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Is SW on the right track? 10

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Phadreus

Phadreus

Mechanical
Feb 28, 2005
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I’ll throw this out, hopefully for some constructive candid feedback.

I have been seeing a reoccurring theme since getting involved with SW (back in 2004), and have been receiving a good deal of feedback from some of my seasoned users that have made the same observation, since 1999. The observation is; each release of SW since 1999 has not significantly improved in stability and performance. Also, the Service Pack route has been netting the same type of results; they fix some bugs and cause new problems each time. We seem to have experienced an “excessive” amount of “bugs” and problems in SW 2007, more so than we were accustomed to seeing in SW 2004 and SW 2006 (SW 2005 was a nightmare for us). Maybe the odd numbered releases have more problems? ?

I attended a local User Group Mtg for the SW 2007 rollout and after seeing all the new “gee whiz” functions, I asked the SW Regional Sales Mgr “all the new features are great, however; could SW drive their next release solely towards stability, performance and making all existing functions work well?” I was in an audience of about 70 persons, and overall they reacted as a mob. I was very surprised how vocal the group was in agreeing with my sentiment. The Sales Mgr’s response was “we hear this all the time, and this is an argument that exists within SW…the fact is that new features sell well, and what would we say to new customers; “SW 200X, now our stuff works”, that wouldn’t sell”. I argued that they could easily sell this as “SW 200X, the most stable, best performing package on the market”. Another user spoke up and said “I’ve been on SW since 1997, and between 1997 and 1999; SW had the market for great performance and great stability. We bought SW based on word of mouth from other users that raved about performance and stability and you never hear of that anymore”. The Sales Mgr, had no real response to pacify the group.

We run a pretty tight ship in our company, being the CAD Manager; I have extensive data since SW 2004 on benchmarking our performance as well as Crash logs provided by my users. There is a definite downward trend that I have observed in stability and performance.

Does anyone have any other observations that can give perspective beyond these observations? BTW, I would like to keep this constructive and am not intending on moaning and complaining only. I AM a big fan of SW and want to see them succeed.

Cheers


M.B. Price CSWP
Automated Assembly & Test Systems
 
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I agree with your findings and experiences with SWx. I can't remember what year rollout but the same thing happened. The SWx corporate guy gave one of those brouhaha speeches centered around large assembly stability. The response was welcomed with smiles and understanding. The fact is SWx has crashed more times in the last three months then Pro/E has in the last three years.....running on the same machine with a SWx certified video driver. I've narrowed it down to all the "handshaking" SWx does with Micro$oft products. But the bottom line is SWx is the tool I prefer to use get my job done and Pro/E is the tool I have to use to support a valued customer.

Heckler [americanflag]
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SWx 2007 SP 3.0 & Pro/E 2001
XP Pro SP2.0 P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi
 
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I think that a lot of the crashing is more directly related to hardware/network issues versus the software itself. That's not to say that SW doesn't cause crashes occasionally though. My experience is spread out over two companies and 7 years. At my previous company, there were many cases of crashes and lock ups, regardless of which version/SP. I'd say 85-90% of the time it was directly related to hardware or the network. The company either didn't understand what was needed to properly run SW or, and I think this is more likely, they did and just didn't want to spend the money. My VAR ran some tests using assemblies I supplied and had no problems. When they came in and tried it on the network, they crashed. At my present company, we've gone through '06 and '07 with minimal issues. And, again, the vast majority have been hardware related.
I think that as the software becomes more powerful, it's simply sapping system resources in many cases. Add in improper drivers, poor networks and typical PC variables and you'll see such issues continue.
Do I think SW is perfect? No, not in the least. It definitely has it's share of glitches but, IMO, it's not the main culprit.
Just my 1/2 cent...

Great conversation starter

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M
 
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I don't believe it is just SW users that are experiencing this. It is trend most of the major MCAD players are caught up in.

I don't believe the powers-that-be will take too much notice of a few people deriding the software in forums like this, or even verbal outbursts at some seminars.

The majority of the "enhancements" are prompted by users. If, instead of submitting ERs for a shiny new function, users used the ER to request/demand improved stability and performance, maybe SW would listen ... especially if it is compared unfavourably to other systems. As the saying goes ... "Get it in writing".

[cheers]
 
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JMirisola,

I agree with your observations on "network" related causes. I've been told countless times that SW does not recommend working live over a LAN. That is exactly our situation, however; my benchmarks have considered LAN operations as well as local stand alone operations and the data suggests the same conclusion. On LAN's; I think there is a fundamental if not philosophical error in judgment on SW's part by avoiding LAN operations. I say this as the performance gap between local operations and LAN operations (Client / Server ops) continues to close to where there si very little performance hits working live over a good LAN. Also, working in a LAN environment tends to be the "way of the future" as well as common for many other apps that don't suffer from it. Hmmm...


