Matt Writes

What do users think about the adoption rate of 2008?

How do you find out answers to questions like this? Do you ask Matt Lombard? Do you ask Mike Puckett? Everybody has a personal agenda to push, so asking an individual who hasn’t studied the question scientifically isn’t much of a real answer, it’s just an educated and biased opinion.

Solidworks has recently put out another survey. This survey is trying to characterize the future of the “SolidWorks Community”. To me, this is a bit like trying to push a dollar sign shaped peg into a user shaped hole. SW Corporate is trying to artificially construct something that should happen organically. Like arabs trying to build an island.

Ok, bad analogy, the islands are kinda cool. The analogy should have compared something that is natural (a beach) to something that is forced by a commercial concern (maximized water frontage for maximized $$). Ok, still bad analogy, I don’t think the SW Community is necessarily trying to make money from this, but it is a PR thing to make restive customers happy.

Come think of it, people aren’t really clammoring for changes to the Customer Portal, but they keep coming anyway. What is the force driving this change? Coming from customers? Do you really think so?

Anyway, SW is asking what shaped island they should build. I’m saying, why are we limited to an island? Maybe what we really need is something else. Let us decide what we need.

So how do you avoid the mistake of asking what customers want and coming up with conclusions like SW reached for the 2008 software? Regardless if you like the new interface or not, 2008 is a CAD admin nightmare because of all of the default changes and re-education that has to take place. Certainly they asked customers before doing that, but which ones? and how did they interpret the results?

Take SWWorld Top 10 Enhancement Requests, this image taken from Mick Puckett’s site:

Frankly, I don’t consider any of those options to be incredibly important. My top 10 list would look like this:

1. Software is reliable and predictable at SP0
2. Mates and sketch relations need to be reliable and predictable
3. PropertyManager should not cover over FeatureManager exactly when FM is needed
4. SW should provide a utility to check your computer and verify that the SW and OS installations are correct (to eliminate finger pointing about crashes, and give some real diagnostic tools)
5. Complete Documentation, electronic or printed
6. “Performance Mode” interface settings to strip out the eye candy
7. Every feature that has a number in a ProperyManager needs to allow access to that number through Design Tables and configurations, double-click changes, and so on.
8. Consistent application of the Esc and Enter keys to exit and repeat commands
9. Apply the RMB OK to all features and functions throughout the software
10. Stop adding new useless functions just for AutoCAD users

My guess is that people got to vote on the things that SW has already decided to implement for the next version of the software. This would help SW with their claim to implement some very impressive percentage of users top 10 requests.

When you ask a question, one of the risks is that the way you ask the question pre-determines the answer. Why doesn’t SW step out of the way and just moderate a discussion between users? SW has shown that they aren’t much good at this kind of stuff, so I think its time to stop being so secretive about things and if you’re going to say that you’re a customer driven company, let the customers drive for once.

The whole thing about “community”, it’s just about people informally interacting and sharing stuff in a way that isn’t forced, and it isn’t commercial, it isn’t formal press-release type stuff, it’s just on the user information level. This should be driven by users, not by the big corporation. I think all of the stuff that SolidWorks Corporation does for “the community” should be transparent. There is no reason to hide the results of polls or surveys. If you want to build a “community”, then treat the residents like you’re one of them.

I feel like SolidWorks is in the mood for granting some wishes, like they have been listening, but it has only taken them 13 years to respond. I think it is time to become more transparent in the process. Somehow the process for deciding on new features in SolidWorks 2008 went badly askew. SolidWorks badly misinterpreted what users want, or at least badly executed that interpretation, with some of the new interface changes. I frankly don’t trust their decision making ability, even if they do claim to be listening.

Make a Wish List, where the users submit the topics, and then users vote and comment on them. In general, I’m talking about SolidWorks software functionality. The survey is talking about SolidWorks customer site functionality, but I believe the same concept should go for both. Get in on the discussion on the SW Forums.

