Stability of v2008 vs v2009? 1

[Theophilus]

This might appear as a rant, but it's really a bit of research. I've recently endured a change from v2007 to v2008 for a hand tool design--lots of surface work with Fills, Sweeps, Lofts, etc. I had some rather predictable bugs pop up when my assembly was in v2007. My client had someone else working on a different model of hand tool, but he did it in v2008. So I had to move to v2008, get up to speed instantly with the interface updates, and get cracking. I have a way of modeling things that makes editing later a piece of cake--usually involving a master part with bodies split and then saved as separate parts at the end of the tree for detailing as separate parts later. After seeing this other colleague's assembly for this tool (not that it was bad--just more difficult to edit/tweak forms later on), I decided to remodel the whole assembly, figuring it would be quicker. (If using v2007, I'd have been correct--lots of later tweaks to handle curves and other geometry.)

I was instantly faced with a barrage of bugs. My v2007 hand tool had a couple of consistent bugs in the feature tree (things like forgetting what surfaces were included in a Trim), but these were always consistent, and I simply labeled which features would fail and fixed them as the edited part was rebuilt (roll back, fix along the way). Annoying, but no big deal. My rebuilt v2008 hand tool has had many more critical failures, but this time they switch, depending on the edits I make upstream--no more predictability. My problem with this is that the failures aren't the typical geometry corrections that are needed, but software bugs that have features that once worked fine failing flagrantly. I cannot merely delete and redo the feature, since up to ten hours of downstream features would be lost if I did so. So the feature problems must be (somehow) solved by keeping the same features. This involves lots of surfaces, so most of the time I add in lots of patches/hacks/fixes rolled back before the failed feature to solve things.

Here's the big question I've got:
For those who do modeling of this sort, are you seeing fewer bugs in v2009 than in v2008? This is wasting huge amounts of my time and I've got to solve this issue--I have other projects that need my attention, and this current hand tool design is stuck in v2008 (I could have done it much better with v2007 and saved all this hassle--it simply handled surfaces much better with fewer bugs). Please let me know your experiences with the two versions and I'll push my client to allow an upgrade to v2009 if that's yielded better results.

Thanks!



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

If you were re-doing the model anyway, why did you not do it in SW07 and just open it in SW08 when finished?

 

[rfus]

Jeff,

This is a tough question. I saw problems with surfaces and composite curves when jumping from 07 to 09. I found going to 08, then 09 solved the problem in some respects, but didn't solve everything. I still have has some buggy issues, weird relationships, in context sketch stuff, and feature failures. I feel your pain.

My 2 cents in terms of 08 v 09 is that you should go to 09. It is 08 SP6 and more. SP2 on 09 is rocking. I've got my S key and RMB rocking, and am now moving faster than ever, when at times I was so reluctant to abandon my precious 07 and my fine tuned workflow. Old habits are hard to break though. I've seen some major complaints about 09 on the SW forums though. Speed was the complaint, when 09 was supposed to be so much faster, it was slower. And then everyone blames hardware. I haven't found this. I've crashed a few times hard on 09 with weird things like doing selections and clicking on the decal property manager.

Also, do a test using the converision wizard of 08. bring the 07 into the conversion wizard without opening. Then try and open the converted files in 08. Is it the same results as opening the 07 files in 08 and then saving to update, and having the rebuild failures and feature issues?

My position is go to 09. Then if on 09, do one more step and use the new convert files in the task scheduler to bring up these 08 ones, and test against just opening the 08 ones, rebuilding, and then saving. The one thing about the 09 conversion is that I couldn't keep it out of the toolbox, updating toolbox ref'd parts from previous versions, and also it was finding in context refs that I swear I broke.

Hope you find a solution.

rfus

 

[Theophilus]

Because I didn't know about these bugs at the time--I'd never used v2008 until then. I was called on-site to this client's office, and v2008 is what they had installed. I didn't originally anticipate remodeling the entire assembly either. The original plan was to tweak the existing model, which, after reviewing the existing work, seemed more tenuous than simply remodeling everything for ease of editing quickly.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

 

[Theophilus]

Thanks, rfus, I'll check this out. (My previous reply was to CorBlimeyLimey--I must be typing slowly today.)

I've never used the conversion wizard--I guess I have no faith in "wizards" anymore, and would rather have a hands-on approach to my model rebuilds in new versions. Your experience is that the conversion wizard does a good job with the updates?



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

 

[rfus]

Yes, it solved some issues in the way it is rewriting the files. Use the file explorer to dump this design for test and all its refs to a place where you can test this, but I don't really need to tell you that. Check the backup option too just in case, because this saved my 07 toolbox. I was able to grab all the backup toolbox parts and put them back in.

I will be eager to see if it does make any difference.

rfus

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

I've had very few parts fail the Conversion Wizard (less than a dozen) over 8 years and 1000's of files. However none of my files have the fancy swoopy-curves and surfaces that yours would have.

With your type of work I guess you rarely have to reuse files. I am often re-using old bits in new products so have little choice in converting.

If you ever have to go back and convert say a SW01 file to SW09, you would probably have far more problems.

 

[Theophilus]

So I can segregate which files the conversion wizard updates vs. not updates? I won't use it without the ability to segregate my files exactly as I specify. In this instance I would copy these files to a new directory and run the wizard only on the contents of that directory for testing.

During installation, did you specify software versions in the directories (such as "SolidWorks2008" instead of the stupid and destructive default of "SolidWorks")? If so, you're still seeing the Toolbox interference? That's nuts.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

 

[rfus]

I had a major issue with the 09 conversion tool in the task scheduler (not previously there in 08). I said, update this assembly, where in the directory with the assembly it showed maybe 50 parts and subassems. But the creatinon of this was with hundereds of parts, sub assembs, blocks, in context refs, where at some times there were things like inserted parts, and then all kinds of toolbox parts. I put just the assembly into the conversion wizzard of 09, and hit go and sent it to a directory figuring it would update these 50 files and my 09 toolbox would be used when I opened the assem, but all of a sudden it says, converting 323 files. It even found refs that I had hidden, such as when you open an assembly and it cant find a ref, and then ask would you like to find yourself. I had no need to rebuild against it, so I consider it an unbroken/broken ref. How did it find these? I was like, if SW doesn't know where they were in the file refs, then how the heck did the task scheduler find them. I'd selected the backup option but spent half a day replacing this stuff I wasn't ready to bring up to 09 because it was used in other places in other designs that were in 07.

I figured out my best workflow for the migration. Have the backup, and am now a happy camper on 09.

rfus

 

[rfus]

one more note.

I have 06, 07, 08, and 09 on here. all have their own toolbox, not default.

 

[Theophilus]

Another thing I'm seeing is that my v2008 eDrawings refuses to properly save my configurations. I have certain parts hidden or shown per configuration, but eDrawings will not save multiple configurations into an eDrawing file properly--ever. Anyone else seeing this nonsense?



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.