M.B. Price CSWP
Automated Assembly & Test Systems
 
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Cor, I agree with you and again, I wasn't looking for forum ranting, but some confirmation that my observations aren't unique, but seen by others as well. Also, my intent is to fly to New Concord and have a face to face meeting with "the powers that be within SW". I do plan to first send a very professionally worded letter to said "powers" prior to meeting with them, to voice these concerns.

Also, I hear the same things from users of other packages as well, it is common. Cor, your point seems valid; “how does one most effectively invoke positive change?".


M.B. Price CSWP
Automated Assembly & Test Systems
 
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I don't believe it is just SW users that are experiencing this. It is trend most of the major MCAD players are caught up in.
Click to expand...

Then we ask ourselves are we demanding to much from our MCAD? I also run Pro/E 2001 on this machine with some very large assemblies and it is rock solid. But I don't have excel design tables, hole tables, word or any other stuff embedded into my MCAD dataa At that point we're at the mercy of how well those other embedded items play with SWx.

Heckler [americanflag]
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SWx 2007 SP 3.0 & Pro/E 2001
XP Pro SP2.0 P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi
 
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Setting expectations of performance and stability is very difficult. Is it fair to expect any software to not ever crash? Probably not; however, when does stability become a vaild problem? How bad before one says "something must be done about this"?

M.B. Price CSWP
Automated Assembly & Test Systems
 
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To answer you original question, "Is SW on the right track?", I would have to answer with a yes I think they are, but with the proviso that I think they are just going too fast. They need to slow down to a safer speed before they derail or crash into something more "solid".

[cheers]
 
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CBL:

It's the former colonist again...I have quoted you in the past without sending any royalties. If you ever get to North Carolina in the US, will you accept a beer or two on me and call it even?

debodine
 
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I think Autodek is the reason for the rapid pace.......just trying to stay ahead of Inventor in features. Reason being that most new users are probably Autocad converts. As Inventor becomes more capable, why would a company using Acad buy from a different software company when they already have a relationship with Autodesk. Solidworks has to wow and whoo them with flashy features.....its like that shiny metallic paint job on a car...and lets face, it sells.

So thats why, IMO, we see big enhancements to "Realview" in 2008 and they make a big deal about it. There is some good stuff in there too so I think they try to balance it.

As for stability, I think it has gotten slight worse in the last few years in some situations. And as its been mentioned, its usually hardware, drivers, and network related. I think the problem is that hardware like video cards and their drivers, cpus, motherboards, etc, come out at a rapid pace and software becomes more and more dependent on it when it makes use of the new features this hardware provides. So many variables to program for and thus more room for something to go wrong. I think the older versions of Solidworks were less dependent on hardware and thus more stable.

Video cards and drivers are my guess for the main hardware culprit. I can usually prove it here where I work when we solve a crashing problem by running in software opengl mode.

There's a reason why gaming companies flock to the Playstation and xbox instead of PCs. Only one set of hardware to worry about and test against. Maybe Solidworks should write a version that will running on the Xbox 360.

Jason

SolidWorks 2007 SP4.0 on WinXP SP2

 
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debodine ... That sounds like a good deal to me. [thumbsup2] ... but if you had read some of my posts in other forums you would know that I am most definitely NOT fascinated by royalty.

[cheers]
 
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CBL:

I have read your posts before, and I realize you have your head on straight. I just didn't want to pass up the play on words of "royalties" vs "royalty". The fact that your screen name identifies you as CorBlimeyLimey just made the irony sweeter when teasing about "royalty".

At least it did for me because I liked my pun. However, it would not shock me one bit to discover that everyone on the forum got my pun but I am the only one who laughed. That is not all that unusual for my attempts at jokes. That is why I use the smiley face :eek:) to let others know I tried...

But the offer of a beer or two is NO joke! That one you can bank on if you are ever in my territory.

debodine
 
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So, back on topic...

Gildashar,

I've heard many people that's been with SW since the late 90's blame much of the problem of SW's aggressive pursuit of more new features directly on the competition between SW & IV. It may not be limited to just these two players. The story I heard was SW responded with a commitment to providing 200+ new features each release when Autodesk put a "target" on SW's back. All that is great to talk about, but at the end of the day the problem still exists...

M.B. Price CSWP
Automated Assembly & Test Systems
 
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