Moving to R17

[CadArtist]

Hi there,

As for product design and surface modeling, would the enhancements in R17 justify an upgrade from R16?

Anybody using Free Style and Automotive Class A WB extensively in the two releases?

Thanks in advance.



Car Designer

 

[solid7]

As for product design and surface modeling, would the enhancements in R17 justify an upgrade from R16?

What exactly do you mean "upgrade from R16?"

Are you talking about BUYING the upgrade from R16 to R17?


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Catia Design|Catia Design News|Catia V5 blog

 

[DBezaire]

Cadartist - what do your suppliers use? This would be the question to answer.

From a tooling perspective - R16 is very adequate, R17 will be used for symmetrical tools only.

Regards,
Derek

 

[CadArtist]

DBezaire, I just want to know if there is anyone familiar with the two workbenches I mentioned in the two releases who don't mind gives his/her findings regarding the enhancements or any useful added features to these two WBs only from a practical point of view concerning freeform modeling and surfacing.

If I set my mind for an upgrade I have my contacts. Thanks for everyone's concerns regarding it.



Car Designer

 

[solid7]

If I set my mind for an upgrade I have my contacts.

What does this mean?

I was trying to ask you what you meant by an "upgrade"? Are you talking about BUYING R17?

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Catia Design|Catia Design News|Catia V5 blog

 

[CadArtist]

solid7

I was clear. I ask for a professional advice. I am running both R15 and R16 together on XPs. And really if there is any considerable improvements in the two WBs I mentioned I would consider a half working day loose to back-up all the current jobs and add 17 to our primary workstations. Otherwise I will continue on the two I mentioned earlier for the current job. No Risk.


Car Designer

 

[solid7]

CadArtist - I asked because it *wasn't* clear. (I'm sure that it was to you)

I won't bother to explain myself, since you got the answer you wanted.



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Catia Design|Catia Design News|Catia V5 blog

 

[catiajim]

Clarification: you don't pay DS, IBM, or any other resellers for an upgrade to CATIA. Paying your annuall license fee entitles you to upgrades. You do have to pay internal costs for testing, intstalling, and deploying your upgrade.

 

[CadArtist]

It's not the matter of the cost or licensing, that is the business of the company owners. As for what I am concerned and designing and my quality policy any move to a newer version should be justified by the added features and enhancements, performance improvement and stability tests after a certain period for certain tasks. I don't do beta testing. And for CAE and CAM there are nice guys here who know what they are doing and clients' and manufacturers' requirements and how to be attuned to their demands and what output they are looking for.
But I don't jump straight into a newer version unless it's been qualified even if it comes free.

My question revised:

Has been there any noteworthy enhancements and improvements in Part Design, Generative Shape Design, Imagine and Shape, FreeStyle and Class A workbenches and overall stability in R17 compare to R16 with SP8?

I know who might have the right answers would be extremely busy with his/her job and it would be of his/her extreme kindness to mind a post for a professional comment.

Thanks all anyway.



Car Designer

 

[catiajim]

When we choose to upgrade from one release to another, we do an analysys that includes not only enhancements, but also bug fixes. Generally, we give more priority to bug fixes than we do to enhancements when we chose that release.

That being said, we are still on R14, and feeling a lot of pain from current bugs. We intentionally chose to skip R15, because R14 was pretty stable at the time. When we tried to implement R16 this last summer, we finally hit so many problems that we gave up. Now we are looking at an R17 upgrade that is an absolute must. But it will still take us 6 months to implement. Oh, the joys of a complex environment

 

[CadArtist]

catiajim Hi

Did you mean the R14 (currently SP10 is there for it) is more stable than R15 and 16 (with sp7 and 8 respectively)? Are they still supporting R14? I mean they will do bug fixing for it as with any more SP in 2007?
All those damn bugs! I hate them. At least NXs are better in that respect. I mean less buggy.

God bless McNeel and associates!, Rhino does great things. There is always a place for it on my desktop.


Car Designer

 

[solid7]

At least NXs are better in that respect. I mean less buggy.

Ahem! You mean like that little issue in NX2 (that existed in every service pack) where you could type in 4.0000 and it would interpret it as a different number than 4, or 4.0?

Look, I'm a big fan of UG - but don't kid yourself. It's a similar product, in a similar predicament. Certain parts of it are bettr, or "less buggy", but the same can be said for Catia. (or anything else)

And Rhino - while it's a great supplement to Catia - especially for those who think that FreeStyle is NOT an optional module - it's still just exactly what it is - and that's a low-end CAD package.

