What can you say about software you can’t talk about?
Working a little with SW2013, it looks like SolidWorks has put more effort into this release than into the past 4. The NDA blackout lifts on September 10th, so maybe we can talk about it more at that point. If you are interested and on maintenance, it is easy enough to sign up and go check it out yourself, if they have all of that straightened out by now. For a company that aspires to the cloud, SolidWorks finds it difficult to manage access to simple things like forums.
Anyway, I’d be willing to bet that with the new VP of R&D came a new focus on the “legacy” product. It could be that they are understanding that it is going to be a long time until the cloud product is seen as viable. Even if it releases tomorrow, it would be years until Catia Lite would be accepted. It’s like starting all over again. Mainly I guess because it IS starting all over again. SolidWorks has a habit of surrounding themselves with “yes men” and fanboys who will tell them that whatever they develop is just what they need. Somehow the n!Fuze disaster got through, and Bernard Charles proclaimed that “people love it!”
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You save on the cloud, use on the cloud, share on the cloud, and the user interface is the same one you work with. This is SolidWorks Enfuse (sic), it’s very SolidWorks consistent, people love it.
– Bernard Charles quoted by Develop 3D
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Yeah. Well. Someone must have told them they were doing a great job on that. I know someone who did alpha testing on n!Fuze, and laid it all out for them in black and white about what they needed to do to make it marketable, but SW went ahead and shipped it as was. So even if they happen to get someone who will tell them the truth about something, if they don’t listen, they might as well not ask.
How does any of that relate to SW2013? Well, it doesn’t. There is enough obvious stuff just lying around that a reasonably intelligent person could just read stuff that’s all over the web, or read the input from say the last 10 years, and find plenty of things that folks have asked for but was never delivered. You could clump a bunch of these sorts of things into a release. It’s low hanging fruit, like you’re knee deep in angry bird carcasses piled up at the base of the SW logo. In fact, it wants into the software so bad you’ve got to fight it off. I think they finally allowed some of this obvious stuff into the software. And frankly, I think that the change in the R&D department had more than a little to do with that. Plus, if the new guy wanted any love from users at all, this was an easy way to get it.
So, what can I tell you about SolidWorks 2013? Nothing. It may be the best liked release since 2007, however. It does emphasize how little of significance they’ve given users for the last several releases.
Dassault’s treatment of SolidWorks 2013 is no different than Autodesk’s treatment of its beta software.
You apply to become a beta tester, and then you cannot talk about AutoCAD, Inventor, whatever, until Autodesk says you can — usually a week or two after the company’s PR department lets the cat out of the bag, much to our irritation.
Hi Matt,
I really don’t know what will happen to our products, but from what I have heard we are going to have to invest a lot to move them to the NEW SolidWorks. So far we don’t know anything.
Our products are especially sensitive since they are tightly integrated and rely heavily on SolidWorks functionality (as opposed to interfacing data). We have written our software for several Cad/Cam companies in the past – so we do have some layer interface which hopefully will facilitate the migration.
Well Matt even though you cant talk about it you have definately raised interest in SW 2013. We are are still on 2010 sp5 but soon seems like a good time to upgrade. Will probably wait till 2013 sp1 is out. Maybe SWs best mistake ever was to announce their their cloud intentions way too early. Dissault can’t ever claim that they have lacked customer feed back at this stage. We have one seat of SW professional & Sinulation professional, had original 2005 demoed to us, so bought in on 2006. I have my complaints probably biggest one is PDMworks but enterprise is too big a jump.
Interesting that George would cite this blog as being one sided. Anti this, anti that and I assume unAmerican as well? All the usual conformist pitches. Either fore or against, all that extreme and polarising stuff. Thank goodness he didnt mention that the sky was falling or the ol’ doom and gloom bit.
I gather however in striving to deliver a balanced view he would actually prefer to quietly remove all dissenting views about Dassault/Solidworks from the internet altogether even if only a handful of users of 1 million or so habitually visit and participate here.
Dont know what happened to free speech and critical thought in that assessment. Sounds like Soviet Russia to me.
People should say anything provided it harmonizes with the company line and is positive. Problems, issues, blemishes, embarrassment, frustration? No, nothing like that here…
BTW I tried out Solidworks and gave up after ten years – mainly because of management and hemorrhoid problems– maybe I didn’t have the proper attitude. 😉
Ok, there’s this NDA in place for solidworks 2013, so i’m not going to discuss that,but if you’re interested to see whats coming for solidworks 2013,2014 and on, you can download a trail version of Creo 2.0:
http://creo.ptc.com/2012/08/13/30-day-creo-2-0-free-trial-now-available/
@Dan Staples
There is a @ between staples and siemens.
@George Berold
George — sorry to hear about your graphics troubles. It probably is a driver issue or something as you say. I know you are not necessarily a fan, but its really important for our unattended trials to go well, so I’d really like to get to the bottom of this. If you can spare a moment for us to try to figure out the issue (even if you don’t further eval), please contact me at dan.staplessiemens.com.
@ George
Couldn’t agree more. This doom and gloom sky is falling attitude does get a little old. I went through the what CAD system do we want to buy exercise about 3 years ago. Tried out SW, SE, ProE and Inventor against keeping CoCreate. Kept coming back to SolidWorks everytime. We don’t design organic consumer products or anything but we do dozens of casting drawings a day which can be pretty difficult and it works great for us 98% of the time, getting NX or Catia for the other 2% wasn’t worth the cost.