Last week, Matt Lorono, fcsuper of SW Legion wrote me an email. He wanted to talk about the lack of printed documentation from SW Corp. It has been a long time and a lot of people used to get fired up about this topic. I thought it was a great topic for a blog post, so what follows is a greatly expanded version of my email response to Matt. He also wrote a blog post on the topic, which you can read here.

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The way I look at it, there are two sides to the “printed manuals” issue: paper books, and usable information.

I write printed books. I’ve also written classes for SolidProfessor. I’m secretly jealous of organizations like SolidProfessor who write for electronic format, because they can make changes very quickly, and their distribution is cheap. My printed books take 3 months for the publisher to get together, print, bind, and distribute. Plus, it costs $3 to send one in the US, and 10x that to send to New Zealand. If I find a mistake in the book I can’t make a change for 2 years when the next edition comes out. This feels very old-tech compared to electronic formats.

I’m a bit of a book worm too, so I love a book in my hands, and reading is real enjoyment. I mean, I really enjoy the weight of the paper in my hands, the smell of the book. Sometimes to relieve the eye strain of staring at a computer all day, I read a book. Ok, that’s still eye strain, but its different.

The advancement of cultures used to be based on literacy level. These days, if it doesn’t entertain you automatically, no one is interested. No batteries? No wall plug? No wireless connection? On one hand I really resent the laziness of modern pop culture, but at the same time I’m a part of it. I’m on-line all day, I’m wireless, I’ve got a pocketful of gadgets where ever I go.

Sometimes I just want to go outside, sit under the tree, drink manually squeezed lemonade in a homemade hammock, swat flies and mosquitoes without chemical repellent, and read a real book. Dostoevsky or Mark Twain. Unplugged, off the grid, manual and gritty.

Other times I want info to be searchable, copy/pastable, screen shotable, surrounded by a bug zapping shield.

So yes, I really DO miss the printed manual, because it was something I could refer to and put sticky notes in, and take to the bathroom, and have on my desk for use while the software is up.

Printing a manual means translating it and printing it in 12 languages, and distributing it. And then changing it when the software changes. They already do this to the training manuals, and I know that writing a manual with the translation and distribution in mind (and doing it SW’s way) means that the level of material that you write goes way down.

Even the SW 2007 Bible was only translated into Chinese, and that probably because if we didn’t do it, someone else was going to bootleg it. Anyway, 1/3 of my sales came from the Chinese version, but I only made half per book of what I make on the English version because of the translation.

Further, the SW 2007 Bible isn’t available in electronic format at all because everyone (author and publishers) are afraid of it just being another freeload download. I’m all for openness of information, but I didn’t write that book for free, and I won’t give it away.

I got the chance to work on a SolidWorks official training manual, and see some of what happens behind the scenes. Translation puts huge impediments in the way of writing a complete and informative manual. Ironically, it is the non-print SW help that suffers the most due to this syndrome. The Help documentation is a spectacle of efficiency, and at the same time nearly useless. SW help is very rare on screen shots, and sparse on words. (Translators are paid by the word.) Screen shots of the interface are non-existent because you’d have to take screen shots in software installed in all languages. The Help is pathetic #1 because they tried to cut corners for translation and #2 because it was written by writers, not by people who understand CAD.

Of course why print anything at all if you don’t have content worth printing. The current (sw08) SW help files are not worth printing. Not by a long shot. But, kind of in the spirit of my Is SolidWorks in the mood for granting wishes?  post, Jim Wilkinson has committed to better documentation because of some vocal blog visitors. Crappy documentation benefits me, because people have to either buy a book from me for $50 or go take a class for 10x or more. I’m looking forward to the documentation with 2009, because that would be the first opportunity for Jim’s new initiative to show results. Plus, it might leave me time to write about more interesting things than how the sketcher works.

