Workgroup PDM 2009

[NL8]

Quick show of hands:

1.) How many of you are actually using this Add-In?
2.) How many were disappointed in the lack of enhancements in 2009?
3.) How many were pi$$ed off when you found a series of undocumented faults, glitches, errors, and just plain garbage for this supposedly unchanged program?

Joe Hasik, CSWP/SMTL
SW 09 x64, SP 1.0
Dell T3400
Intel Core2 Quad
Q6700 2.66 GHz
3.93 GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600

 

[macduff]

Hi Joe,
We haven't made the move to SW2009 yet because we were waiting for SP2.0 to come out, which it did. So, I would like to do some testing before going to production. Question; did you install SP2.0 yet? There's a list of fixes for Workgroup-PDM. I'm a little worried about making the move based on your comments.

To answer your questions:
1) Yes, we do use the addin.
2) Yes, I'm disappointed with the enhancements, which
is NONE.
3) Can't answer number this yet.

Speaking for the Workgroup-PDM users...we cannot afford to move to Enterprise-PDM due to cost and training, and appauled SW is letting new enhancements go to the wayside. In fact, SW introduced "bugs" from what Joe is stating. I don't know for fact, but believe there's more Workgroup users out there than Enterprise, so why is SW ignoring this?



Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

 

[sldwkmin]

Just out of curiosity what types of enhancements are users of workgroup looking for? It seems to do what it is intended to do quite well.

Cole M
CSWP, CSWST, CSWI, CPDM
Certified DriveWorks AE
HP XW4300, 3.4g proc, 2.5g RAM, ATI Fire GL 3100
Dell M90, Core 2 Duo, 4g RAM, Nvidia Quadra FX2500M
Equus (custom), P4, 3.4g proc, 3g RAM, Nvidia Quadro FX3400

 

[Standing]

1. Yes, we use PDM add-In. I am happy with it.
2. I never expected enhancements.
3. Yes, I would like to see issues fixed.


Bradley
SolidWorks Pro 2009 x64, SP2.0
PDMWorks Workgroup, SolidWorks BOM,
HP xw8600,
64-bit Windows Vista Business
Service Pack 1
Intel Xeon CPU, 3.00 GHz, 16 GB RAM, Virtual memory 166682 MB,
nVidia Quadro FX 4600 Driver 7.15.11.6956

 

[macduff]

There's 23 enhancement ideas listed here. A few are mine.

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/brainstorm.htm

You might have to login under the customer portal to get to this site.

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

 

[NL8]

Just out of curiosity what types of enhancements are users of workgroup looking for? It seems to do what it is intended to do quite well.

I could settle for the software not being enhanced at all. The occasional tweak or addition of functionality is nice, like in '08 when they added the PDF feature. But if you're not going to enhance it, don't break it in the process of ignoring it. Having features you've always relied on break is more frustrating than having new features you'd like to play with not work. And given some of SW's suggestions for work arounds to bugs...

Ex.: we noticed that certain users accross a bround OS/hardware base were no longer able to pull up E-drawings from the web viewer that Workgroups uses. When I reported the problem to my VAR they said it was a known rights issues (something having to do with writing to the directory) and that it was scheduled to be fixed in SP3 (don't see why it broke in the first place, but at least they're handling it). In the meantime they offered the following workaround for our 50 person company:

Would it be possible to set the user rights to administrator until SP3 is released?

On what planet would this even be a reasonable option?

Joe Hasik, CSWP/SMTL
SW 09 x64, SP 1.0
Dell T3400
Intel Core2 Quad
Q6700 2.66 GHz
3.93 GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600