Get somebody who can provide low end CAD quality and service,and high end functionality, and I'm all ears. Otherwise, it's just your frustration speaking...

Good luck with the new release. I haven't seen any major improvements with R17 - but in all fairness, I, like most Catia users, don't put the software through all of it's paces. It's easy to miss things that way.

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Catia Design|Catia Design News|Catia V5 blog

 

[itsmyjob]

About R14...

As we also are still using it... the choice of going to the next level is not only about new (bug) functions... CATIA is not alone, VPM, ENOVIA, oracle... have to follow the way up. So sometime it is better to wait a little bit and make a full test and a big jump then several test/validation and small jump.

Happy are those who can change to new release when they are out. I wish it could be that easy.

we do not change catia level for the fun of it (if there is any) but because we gain something. That's what CadArtist wants to know.

I would have ask another question : Do you know any bug going from R16 to R17 ... AS FOR THE NEW STUFF CAN BE FOUND IN THE ONLINE DOC (AS USUAL)

Eric N.
indocti discant et ament meminisse periti ​

 

[CadArtist]

Solid7,
I have here FreeStyle and Class A, also the best of surface modelers (Alis, Icem and Imageware)here and I still keep Rhino. In my job meeting class A surface standards and matching all those tolerance required for high-end packages is an everyday part of the job. Please don't worry about the quality of my surfaces. At least in this field I am an expert an being consulted and I am not just a surface modeler I am a designer and an engineer too. For me Rhino is a handy and lightweight toolbox and I still can have G4 blends without any needs for healing or rebuilding in any of those high end programs or any downstream packages. Just my familiarity with Rhino and all those programs I use is more than that of starting and closing the program and browsing the menus and far longer than that of a demo testing. And as for NXs it was in my opinion for sure, based on practical use. Depending on what we've used NXs for, and for how long our findings can vary. It's normal.

Anyway good luck to you too. Thanks.

Car Designer

 

[CadArtist]

itsmyjob

What platform are you using?
I am still on R16 and the SP3 just has been released for R17. I will ask those guys working with R17 if they've found and reported anything not mentioned by IBM.

I myself will wait till SP6 or 7 before doing any serious job by R17 entirely.



Car Designer

 

[catiajim]

I would not say that R14 is less buggy than R15 or R16. It's just that it was stable for the functionality we were using at the time. We have now started using some new functionality, and we have discovered some bugs with that new functionality. When we decided we needed a new version, we chose R16, but due to some internal company issues, we didn't start until June. After 3-4 months of testing, our last critical bug was not repeatable by DS, and we said enough. We knew that we needed some functionality in R17, and we didn't want to push R16 in October/November and then turn around and try to push R17 in February/March, so we stopped testing R16. Unfortunatly, internal resource issues have again struck, and we are now looking at R17SP5 (instead of SP3 as we had hoped), which puts us at the end of June for a production migration.

 

[CadArtist]

catiajim

That's it. I was questioning about the workbenches I mentioned in my posts. Other modules for CAM, CAE, etc, are not my concerns at the moment.

Car Designer

 

[sme1970]

Hello, I was reading your posts, guys, about the fact that V5R14 was better than V5R16 or above, but due to DS lifecycle policy, we HAVE to migrate to new releases if we want to be supported. In a why it is good since we can benefit from these functionalities for free, and get all existing corrections too, but this could also somehow tricky since it forces us to constantly test and install new products.

 

[CadArtist]

It's not fair that customers are being forced to move into each new releases by CAD vendors even if you don't need those extra functionalities. Vendors must follow what their customers demand and they have to convince customers to pay for what they need.

Car Designer

 

[catiajim]

DS does not force you to migrate to new versions. They generally support 2 versions back from the current. And there is nothing forcing you to migrate anyway. It's only if you want fixes for problems you are having, they will not fix anything older than 2 releases back (Currently R15 and R16, plus R17). I can't blame them for that.

I also didn't say that R14 was better than 15 or 16, just that we had problems when we tried to implement 16, and DS couldn't figure them out before R17 was released. We could have kept working and gotten fixes, but we didn't want to implement R16 in December, and then turn right around and start R17 right away. R17 is mandatory for us, as it has some functionality that we really need.