As I see it we’ve got these two issues (writing for translation and writing by writers instead of experts), and we can’t solve the print/electronic issue until we solve the issue of having something fit to print in the first place. You can’t solve the translation issue without charging more for non-English versions of software and documentation. I want to say that again because it’s painfully obvious, and SW often has difficulty with the really obvious stuff:

You can’t solve the translation issue without charging more for non-English versions of software and documentation.

Personally, they have worn me down. I used to be a big proponent of a printed manual, but now I’ll just take the information in whatever format they can deliver it. And now, I might even lean a little the other way, because electronic data is more easily searched, and more quickly updated. On the downside electronic format is too easy to steal, which is a problem for paid books, but not for software manuals. Also, for me, I really dislike reading from a screen for long periods of time.

So there are pros and cons on both sides. I don’t believe we will ever see printed manuals again for software in our lifetimes. The people developing the software are too far divorced from old-tech techniques. The costs of educating users just seem like a waste to them. Notice the only print books SW creates are the ones for the training classes, and even those exist primarily to sell $400-$1500 classes, not for the sale of a single $60 book (aside from Rob Rodriguez’s new Photoworks book).

I want to lean toward publishing new information electronically like SolidProfessor. I must admit, though that I prefer the style of info delivery in a book, a narrative, rather than a video style. I personally don’t think that people absorb much from videos, and that they lack the inate ability to look at it again effortlessly that you get with print. People love what’s easy, but learning isn’t easy. Video lessons look like learning, but I think they have some evolving to do before they really teach much. Video is also no good for reference info.

The Kindle device seems like a good answer, but staring at a screen isn’t on my list of things I want to do more of. Plus, the thing costs $400 plus media.

Anyway, how many more conflicting points of view can one person have? I’m attracted to both electronic and print publishing. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. When it comes to these large impersonal corporations, the cost factor is going to be what wins the day, and that is clearly the electronic side of things. It’s not an entirely bad option, and makes at least some sense business-wise.

How about you?

Far be it from me to be one of those blindly optimistic sorts who sees only Prozac induced bliss around every announcement from SolidWorks Corp. Still, all cynicism aside, sometimes they really do come out with what appears to be good news for people like you and me who actually use the software.

What’s the good news? Well, from my point of view, no news is good news. We’re getting no news about SolidWorks 2009, and the less the better. For once, I’m happy about a lack of information. A year ago, we were well into Beta for 2008. This lack of news can only mean that the development cycle is slowing down, at least for this round. If it goes to 14 months, well, that’s a start. Of course the real measurement is that un-measurable quantity called “flakiness”, which 2008 has in abundance.

It would also be great if the first service pack were usable right out of the box! This is the part where the optimists and the pessimists change roles. The optimists say its stupid to expect software to be done correctly, like people take pride in what they do. The pessimists say we are owed more effort than we have been getting. Personally, I think the pessimists are right, and I think we are winning the battle on this one. Take your time on alpha, making sure you have the right ideas. Then take your time on beta, making sure you have executed well. Release the software when its ready.

Anyway, with that and the SWWorld presentation 180 flip, I think things are looking up for people who dare to ask. I’m even somehow weirdly obliged not to tell even more good news (doesn’t have to do with new functionality, I’m obliged in that respect also, but it isn’t weird to keep your word on an NDA).

There is a lot to speculate about around the future of this software, but for the moment, I’m cautiously optimistic. The “proof is in the pudding”, but I think we are hearing at least some of the right things. The 2008 release year was the year of stuffing potatoes in your ears and penalizing existing customers for being loyal. 2009 will hopefully be one immense bug fix and a collective sigh of relief that all of these years of effort and learning invested in this CAD tool have not been unceremoniously flushed.




If you’ve been waiting for this, this is the time. If you don’t care, well, move along then.

I have finally received my copies of the surfacing books. Many Amazon customers had their copies several days before I had mine. I’ve also ordered a few copies to see if I can sell some.

The book is in color this time with much better quality print, pictures and paper than in the 2007 book. It is 460 pages long, and written for SolidWorks 2008. The files are available by download from the publisher rather than on a CD. I should point out that the files are all in 2008 format.