This switch to Catia Lite is both interesting and terrifying at the same time. I don’t plan on being an early adoptor but I can’t wait to see what it looks like at the same time. I know there are a lot of people threatening to switch to SolidEdge but what does that really gain you over what is supposed to be in this Catia lite? You’re still going to have years worth of work you can’t update either way. I’m going to call some bluffs here I’m not nieve enough to think nobody will switch because that happens all the time but it won’t be near as dramatic as is being predicted by the doom and gloom squad.
@Dave Ault
Dave thats a good point, who needs outsiders when you have all the tools inhouse.
@matt
Matt
That is a good question!!
The cloud is prone to hacking. I do not connect my work station to the Internet. I use an apple for Internet stuff. So, to do cloud would let me be subject to all kinds of new system problems. I am one of the few Solidworks users who work in remote places. Do you imagine how well the cloud will work on a 4800 baud satphone connection, $1.20 per minute. I have many work days that start with a walk on the beach of a desert island, a few hours of engineering design, and an afternoon snorkel, an hour of satphone communication, then a leisurely evening meal on the aft deck. There is plenty of room for more engineers to enjoy this lifestyle. I have never encountered anyone working in my desert island paradise. Of course this is not available to cloud connected users.
Solidworks is not sufficiently reliable to use a database. I have seen nasty corruption of parts in an nassembly. The only recovery is to find an old copy of all of the involved files that was hidden in a subdirectory. Solidworks files are pigs. These files are 1200 times larger than they need to be. If Solidworks would get their files down to size, I might imagine that they could do something with a database.
I would go further than that Matt. If Dassault is getting rid of Parasolids so they can control what happens with the kernal and going to the Catia CGM stuff how about this. In a brief search today I see Catia has in house FEA and CAM along with other stuff. Why would they stop at just the kernal when they may well have a closed software ecosystem they can deploy and then who cares about Gold Partners. Perhaps these integrated program vendors need to worry about more than just integration. Catia Lite, Cam Lite, FEA Lite and the heck with sharing the profits. Geometric was the first integrator of CAM with SW. They had the vision to see what would be back then. Today it appears they will be the first to do so with Solid Edge. Now I don’t know because I am not invited to board meetings but it would seem to me the adage about all your eggs in one basket may apply here to SW integrators.
@George Berold
George,
I’ve got a lot of respect for you and your products, but I’ve got a question. What happens to your gold partner product once SW starts delivering in the cloud? Do you have to rewrite your software? Is this even something you can start working on? How will the database file storage affect your libraries? To me it seems like this v6 model severely limits the future of gold partners with SolidWorks.I’d like to hear your opinions on that.We haven’t heard from partners on this topic yet.
non-disclosure agreement
I am not at all anti Solidworks. I am anti bug, and anti bullshit. The software has the bugs, the executives spew the other. I make Solidworks work, about half the time I am doing some kind of work around. I do both machine parts and complex surfaces. It is very hard to make an excellent complex surface in Solidworks.
Whats the purpose of this DNA?:)) can someone explain? maybe its funny,because i don’t know the reason.
they have already shown the new features and enhancements in SWW 2012, so why is it banned to talk about them?
I don’t often comment on this blog except to try and push my company’s products occasionally (add-ons to SolidWorks for mold design), however, I do check in once a week to follow it. I have 2 comments to make:
1. I feel that it has become a one sided blog (sort of like the ex-Soviet Union), only one opinion is expressed – anti- SolidWorks, anti- Cloud, anti… I don’t know if the cloud is good or not and I can see the slowdown of the development of SolidWorks – but I still think that there are many positive sides to SolidWorks today. BTW I tried out Solid Edge and gave up after a few days – mainly because of graphics and UI problems – maybe I didn’t have the proper graphics card (although its the same machine use for SolidWorks). So while its technology might be very exciting – I wasn’t able to explore it very well.
2. Cloud is prone to hacking. Well as far as I can see anyone using a workstation connected to the Internet is prone to hacking. Can someone correct me on this issue? I know that security installations do not allow their workstations to be connected to the internet at all – and I reckon its because of this (or maybe they don’t want the users to waste their time on the internet).
The only thing remarkable about SW2013 is that DSS SolidWorks stills dreams that a NDA is even necessary.
But the other side of reality is that the loyal subscription service customers are pandered to and made to feel more important than they really are in DSS view. Mostly an incentive that DSS puts a cigar in their mouth and they can then recommend that they really need the next edition of SW.
Perhaps if someone violates the NDA, DSS stock will become in play???? In their dreams.
This is where I pull the plug. I won’t be commenting on or looking at SW2013. I may or may not look at V6, depending on the water temp of Big Bear Lake or the waves in Carlsbad.
All the feedback SolidWorks asked me about n!Fuze, and I gave them, was ignored. In a web conference, they’d ask me a question, I’d give my answer and there’d be silence on the line from SolidWorks. No discussions, no follow up questions, nothing. Awkward, weird, and a waste of my time.
I’m having a blast restoring vintage FM tube radios.
Good Luck all
Devon
I can talk about it. I don’t know anything about it, haven’t seen it, Haven’t used it. I know as much as any Solidworks executive, and more than DSS executives.
If they fix any three of the geometry bugs that bug me, I will buy it.