SolidWorks World Top 10 List
The voting for SolidWorks World Top 10 list has been active for a few days now. Right now, every item displays on my computer as having a score of 0, even though there are definitely votes for each. You can vote +1 or -1 on each item, so scores of zero are definitely possible, just not likely. This is the company that wants to run its software on the web – the same company that struggles to make a counter on a forum run correctly? I’ve seen it work correctly a couple of days ago, just not today for some reason. Some other people seem to have had problems getting the ideas to show up, and I’ve also seen that, but intermittently. So if you go there, some patience (and imagination) may be required. Also, the voting is very sparse, especially for a forum with such big traffic. It might be that the links to the voting area are not really explicit. It took me a little while to figure out how to get there, and first arrived thanks to a link someone had posted.
Anyway, the Top 10 voting list is one of the things I’ve liked best about the SolidWorks forums. It only comes once a year, right before SW World. Even though I like it, I’m not convinced it does any good, because the stuff that comes out of the process has varying quality. Many of the items being voted on are existing functionality, and some are simply bad ideas, or stuff that I wouldn’t benefit from at all and would prefer that development time were spent on something else. I didn’t contribute any ideas this year, mainly because it seems futile to me. I don’t think anything of value will be added to the existing software. All significant development seems to be going into something other than the current software. Still, I voted on the ideas that I had an opinion about.
And then here’s something else to have a look at:
This is the list of categories, and how many ideas are in each. If CAD is as developed as it’s gonna get, why do we still have people asking for stuff? The categories with the most requests are Parts and Features and Drawings. That is pretty much basic CAD functionality. Anyone telling you that users are not asking for CAD functions is fooling themselves. The fact that Toolbox has so few requests tells me that people have given up on it. Photorendering only has 2 requests?!? It has been a whole year since they gutted the renderer, you mean people aren’t asking for another total rework of the renderer?
Anyway, go check it out, and vote on stuff.
I used to be a SolidWorks evangelist, but I lost interest when SolidWorks stopped caring. I didn’t even renew my subscription this year. No sense in staying on a sinking ship.
By the way, who the hell plans a convention like SolidWorks World over Valentine’s Day?
@Dan Staples
Ok, it’s not every day I have the ear of someone in the position to make things happen… surfacing Top 10 coming up.
Seems like most of your die-hard contributors to this forum are heavy surfacing users. What about a top 10 for surfacing? I don’t know if SolidWorks will listen, but maybe someone else will. 😉
SWW top 10, I lost interest many years ago, it has no value to me.
I am not going to waste my time on SWW top 10. When you do not take advice it will stop coming.
I am doing mostly fussy surfacing stuff. I have noticed that I spend about 30% of my time when using Solidworks fixing broken models and working around bugs.
I am getting more interested in other CAD geometry definition options.
@Kevin Quigley
If conic sketch entities are not on the list this year, I would say its because the people who usually suggest that stuff aren’t participating. I didn’t participate in submitting ideas. I don’t think it’s because conic sketch entities aren’t needed or wanted. If you deny people for long enough, they stop asking.
I can vote OK, and the system is logical enough – click the up arrow to vote it up, the down arrow to vote it down. But the issue I have is that I didn’t see this ideas list on the forum so I’m voting against a fixed list now…..and 80% of the stuff on there is what I would call very minor enhancements (like changing the icon for parts in the Feature Manager). There are a few long timers, but many many more missing ones (Conic surfaces anyone?) and very few relate to geometry creation. What does that say?
What astounds me is how any business can sit back and watch their goodwill drain away, or worse still actively hasten their demise by deliberately persisting with things that are known to be going down badly. Because of that, what was a pretty valuable rapport between SW and users is now reduced to being a couple of shades above derision level in both directions, and I don’t see that reconcilliation is q realistic outcome.
Thats 300m pa of SW business going sour in the meantime and many thousands of customers business who are going to be adversely affected. The loss of Tsplines is a good example of collatoral damage arising from this whole misguided plan.
While there certainly have been times when SW screwed up along the way I would never have anticipated the way they have progressively bombed out under DS direction and despite the vigorous feedback pointing out the nature of the shortcomings. What the hell is wrong with the people who run DS?
I’m hoping Mr Charles uses his SWW guest speaker spot to inform us of his resignation. Well overdue IMO. I am kind enough not to call him a dinosaur at 55 but the decisions he has made in respect of SW do come across as being out of touch or inept.
I am much more interested in straightening up abysmal management performance for the betterment of what we have currently in SW than I am playing with software focused on delivering social media and lifelike experience. Bernard can appear on stage in a sexy little number and pucker and mince all he likes while attempting to land love bites but I’m not looking for any of the kind of action he’s offering.
I agree with you all, solidWorks has currently lost its Mojo. My impression is that the number of users participating in the voting and the idea submission has decreased a lot.
