Thumbs up for SolidWorks 2009

It is no secret that I thought that many of the changes in 2008 constituted a full-on train wreck. The implementation of the most extreme changes was reckless. If I were to assign a grade to the overall effect of SW08, it would have been a D-. If you want to know exactly what I thought was wrong, read through June 2007 posts.

The 2008 release caused a lot of people to lose faith in SolidWorks development. I bet against the 08 release by not updating the 07 bible, and instead focussing on 09. I think this bet has paid off. The 2007 book sales have only in the last month started to tail off. It has taken until sp4 for this to happen.

SolidWorks 2009 repairs much of what was wrong with 2008. You would not be off the mark to call 08 an extended beta for 09. I know SW people admit that there was a lot of unfinished business in 08, but what I don’t understand is why they would want to “release” software with that much half-completed functionality. I’m not sure if the backpedalling done in 08 service packs and further changes/fixes in 09 will restore user confidence or not. There is some really good news in 09 but also some evidence that whatever caused the problems in 08 is not completely gone.

The good news

There really is a lot of good news for people who upgrade to 2009. Let’s take them in order of my favorites:

Undockable PropertyManager

What a breath of fresh air! Ever since SW went to the concept of the PropertyManager, abandoning “dated” on-screen dialog boxes, they have complicated the workflow for many formerly simple tasks. If you add a mate to an assembly, and you want to mate to an item selected from the FeatureManager, the Mate PropertyManager covered this up and you had to use a split window or a flyout FM. If you wanted to Edit Sketch Plane, same thing. This is especially a big problem with big FMs.

In 09 the PropertyManager can be pulled out of the FeatureManager window as a separate window. This may have some minor quirks right now, but I think this is the move that they should have made back when they started using the PropertyManager. This will save me a lot of time scrolling through flyout FeatureManagers.

SW is going to claim that this is a “multi-monitor” enhancement, but I don’t see how that really works. To me, it’s just repairing a serious long-standing workflow bug.

SpeedPaks

Regardless of the tacky marketing name, this is functionality that I think people are really going to like. I think the concept makes sense, and the actual implementation of the functionality works well. The two groups of people who may not like this are the people who for whatever reason key on file size, and the folks who are superstitious about Lightweight.

The way the What’s New reads, I don’t think users have any chance of figuring out what a SpeedPak really is. A “SpeedPak” is just an assembly configuration that saves part or subassembly body data in the top level assembly. It can save solid or surface bodies (individual faces). You might find some conceptual similarities between this and Lightweight, but SpeedPak also has advantages. You may also see similarities between SpeedPak and eDrawings. You can open a SpeedPak of a component without actually having the component file. Most of the functionality that you need is there. The main reason for using a SpeedPack is to speed up large assemblies. As ususal, the way to speed up assemblies is to make the assembly file larger by storing more data in it.

Anyway, I like it.

CommandManager

The CommandManager in 08 was unusable. Many people didn’t like it in 07 either, but I did. 09 splits the difference. It doesn’t really have any advantages over 07, but it is clearly not as handicapped as it was in 08. The main improvements are that you can now undock the CM, and put additional toolbars on the same row. It still has some limitations which decrease its usability when compared to the ideal of 07, but we were lucky to get them to concede this much. At least they have not totally mimicked the MS Ribbon. I’ve read several CAD related blog posts on the Ribbon, and most of them have been highly critical. Many of the other players in the mid-range market are using the Ribbon.

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The SW CommandManager suffers from some of the same problems that afflict the Ribbon, at least in the CM’s out of the box implementation. The main problem is that the CM/Ribbon install with a fat toolbar row that uses toolbar buttons of different size. Some with text, some without. My feeling is that it is difficult to scan with your eyes across large and small icons/text that are not arranged spatially in a well organized way. The only thing I can think is that someone wanted to copy the “Tag Cloud” concept where more frequently used icons are larger. This works best if you always use the most frequently used items. It seems to make sense, but people do use things like chamfers, curves, patterns, etc. Those secondary features are things you may have to hunt for, and this will waste more time than putting Extrude in a place where you can’t miss it will save.
Anyway, CommandManager is still broken, but is almost usable now.

View Manipulation

Several new things in view manipulation. Click on the arrows on the lower left triad to orient the view. Double MMB zooms to fit. A new “magnifying glass” functionality was much debated in Beta. This is where SW, in my view, starts to get into some conceptual murky water. This tool started with an extremely tacky magnifying glass handle and metal ring graphic around it. Users got SW to remove that crap, which even if it does not effect performance, certainly covers up part of the screen. The problems that remain with this functionality are that it is intended mainly for selection, and it disappears after you select something. There was a lot of discussion about how to move the thing, and I’ll just let you be the judge if it moves in an intuitive way or not. A minor point is that it is circular, when I thought a rectangular shape

might be more useful. I’m sure this one will be much debated.

