Here’s the kind of thing that kills me

Ok, this looks minor. But it’s not. It’s potentially huge and costs me or my customers vast amounts of rework time for nothing. I was working on a complex surfaced part today, one of those parts with a lot of interior features, so visualization is really difficult. It’s a part last saved in 2008 probably, and I’m working in 2009. I roll back the tree, and then roll forward. Bang, tree is red, part is a mess of stuff all over the place. Why? A Split Line feature decided it was going to do things differently this time. Here’s the proof. And no, I’m not sending the files to tech support. I’m done with that. I’m showing the problem, I’m paying them to figure it out. I shouldn’t have to hold their hand.

That simple change is going to take 45 minutes to troubleshoot and fix. Where do I send the invoice? Do you guys realize people use this software for businesses, not just for pretty demos? It matters that it works. Please take this kind of thing more seriously. Was it wrong before or after? I don’t know. All I know is that stuff has to work consistently. It has to be predictable. Yes, you have to make progress and improve things, but you can’t mess with the way things work. This is not a curmudgeon who is afraid of change, it’s someone who depends on a tool to work predictably. To the extent that I cannot rely on this software to do what I tell it to do predictably, that’s the extent of the value it has to me. Right now the value is well into the red.