SolidWorks 2008 Vista follow up
The first thing that struck me about working in Vista (shown on the right) was that the colors seemed to be different. Maybe this is just a prank being played on the colorblind, who knows? The color for selected items is blue instead of green. Also, the dynamic highlight color is orange instead of red, and the sketch relation icon background is green instead of blue. Sometimes. If you still have SW07 installed, then your 2008 colors will be just like they are in 2007 (as shown on the left). If it is a fresh installation, you’ll get the colors on the right. The value of changing colors, regardless of the reason, seems dubious at best. Anyway, what it comes down to is that Selected Item 1 and Selected Item 4 have been swapped, and the Selected Face Color and Dynamic Highlight have also been changed for God only knows what reason. After working with this for a while, it seems like a completely unnecessary change, although it’s a little unsettling, I don’t think there are any real consequences (or benefits).
***Update*** It turns out that this is just a setting, but it still looks like someone at SW sent out this version (sp0 ev) with a different default setting from usual. As mentioned above, the colors can be manually changed back to normal defaults if you want, but in this case, there are three saved color schemes for highlighting colors – Green Highlight, Blue Highlight and Orange Highlight.
In SW07, the color scheme had several schemes like Blue Horizon, Hazy Day, In The Spotlight, etc. that used background images and color settings. In SW08 the new RealView Scenes made those kind of redundant. Still, the 07 schemes and the new 08 highlight schemes were both in the drop down list as late as pre-release. In sp0, only the highlight schemes remain. I think someone made a mistake by using a registry setting with the blue highlight defaulted on.Another difference between the images is that the Vista cursor doesn’t have an indicator for the type of entity it is hovering over. The indicators are really there, something odd just happened with the screen shot.
Another jarring realization is that the Open dialog is drastically different in Vista. Some of that can be set back the way it was by setting Windows to use Classic Folders, in the Folder Options, but I’m going to try to get used to the new stuff to see if it has any benefit. So far, I notice that the little preview is missing in Vista, which to me is a big deal. On the plus side, though , Vista allows 4 sizes of thumbnails – small, medium, large and extra large. In reality, that’s only slightly more convenient than XP which required a registry edit to change the size of thumbnails.
This part is about 32 MB, built in SW05. As a test, I saved this file out as a STEP file in 08 Vista, 08 XP and 07 XP. All the save times were within a couple seconds of one another. The part has 249 features. The rebuild time was 13 seconds in Vista, 15 seconds in 08 XP and 16 seconds in 07 XP. This isn’t an exhaustive or scientific test, but on first blush, things appear to look good for vista.
This is the new hourglass equivalent. The little ring circulates. Not a big deal, just different.
Here’s a little head scratcher. The pop-up shortcut bar that shows up when you select a mate from the FeatureManager has the Normal To option on it. Huh? When you click on it, it asks you to select something to be Normal To. Even the Zoom To Selection seems out of place, although it actually does something (it zooms to one of the parts of the mate, but not both). The shortcut bar is supposed to have the “most commonly used” tools on it. I’m sorry, I’m slipping back into bashing the interface. 
Here’s a little game you can play at home. In SW08 you’re going to have to know all of the icons for all of the RMB menu picks in addition to all of the toolbar icons in order to get the most out of the new productivity enhancements. Have you ever seen the movie Johnny Mnemonic, where Keanu Reaves gets computer data dumped into his brain? I feel a nosebleed coming on.
Anyway, we’ll call this game Johnny Mnemonic in honor of that pre-matrix cyber-punk memory master. Name all of the icons shown above. I was able to get 8 of them. How many can you get without looking at tooltips? (hint: this pops up when you click a part in an assembly) \n\n
‘, ‘SolidWorks 2008 on Vista’, 0, ”, ‘publish’, ‘open’, ‘open’, ”, ‘solidworks-2008-on-vista’, ”, ”, ‘2007-09-12 00:55:21’, ‘2007-09-12 04:55:21’, ”, 0, ‘https://dezignstuff.com/blog/?p=806’, 0, ‘post’, ”, 0),
(808, 248, ‘2007-09-12 00:56:58’, ‘2007-09-12 04:56:58’, ‘ \n
I’ve had a couple of comment questions on the setup. First, SteveO asks about the Task Pane. There are more panes available… give me more pane, mamma always used to say. In the images below the right is XP and the left is Vista, both SW08. These are taken from different computers, notice that SolidWorks Search is on the Vista box and not the other. I think the File Explorer portion of it has the same options. Below it is shown with all of the options checked. Recent Docs, Samples, Open Docs, local comp, network, etc. It looks like the Wiley and Public folders are favorites folders, with just about anything in them you could want. These appear to replace the My Documents folder.
The RealView tab at the bottom of the tabs on the left is new, or at least changed from a set of tabs that used to be to the right and take up a column of interface space. Now instead, the Task Pane tabs interfere with the Confirmation Corner icons when windows are tiled. I think the shuffling of stuff around the screen was careless with 2008. There is no other word for it.
The RealView tab allows you to apply scenes and “appearances” (materials) to windows or parts respectively by drag and drop from the pane. It should be noted that backgrounds are now document properties, so you are at the mercy of other users, and can’t set up a consistent background for yourself unless you want to simply turn off RV backgrounds altogether, which isn’t a bad option for real work.
Ricky asked about Software OGL. No. I am not running Software OGL. The graphics functionality is pretty good, even with the RealView fluff turned on (reflections and shadows) which will probably be turned off as soon as I’m done writing reviews. My video card is the nVidia FX3450, and the nVidia site has a Vista specific driver available, which seems to work ok (no problems yet).
Jeff says he’s not selling pencils. Maybe we can vote on this later. No doubt he is giddy from all of the interface interference between SW08, Vista and Office 07. Geez Louise, no thanks.
And of course HoffY rants about the Open dialog. I tend to agree. SW needs to spend more time on details, less time shuffling things around. Maybe HoffY could benefit from SteveO’s suggestion of abandoning the Open dialog in favor of the File Explorer. I would miss the ability to sort and change icons with the views in Open, but I’ll give it a shot. I’ve heard other people doing the same thing.
Ok, I’ve shown mine, now you show me yours. I want someone who likes the new 08 interface to show me specifically why they like it and why it makes them faster, and give counter points to my description of why I don’t like it. That would be valuable for me. People just say “it’s faster” or “there is less mouse movement” or “it takes up less space”, but I would like to see someone prove it, because I think I have proven that it is none of those. Maybe I’m just not using it correctly. Really, I’d like to see someone do this. Any takers?