Also the quality of the idea is quite low…it seems like many “historical” SolidWorks users are not participating in the idea submission and voting. There’s probably a lack of confidence on company’s plans for future developement.
I contributed to simulation, but who knows what will happen when V6 comes ? Will Simulia replace all the former COSMOS suite ?
It would be a pity because:
– SolidWorks Simulation (structural analysis) has come to a very high level of power and ease of use. I wish they could keep it and maybe borrow from ABAQUS only the non linear solver and the explicit solvers
– SolidWorks Motion is an hidden pearl (it’s so powerful, I sometimes think that many people at DS SolidWorks Corp are not completely aware of it’s potential and power)
– SolidWorks Flow simulation (in my opninion), is the product that most likely is going to be replaced by something else since the solver is owned by Menthor Graphics. I’ll give you a hint for that “something else”: have you ever read about the partnership between Simulia and StarCFD by CD-ADAPCO ?
I can’t view the top ten list, let alone vote on it, because I have not upgraded SW since 2009. But so what???? Dassault/SolidWorks has been positioning their customer base in a history based heirachical customer management tree for many years now. If you are not a subscription services customer, you can not only not vote on the suggestions, you can not even see them.
My investment in SW is now easily over $20,000 including the base package (SW1997), plus PhotoWorks, Annimation, Piping, Flow, and a number of meaningless upgrades. While I have received a nice return on that money spent, the improvements since SW 2004 have not been worth the subscription price, at least for me. I mostly produce images for sales purposes, models for Flow simulation and CNC input for sheet metal parts. Keeping up to date for no apparent improvement in functionality to SW2012 would be >$10,000.
Whining aside, if I could have made suggestions, they would be as follows:
1. 3D CAD should be scalable, macro and micro. And you should be able to “walk through” not only your model, but it’s surroundings as well. At a micro level, I should be able to inspect the molecular composition of the steel in my product and at a macro level I should be able to zoom out to see the product from the moon (if product is very large and Earth would provide good backdrop). I know of no CAD systems that do this, including CATIA, but this would make me want to spend $$$$$. Maybe this should be on the top ten list for CATIA………is there such a list for CATIA????
2. Cloud resources with a one time cost, not a monthly expense. Much like being able to use your SW2009 edition forever (hopefully). I don’t think cloud computing is as much of an objection as is the monthly cost structure.
For those of you on subscription services, I have no objection to your adoption of these suggestions.
There was a category that would NEVER appear but would probably be the most popular. To be polite it would be called ‘stability’ or something like that but in reality it deserves the title – BUGS. Thank god I left SWX and never have to deal with the program or the moronic tech. Support again.
Sorry to be such a downer but Matt has made a great point about their poorly functioning website. I’ll never forget that it took us almost a month to be readmitted into the Knowledge Base after we first reported the problem. Tech. support would say things like you need to change your password over and over. I am moderately web literate having put together several websites and feel that SWX do themselves a huge disservice by allowing the multitude of little things like this to even appear let alone remain up.
I’m locked out, too. Again.
@Neil
Neil, the feeling is familiar. I’ve quit in a way because I’m not posting any of the interesting technical stuff I used to post. I really miss that. I think SW will eventually give us some software to play with, but I’m afraid that when they do, the non-CAD stuff will be too distracting to pay much attention to the interesting things.
@chad
Chad, the list used to get used for development, and SW bragged that you’d see ~80% of the top 10 list in the next version of the software. I do think that while V6 is hanging over our heads, user requests will take a backseat. It’s clear the SolidWorks company as we knew it is long gone.
I guess I don’t understand the purpose for the top ten list. It seams almost impossible that an idea would be implemented into the current version of solidworks. I get the impression the list is a joke and really has no relevance what so ever. The design cycle to implement most ideas is probably 1.5 years or longer. This is basically a giant waste of SW users time.
exactly.
solidworks has lost its mojo
Hmmm ‘don’t have permission to view’…
Never mind, decided in the last few days to scale back my SW participation to zero this year including this blog. Really it has become a pointless mission.
Gone from active enthusiast to waiting until sp5 to install, to not reporting bugs, to not participating in beta, to expecting half arsed features that are never revisited, to not putting in enhancement requests, to not answering forum questions, to not reading around the blogs, not looking at SWW presentations and SW news, to not considering upgrading SW anymore, to looking for a replacement.
Given up being critical of the derelict SW labs, the coopting of bloggers for free marketing campaigns, the zombification of usergroups by SW cultists, broken count down to launch clocks, new releases without CAD, missed development directions, stupid corporate me too or FU thinking, serfdom by stealth, silly excuses for conspicuous personnel changes, dead before they arrived apps, unattractive/inappropriate rebranding attempts, party games with the Matthews, corporate pirates making off with mattresses…
It is all gone steadily down hill. Sorry to say my interest in SW is pretty much beyond revival much like SW itself.
Voting for the top 10…who cares…light entertainment/PR to help fill a wake-like SWW…. 😉