use PhotoWorks for? RealView may be ok for a quick and dirty rendering wanna-be screen shot, but it will not take the place of a real rendering. The reason for this is that RealView cannot give high quality soft shadows, nor can it do anti-aliasing, global illumination effects or depth of field effects from using a camera. If you can live without these, you may be able to live without PhotoWorks.

Summary: This is cool stuff, but if you never use PhotoWorks and don’t have an up-to-date graphics card, then this may not make any difference to you whatsoever. On the other hand, folks who care more about appearance than performance may enjoy working like this all the time. Sexy? Yes. Useful? Possibly.

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