Solid Edge Software Quality
Some of my long-time Dezignstuff readers know that I’ll sometimes make an obscure stretch to play word association games. If you understand the connection between the image on the right and the title of this post, leave a comment and claim your prize. What’s your prize?
We could get philosophical on the meaning of “quality”, but I’ll spare you. By “quality”, we usually mean two things:
- reliability (does it crash or hang up)
- predictability (does it do what you expect it to do)
Once upon a time I used Mechanical Desktop, and it was awful. I spent more time rebooting my computer than running the software. SolidWorks used to crash a lot, and once they got that under control, the software was then full of small bugs that seemed to get in the way of nearly everything you do. You have to keep a bucketful of workarounds ready in all situations. “All software has bugs.” Smug apologists could excuse almost anything with this statement. To me how many bugs you leave in the software is a measure of the value of the software. SolidWorks people seemed to have better things to do than fix bugs.
Anyway, bugs are kind of a pet peeve of mine. On The Edge is not just here to talk about the sunshine and roses part of working with Solid Edge. I’m here to talk about the reality. Bugs are part of reality. What kind of bugs have you run into in Solid Edge? How did you report the bug? How long did it take to get fixed? How painful was the workaround?
SolidWorks tech support always played “goaltender” with bugs. All they wanted to do was deflect, and not let your report get past them. Part of that tactic was to set up a system where researching the bug was really the responsibility of the user, and you couldn’t report a bug unless you had already researched it. They were definitely trying to get you to solve your own problems. For the last several years, I just never bothered reporting bugs, because I always got an argument, and then the bug rarely got fixed. And I still had to find my own workaround. I’m hoping Solid Edge does a better job than that.
So far, I’ve only recognized one bug when using Solid Edge. With Solid Edge open and a blank part, I clicked on the Help icon, which shows the Help panel to the right. Then I tried to drag the top bar of the Help panel to move it around, and the Solid Edge display kind of froze up. It would release again if I clicked on something in the windows Task Bar. This is 100% repeatable on my machine. Can anyone else out there reproduce this?
Please tell us about your experience with bugs, finding workarounds, and getting them fixed.
I’ve reported a few bugs in Solid Edge. Either over the phone or on their webpage. They always get looked into even if they are in a old version which we always are. Sometimes the answer is that it isn’t in the new version so it must be fixed. There is one bug that I got that answer to which is less frequent now but not all the way gone. It was for holes that would all be in the sketch but not all get cut. The workaround is to delete the feature and recreate.
Their database for tracking things is good. I have gotten E-mails occasionally saying your bug from 2 years ago has been fixed in XX build.
Their system for requesting new stuff is more cumbersome.
Hi Matt,
I’ve tried to reproduce this, but it works correctly.
http://www.screencast.com/t/Vsl4QPC06
What kind of video card and driver do you use?
Regards,
Imics
Your first question, Matt: the illustration is from Robert Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’, which was concerned with the creation of a particular kind of quality. From everything you’ve written in the past few months, it seems like you think SE _is_ teaching quality daily, long after D’Assault has stopped.
Evan,
Correct about the reference. Your interpretation isn’t quite right, though. I was concerned that SW only considered one particular type of quality as being worth addressing. I don’t have any idea at this point about Solid Edge quality. Which is why I’m here asking questions.
Help pane snapping to the screen edge via blue triangle fine on my system so must be some sort of conflict.
Roger
Matt can you run through service packs – I mean how big ? how hard to do? can you roll them back easily? do they add new stuff in a SP or just fix bugs? can you get SP for older SE versions or do they disappear from the download are like they do for SW after a couple of releases? Solidworks usually runs to about 2000 bugs per release or it has before development dried up. So how does SE compare? BTW I crashed SE several times in the short time I trialled it. Perhaps you arent pushing it hard enough.
Looking for some grit in this blog not just advertising 😉
To answer some of Neil’s questions…
I just logged in and currently I can still download full products back to v18 (that’s 6 version back from the current version), and I can download maintenance packs back to v14.
SE maintenance packs are all encompassing, meaning you don’t have to install them all in order; you just install the latest one that you want. However, to “roll-back” you have to uninstall SE completely and reinstall with the previous maintenance pack.
Of course SolidWorks has 2000 bugs but Solidworks has also about 2000 functions more than Solid Edge.
@Chris ……and they are all redundant.
@anonymous. Really that far back? ok well already some useful differences are being revealed. I’ll keep watching this space 🙂 Thanks to the SE community for pitching in to answer newbie questions here.
Really? 2000? Could you then name a few useful functions that cannot be found in SE? I’m really curious about this…
Neil,
On the crash thing, our data/feedback shows Solid Edge is generally less susceptible to crashing than some of the other mainstream systems. However, we do tend to be somewhat sensitive to graphics driver in this regard. You do need a relatively matched set as the graphics folks are often making changes that need coordination between the vendor and the CAD. If you are truly interested in testng Edge further, let me know what graphics card you have and we’ll hook you up with the right driver.
Hello Matt,
I tried to reproduce your “bug” but did not have that behaviour. If i reproduce your steps as shown in the movie my screen did not froze.
Perhaps a new/other video driver for your graphic card wouls solve this.
Good Luck
Donald
Hi Matt,
Strange, I suspect it’s a system issue….I have access to ST4 Student Edition on this (low spec) laptop, and this process works as expected here, equally as well as on my workstation PC. (although I’m away on leave now…yes, this is my idea of relaxing) 😉
I made a screen capture of how it rolls for me http://screencast.com/t/Hy1gK2H7MNb …you should get gist of the little blue orientation glyphs from this.
Sean, thanks for that. I’ve apparently got something local going on.
Matt
I was installing the student edition at my local high school on aeveral machines. We had some graphics issues on the teachers old (4 or 5 yrs old) low end notebook. Screen flashing when moving cursor, graphics not appearing normally in several areas.
Help on SE recommended that if these graphic problems were occuring, the fix was to run CHKDSK on the machine and dfrag the drive. On our notebook in question, defrag had never been run ever, nor had CHKDSK.
I was late when we found this info, and I have not got back in touch with him to see if this ‘fix’ cleared up his graphic issues on this one notebook.
I will get in touch with him and see how that notebook is running.
Billy