If you are interested in reading the Table Of Contents, go to the Surfacing Bible link at the top of the page.

The book is $50, which includes shipping in the US. The rest of the payment and shipping details are on the Surfacing Bible page, where you can also order one directly from me if you want.

If you want to pay as little for this book as possible, go to Amazon.com. People who sell the book make more money per book than I do for writing it. Something wrong with that.

The book has been selling better than the 2007 bible for the past couple of weeks, and they are both at the top of the SolidWorks category on Amazon. I’m surprised that a niche book like this would be that popular. I’m finding that a lot of people are curious about the topic even if they don’t use it every day.

Some of you have asked for details about the SESWUW coming up in May in Columbia, SC.

What distinguishes this event from some of the others is:

- two day event, you can come to either or both days for a single price
- hands on events
- an opportunity to take the CSWA or CSWP exams
- presentations by regional user group leaders, reseller elite and SW employees

This event has been put together by Tony Cantrell, the leader of the Palmetto user group.

SESWUW now has a website and active sign up! So get yer butt over there and do it. You need more SW info, and this is the largest source this side of SolidWorks World!

I was digging around for something else, and found this. It is about two months old, and is speaking in reference to Catia V6.

V6 is a brand new kernel, one that has capabilities that Florack claims to be unrivalled in the industry, being able to resolve Geometry and Topology simultaneously and being able to open files from pretty much any existing CAD system and edit it natively. V6 is claimed to remove many of these painful limitations that the CAD industry has suffered long and hard from.

It comes from this MCAD mag article by Martyn Day. The first part of the article is incomprehensible CAD doublespeak, but one phrase from this quoted block stands out - “and edit it natively”.  Who knows what they are actually saying, but what I’m hearing is that the new Catia kernel is also on this direct editing bandwagon.

And of course the next question is why should SW continue to line the pockets of their competitors (UG/Solid Edge) by paying for the Parasolid kernel, when they could just integrate the Catia kernel? I think a lot of people have asked that question for a long time. The Parasolid kernel seems to be very effective, but Synchronous Technology is separate from Parasolid, and the Spaceclaim style direct modeling functionality sounds to be built into the Catia V6 kernel.

I think one of the stumbling blocks of the Spaceclaim/Synchronous Technology paradigm is going to turn out to be that it really only deals with analytical geometry - flat and cylindrical geometry. It doesn’t work on more generalized shapes required by NURBS. When they announce that, well, then I’ll be excited.

If we’re talking about Catia V6, we can’t just talk about direct editing speculation. There are other things as well that are important in V6.

It might have been 5 years ago when we heard Bernard Charles say that CAD interoperability was going to come about by all software working across all hardware and OSes. At the time it was seen as a dodge for getting around the notorious SW/Catia lack of interoperability. SolidWorks had a viewer version that ran on Java, but it was unusably slow. It sounds like part of the vision of V6 on a larger scale is to start to deliver on the interoperability using more modern tools. One way of overcoming interoperability problems is to just ignore the proprietary feature history, and use direct editing. It also solves the marketing dilemma of “why can’t SW and Catia share files?” and another huge one “why can’t SW07 read SW08 files?” One aspect of this direct modeling concept that people aren’t jumping up and down about is that the whole version compatibility issue simply goes away. If you have direct editing software, you are compatible with all versions of other software programs.

SaaS, software as a service, the ominous threat of delivering applications primarily across the web instead of having them installed locally, seems to play an obvious role in all of this. Even SW people have been making sure that those listening are hearing the SaaS message again and again. Do you really believe it? Do you really want to?

Anyway, the SaaS dream is being combined with the old virtual reality dream, and the word “experience” is being abused to the point I expect it to file suit. “If you build it, they will come”. Does this really apply to a “Second Life” sort of application for manufacturers?

