SolidWorks and the Walmart Dollar Bin
SolidWorks Corp seems to be hell bent on converting the bottom of the barrel 2D user to 3D, regardless of the cost to the rest of their existing customer base. The 2008 interface is only the latest salvo in this war on their customers. The 2008 interface throws away all of the knowledge and training that loyal customers have accumulated over the years, mainly for the benefit of people who have never used the software – potential new sales to reluctant-to-change 2D users. Is this any way to treat your loyal customers? Yank the rug out from underneath them? What’s wrong with a familiar interface for a tool? We are not talking women’s fashion, we are not talking styling, we are talking about how we interact with an engineering tool that needs to remain familiar. There is no benefit in random change.
Anyway, screw you, user, we already have your money. There are vast untapped wallets out there in the reluctant 2D world, and we are willing to piss off/on anyone who has helped us get where we are simply to win these curmudgeon-stick-in-the-mud 2D users. Oh, and by the way, while we are trying to convert these stodgy geezers, we are going to do it by appealling to the 13 year old gamer, because we think that makes sense.
You know, every time I think of this topic, I feel jilted again. I truly think that the management at SW has not thought about this plan critically. They are trying to convert AutoCAD users. The user who is reluctant to leave AutoCAD is not a 13 year old gamer, but a middle-aged grandfather. I don’t see how benchmarking SW against games is going to attract grandfathers.
A soon to be famous quote from Jeff Ray is that he thinks a blank screen is the ideal interface. Games have minimal interface, so CAD should have minimal interface, right? Is that a fair comparison? Games put their interface in the hardware – the controller, the joystick, the Wii-mote. You can’t just remove the interface and not put it somewhere. Are you going to make a new Spaceball that has all of the CAD interface on it? Maybe revert to a completely hot-key driven interface?
Listen to Jeff Ray’s interview before SolidWorks World. SolidWorks wants to sell millions of licenses. They aren’t happy with hundreds of thousands. The only way you are going to sell millions of licenses is to aim at the lowest possible common denominator. Based on that, I expect SolidWorks to become an amateur digital content creator for websites about your puppy, or your Barbie collection, and you should be able to pick it up in the dollar bin in Walmart. Seriously, they are aiming that low. How can a product that has such low aspirations also go where I need it to go? It can’t.
You simply cannot be everything to everyone. In the same way that you might consider breaking a solid modeler away from the surface modeler (Cosmic Blobs) to have two centers of competence, you might also consider a low-end product and a professional level product. I mean, anyone who is willing to finally break away from AutoCAD R10 is going to be unhappy with the rigors of parametric modeling. You can’t stuff an AutoCAD mentality into what we know as SolidWorks and come out with anything that you can make much sense of.
Advice to SW: Don’t continue to piss on your loyal customers. If you want to attract the dregs of AutoCAD users, make a low-brow product just for them. I don’t want to be forced into bad AutoCAD ideas. You simply cannot continue to cram all of this junk into a single piece of software.
Phil,
Very astute observation about the time away from the office. But is it users who are concerned about that or is it their management? Independents are concerned about it because they are both the user and the management.
The essentials class is 5 days, and plenty of people take that. That covers lots of “how” and very little “why”. I’m not sure how to interpret that.
I’m a big believer in live training. I’ve done enough of it to see how some students just wouldn’t understand some things any other way. But on the other hand, not every one learns best by being lectured or shown. Some people learn better from books or other media.
In the end, SW just doesn’t offer the information, regardless of format. There are many possible formats for conveying information other than just live training. A real manual (printed or electronic) comes to mind, or extensive help files. White papers. Video. Knowledge base. Powerpoint. User groups. Print books. Whatever. Many of these don’t require time away from the office and have a higher return rate and more immediacy than formal live training.
I’m frankly surprised at how well the surfacing book is selling. Its selling better than the first book, even though it is a far more niche topic. You’re only a beginner for so long, and of all the SW users that exist, most of them are not beginners. Most of them need something more than simple “how”.
Anyway, fascinating topic. I’m not sure there is any way to know the real truth about what is happening, but the book numbers I think are bearing out the idea that people want something more than the basic.