The main problem here for me is that it is implemented in such a way that it may not be useful for anything except selecting. It may not be useful for let’s say, just looking at stuff. They claim they did a lot of research… I know these guys are extremely bright people. They are smarter than you and me put together. The problem is that they likely have problems with things like shoe laces. I don’t think there is a lot of common sense or intuition being used here. There is more of this to come.

Dimensions on new sketch entities

Wow. This one came very close to being beautiful. But you know, there is a very fine line between beautiful and not so beautiful. SW claims that the remaining problems are bugs and will be fixed, but have yet to be fixed in the betas. The concept is that you can draw a circle or a line or a rectangle, and it is automatically dimensioned. In practice, it doesn’t really do it, although technically, you are forced to agree that it is possible. Again, spelling out the problems in too much detail would take a lot of space, and it’s not really what I intend to dohere. I just want to introduce you to what I think is the best stuff.

The main disconnect here is that again, a lot of user research led to the idea that full circles should be dimensioned by default with radius dimensions. Geez. This user research is clearly not serving SW very well. Again, a little common sense or intuition would say that diameter dimensions are used by default for full circles, and radius values are used for arcs.

Draft Analysis

Again, so close to being a great tool, but alas, no cigar. Draft Analysis is now dynamic, so ifyou add draft, the face color changes. Beautiful, right? Wrong. You’ve lost the ability to save the color to a translated or edrawing file. Oh, well.

“Sub-optimal” improvements

How far can you jam your tongue into your cheek?

The RealView/Appearances/Textures/Materials/Colors fiasco proves that there is no limit to how committed someone can be to a really bad idea. This is without exaggeration, almost as big a G.F. as the 08 interface. If you have used SW08 sp4, youhave seen the full extent of the insanity. The Colors functionality has been removed altogether (except to change the colors of curves and sketches), and replaced by a far more convoluted workflow. The whole point of torturing the 08 interface was to save clicks and mouse travel. I don’t see any upside to this whatsoever. I’m still completely baffled by this set of changes.

Fortunately, this is partially fixed in 09. It confuses me that they leave 08 so utterly broken while still changing the code for 09. In fact, the 08 software got even more broken between sp3 and sp4, and this was intentional, not a bug.

If you haven’t seen this, it boils down to SW trying to streamline colors, textures, materials, realview, and PhotoWorks, which on the face of it would be a good thing. Todo this, they have created a new thing called “Appearances”. At first, the color data was buried 3 menus deep (like it was back in 1997), assuming that all users were going to either use RealView, make all your parts whatever the color of your template was or quit using SW. At least they have added color functionality to the main PropMgr of Appearances. So in essence what they did was to go back to the same functionality they had, but just use a different icon and name for it.

In general, 2009 and 2008 both exhibit a fair amount of wasted energy – new functionality that seems to only fill in a demo check box for sales situation, it doesn’t result in real user benefits. Some of these are new to 08, and some to 09. Nearly all of the Xpert functionality is useless (fillet, dim). TolAnalyst has a long way to go to be useful. SW continues to spin their wheels fixing the wrong things in Toolbox. Virtual parts is interesting, but still dangerous.  Read through the What’s New doc to see what functionality catches your eye, and what functionality doesn’t.

Spline sketching

I haven’t heard much about what they have done to spline sketching, but I’m sure someone is going to say something. When yousketch splines now, they have curvature at the ends. The problem is that the software determines what the curvature should be, so it turns out to be very difficult to control. In the past, spline ends had no curvature. This was sometimes seen as a deficiency, but I don’t thinkyou can make up for the deficiency by having the software make automatic decisions for you. The only way to make it really controllable is to allow the user to control it.

Summary

Overall, 2009 is a far better release than the one that preceded it. For a grade I’d assign a B. This is a conflicted grade because some of the stuff clearly warrants an A and some of it an F. If you held off upgrading, and one of the features above looks good, you owe it to yourself to at least try it out. Still, it’s clear that whatever was causing all of those “WTF” moments in 08 is not completely gone, and SW is even using user studies to back up some of these things that seem wrong at least to me. I personally think they need a serious infusion of intuition or common sense or both. They may be too smart for their own good, or it may be that they are simply trying to do “design by committee, and subcommitte, and focus group, and… and… and…” Falling victim to the large corporate syndrome called “out of touch”.