SolidWorks Island on Second Life seems to be one of those marketing feelers to see if this was a great idea that no one ever recognized. SolidWorks Island is a lonely place where you can ride surfboards on the sand and watch videos of the real world while you sit by yourself in a virtual world. Anyway, not to say its a bad idea, maybe just that people aren’t quite ready for it yet.

I can see where the immersive “experience” might work out for things like planes, trains and automobiles, Catia’s forte, but probably not so much for the ventillation system, or a potato peeling machine. By now we’ve all seen the DS ad where people in the real world interact directly with virtual people and virtual stuff. Maybe this kind of thing is 50 years off. Maybe for some industries much less. It all seems to fall into the “2D is going to disappear” category of CAD salesmen’s wet dreams.

So, editability with direct editing is great, banishing the version problems forever will be great, but direct editing has a lot of questions to answer. It is certainly not going to replace parametrics, but is it really of much benefit when they are used together (a la Synchronous Technology), or will it be used separately, and side by side (a la Spaceclaim)? And who is ready for that really immersive experience?

Devon Sowell has started a new blog called PDM Solutions tackling PDM issues. A great place to start is with his SW Explorer tips. File management can be a make-or-break capability in engineering projects. Whether your organization is big or small, you can benefit from this technology.

Leave some comments for Devon and ask for stuff you want to see.

Let’s be clear about this. Direct Model Editing is generally an old concept, CAD-wise, which is being applied in some new ways in the last year or so in the CAD world. To some extent it is a technological development, but it is in my opinion more evolutionary than revolutionary. It’s not a big change, just a step forward. The real development here is a marketing development. CAD companies are getting scrappy trying to out-do one another, but they are fighting over the same jaded customers over whom they have fought for the last 30 years.

The real point of the resurgence of Direct Model Editing is that it removes specialized knowledge from the equation. Now you can have your office manager update the cast transmission housing instead of an engineer or CAD specialist. Imagine the money management can save now! We can get rid of engineers, and just have untrained people make models for us!

I think that’s the level that the CAD vendors are pushing. By making CAD available to current non-CAD users, they are opening up a whole new class of customers. The new Siemens offering as well as Spaceclaim are clearly aimed at this non-CAD user. Even SolidWorks is pushing to increase overall seat sales and revenue so much that they can’t do it selling to the relatively entrenched current CAD user base. In SolidWorks, the Instant 3D gimmick is one step in this direction. The Siemens stuff is a leap-frog/copy cat feature, copying Spaceclaim and Instant3D and out-doing each to some extent. Outdoing Spaceclaim because Solid Edge and UG/NX also have parametrics and Spaceclaim does not, and outdoing SolidWorks because the Siemens direct model editing deals with fillets better and the interface for the direct changes is less cumbersome.

For existing CAD users, this means one of two things:

1) If you make your living editing simple models, one of these tools may be used by you (or someone with less skill than you) to do the same work more easily

2) For people who work in more complex parts or design from the ground up, I think the whole direct modeling concept is going to mean very little until it progresses to the next level with the ability to directly manipulate a full range of general NURBS curvature.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll repeat it here because I think it’s at the heart of the argument. Pushing direct modeling tools too far down the ladder to enable non-engineer/designer workers (such as machinists, graphics artists, marketing people or general office personell) to make engineering/design changes will have a backlash.

I personally don’t think the the direct model editing market is going to be significantly larger than the existing CAD market unless the price is in the sub $2000 range. At that price, it will start to cannibalize the low end of the existing CAD market rather than add to it.

Is the functionality valid? Yes. Is the market approach valid? Maybe. I think this is what everyone is waiting to see right now. Who is going to buy into this? Direct model editing is not going to replace parametrics completely. There are too many real benefits in parametrics for models which change predictably.

They are trying to sell this to non-specialists, but ironically, some things about direct model editing require the user to understand more about the underlying construction of CAD models (b-rep, NURBS, and limitations of representing surfaces) than parametric modeling does.