Hey Guys,
How much of a factor do you think “time away from the office” has to do with the simplicity of the training courses. Anyone who has taught the advanced surfacing course, and any of the advanced courses knows there isn’t enough time to go over all the material in depth. If they added more advanced info, it would even take longer. It is easier to get approval for a one day course, so the material must be compressed into that timeframe. Time and time again, students show up for the Advanced Parts class (1 day) hoping to learn all there is about the subject (even some surfacing). When asked why they didn’t sign up for the additional 2 day Surfacing course, they usually sight the fact that 3 days is too much time away from the office. So it seems everyone wants more “advanced” stuff, but nobody has the time to learn it.
Make sense?
Phil Sluder
fatbikeracer-
I’m currently writing a book about PDM. I’ll have an annoucement ,with details, soon on my website and blog.
Thanks,
Devon T. Sowell
3-D Design Solutions
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/devonsowell/
PDMWorks!!!!!!!!!!!
A thorough explanation of the “deeper” options for features such as surfaces, lofts, fillets, etc. maybe?
But to me it not as much as learning ‘how’ something works as it is ‘why’ something doesn’t work when I think it should. Or why it works here but not there?
Installation. Tim is installing 2007 64 bit and 2008 32 and 64 bit on his machine and it has been a nightmare. Heaven only knows how many times he has gone through the process and how many hours he has wasted in the last couple of days.
To add to what Charles said, I would like to know more about errors and what is going on inside the software. Why does rolling back in the model and making a change cause later features to fail that seem to have nothing to do with the change? Why can’t it offset the edges now? Why do dimensions go dangling? Why is a face no longer selected? Why do fillets fail whose faces don’t seem to have changed? Why does selection order make or break certain fillets? The questions go on and on!
Oh, two more things.
There are about a million little things (tricks) in drawings. I don’t know them all. Hell, even Eddie C. pops up with an “I didn’t know that” every once in a while. A compilation of EVERYTHING sure would be nice.
Also, a guide on how to use SW to create model-based definitions per the current ASME Y14.41, or whatever standard. I don’t know when my company would be willing to make that plunge. It would require both SW to fully meet the standard, as well as proper documentation…
Man, now that I think about it.
How about Animation/COSMOS Motion? I remember using animation in 2006 and the documentation was abysmal. Not sure how it is now.
Advanced Drafting (step draft,etc)? I’m pretty good with the standard draft features, but when complex parting lines or sliders are involved, It can get a bit frustrating.
Oh, totally forgot. What Charles said, MATES!
I agree. CAD Administration. Advanced surface modeling as well, although not so much on the standard tools, loft, sweep, fill, etc. but more on the manipulation tools such as extend/trim/delete face/move face/replace face/heal edges/knit surface. Gee, what have I left out?
One of my biggest challenges with surfacing aren’t models started from scratch, but working with imported/scanned data. Those can be some real beasts.
Boy, Here’s something that I doubt anyone without a serious knowledge of the inner workings can really write about. How about mates? I don’t create huge assemblies, but there are plenty of people that do. There is a lot of “mythical knowledge” about the proper way to do a very large assembly. Even “experts” have directly conflicting best practices. Somewhere among the mis-information is the truth. Which mates solve the quickest? Plenty of people have tried to calculate it, but this in-depth detailing of how to best create large assemblies would be great, even for those of us who don’t create large assemblies.
On the same note, there are plenty of these same details with surfacing. I can (and have) played around with boundary surface for hours, and understand about the different end constraints, how the effect the ISO curves, and why I would want one over the other. I would prefer to have this information already written (maybe it’s in your new book).
I’m sure other aspects of the software run into the same crutch. I think the ones that I would want to see are ultra-in-depth surfacing, mates, solid model shapes (which is better, extrude to body or extrude to surface, and why?). I also wouldn’t mind understanding how SW2009 handles Colors/Appearances. And I mean “truely” understand. As 2008 seems to be transitional, I’ve given up hope of getting that sorted out until the next release.
More importantly, what is the software solving behind the scenes? I can play around to get a “good feeling” about why something works better. But, that’s the problem. I’m an engineer, I don’t do feelings. I want to see the numbers.