CADFanatic.com » Rants

SolidWorks – You’ve Got A Hanger!

brian — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:05:57 +0000

If you haven’t heard by now (and if you haven’t, where have you been?), earlier this week Josh Mings posted an article about an announcement SolidWorks made to VAR’s: as of SolidWorks 2010 Service Pack 4, that they would begin aggressively enforcing their policy of not allowing users access to service packs if they are not on subscription maintenance.

To get more clarification on this issue, Devon Sowell has scheduled an interview with Rich Welch, SolidWorks Vice President of Customer Services, next Tuesday, April 13, 2010 covering “SolidWorks Subscription Maintenance, Service Packs, and Bug Fixes”. Devon is currently soliciting questions that folks would like answers to in this interview.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since Josh’s post, and the biggest question I would like the answer to is why are they just now choosing to enforce this policy?

I’ve never understood this policy, and why it even exists when most (all?) other CAD vendors allow access to service packs/bug fixes for their purchased version. I’ve always thought this was the hanging booger SolidWorks was walking around with while talking about being customer-driven. (How do you like that analogy?) It definitely doesn’t make you look cool!

You know, they could have scored major brownie points with customers and press alike, and not come out with black eyes and bruises that they are going to get from this, if instead they had announced that they had changed the old policy to reflect a more judicious, customer-centric approach, allowing anyone access to all updates for the version they had purchased (or the last version they were on when their subscription lapsed)…

What do you think of this policy?

Image credit: inyobusiness

Drawing Center Mark Improvements & The Lack Thereof

brian — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 12:00:00 +0000

A recent comment on my post on my favorite improvements in SolidWorks 2010 reminded me of an issue I have with what was one of my most favorite improvements: Drawing Center Mark Improvements.

When this feature improvement was first announced and I saw it demoed, I was very excited. My workflow has always been to add center marks, and then dimension to them, as dimensioning to the holes would not allow the dimension witness lines to display correctly with the center marks in place. And I occasionally had issues when something happened that required the center marks be deleted and recreated, and then I would end up with dangling dimensions.

Finally, my issues were addressed with the drawing center mark improvements! Not…

Unfortunately, it turns out that the improvement only works on individual center marks, and not linear center marks, which is pretty much all that we use. So, while this is an improvement, it’s not really for me at all. It’s only half done.

I really hope that SolidWorks finishes this feature in 2011 (or a Service Pack would be even better). It would really make my workflow streamlined.

Like the comment I mentioned above states, it IS the small things that make a difference!

Photo credit: sybrenstuvel

SolidWorks 2009 SP3 Removes Display State Option?

brian — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:45:22 +0000

Back in early December, I posted an article on Display States and Steve Calvert commented about controlling the visibility of new components:

Brian, I use display states and love them except for the fact that when I add a component I have to go back and remove (hide) it from the already created display states. Do you know a way to add a component and only have it show in certain display states?

Steve Calvert

Originally posted as a comment by Steve_Calvert on CADFanatic using Disqus.

And I responded:

Steve,

I’m unsure of previous versions, but in 2009 there is an option to “Hide new components” in the Display State Properties PropertyManager tab.

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/photos/uncateg…

Brian

Originally posted as a comment by Brian on CADFanatic using Disqus.

Well, after applying Service Pack 3 yesterday to my SolidWorks 2009 x64 install, I happened to want to control the visibility of some new parts in a new Display State that I had created, and the Option dropdown is gone! (Compare the image to the left to the original image from when I commented.)

I surely hope that this is just an oversight! Are other folks seeing this?