Engineer in despair!!

[RufusUK]

Hi to all,
Am I alone? Solidworks 2004 has to be the worst release yet in my opinion. Sure its got a lot of nice new features BUT at the expense of more bugs than ever.
Our design dept never know what to expect each time they re-load a drawing or assembly.
What do the rest of you guys think?

 

[Standing]

RufusUK,
I have not had any problems with SolidWorks 2004 since installing SP2. I know they took SP2 away. But it is still working for me. I do not use PDF’s. We are still using SolidWorks 2003 SP 5.1 of projects until I finish testing SolidWorks 2004 for our applications. If you have anything that would be a showstopper, like the excel BOM not working in SolidWorks 2004 SP1. Would you please post it here? Once we go to SolidWorks 2004 there will be no turning back. I hope to convince management to upgrade this Friday 1/16/2004 just before quitting time.

Bradley

 

[SBaugh]

You should always fully test the newest verions before upgrading to the latest. Just like Bradley is doing.

Personally I like it. I do think it the early versions SP0 and SP1.0 still needed some work. I am also running SP2 and it's working well here. I hope the get SP2 back up soon.

I didn't crash very often in the other SP's but I have seen plenty of bugs in it. But that's not to say I haven't seen just as many in SW03 last year. All new versions have their problems from the beginning. You just have to learn not to be the guinea pig. Take the time before you upgrade to make sure it's goign to work for you.

Regards,


Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[ctopher]

Same here. No prob. I like 04 alot better than 03.
SP2 is working except messed up saving as PDF's (which SW has a note at their web site stating there was a problem)

 

[MadMango]

I've been testing SW04 at home for the last month, and for what our company does with SW, everything seems to be working just fine. I was lucky enough to DL SP2.0, and it is also working fine.

Back at work, we are still using SW03 SP3.1.

Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

RufusUK
Am I alone?
Seems like you are

I too have been testing SW04 SP1 at home without problems. Have not been doing anything too fancy though.

If you post specific problems here, maybe you could be helped. At least it would determine if there is a workaround or not.


CorBlimeyLimey
Barrie, Ontario
faq559-863

 

[JNR]

Yup, we have been testing 2004 plus some of us at home run it. No real issues, except SmarTeam compatibility and that's their fault, not SW (plus we do use some strange SmarTeam options).

Scott is right, though. When a new rev OF ANY MAJOR SOFTWARE comes out, let it sit in the box for a while until all the other eager beaver guinea pig have found all the major bugs and the have been fixed. (Hopfully some of them might be your competitors and it will slow 'em down a bit, heh, heh....) Sure play with it on a non-production system for a while and DO test it out thoroughly on a COPY of a production job. But never load it in production right away.

I was - and he did. So at least I didn't get coal.....

 

[RufusUK]

Thanks for your input Guys,
We all loved the new features when 2004 came out but having used it for some time now my colleagues think we were better off with 2003 in terms of stability.
I didnt get the chance to try SP2 before they withdrew it and maybe that will cure some issues.

Some of the issues we have had are as follows:
More unhandled file error crashes.
Performance on drawings v.slow with large assemblies taking several minutes to re-build.(we are upgrading hardware to help with this -Topic was covered on another thread here.)
Sporadic mate errors after opening a 2003 assy in 2004.
Components sometimes not showing in drawing section views but exist in the assy.
Components sometimes cannot be dragged when only having a single concentric mate applied.

 

[SBaugh]

More unhandled file error crashes.

Clean out your temp folder. - C:\Documents and Settings\[log in name]\Local Settings\Temp

Performance on drawings v.slow with large assemblies taking several minutes to re-build.(we are upgrading hardware to help with this -Topic was covered on another thread here.)

Hardware - Drivers - working locally not over a network - More RAM - Convert your files to SW04 before opening (This will cause major slow downs when saving)

Sporadic mate errors after opening a 2003 assy in 2004.

This has happened in most all Major versions. Sometimes it's just one or two mates that get reversed. You just have too change the mate alignment.

Components sometimes not showing in drawing section views but exist in the assy.

Check the properties of the drawing section view and make sure there are not any parts showing up in Section scope under "Excluded parts".

Components sometimes cannot be dragged when only having a single concentric mate applied.

Change the angle in which your viewing the model. Also try moving the mouse up and down and in other directions to see if it will move.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[RufusUK]

Thanks for the help Scott

Richard

 

[Jimijames]

Just installed 2004 this AM (SP1.0). So far so good, except for strange (annoying) BOM table behavior. The new and improved table seems to still have a mind of it's own. I have cust prop "partno" which I would like to use in the BOM instead of the default "PART NUMBER". I deleted the part number column and added a custom column that references the partno property. Save template as new name, insert it in a new dwg and the default part number column is back, this time tacked on the end (my custom column is also there - so that's good).
My cust prop macro also copies the partno to the summary title, so I also tried checking the 'use summary title' box for the default part num and saving that as a template, but that doesn't stick either... the system unchecks the box the next time I insert the BOM.
I know others have had these problems, anyone find a solution?

 

[BBJT]

I reported this to SolidWorks and they told me to enter in an enhancement. I did. I also entered in as a bug which got kicked back to me saying this is an enhancement. Tou will also find that you can not change the QTY heading name if you do not have SP2. Funny this was a bug but the Part number was not.

BBJT CSWP

 

[Olid]

JNR,
I am curious to learn what kind of compatability promblems you are having with Smarteam and SWX 2004. We are planning on upgrading our Smarteam from V5R10 SP7 to V5R11 SP6 and our Solidworks from SWX 2003 SP4 to SWX 2004 SP1. I have tried SWX 2004 outside of Smarteam and it appears stable enough, also there is enough new stuff in SWX 2004 to make it worthwhile. I was told by our var that our current version of Smarteam was not supported with SWX 2004, hence the need to upgrade Smarteam. I want to make sure that the two get along.

 

[JNR]

we are testing the latest SmarTeam and SW2004 and will be loading SmartFlow. I'll go ask The Guru tomorrow if they found anything and exactly what versions there are testing - he is gone for the day. You can't afford to go into production and then find a bug.

Our issues tends to be in the way we customize SmarTeam and they usually have to do a few tweaks or custom macros to fully support us. Having said that their support has been pretty good (now)- they are just slow in getting up to the new revs.

We started with ST when config/part handling was very limited (the old 4 digit plus 5 in parens). So some of our conventions ,etc. were driven by the early versions - too late to change now.

I was - and he did. So at least I didn't get coal.....