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SolidSmack
SolidWorks 3D CAD Technology Design Blog
There’s usually a lot of change in a new software release that doesn’t get reported. There’s also most likely an equally sad employee that doesn’t get to bask in the brilliance of that small “mediocre” addition.
Well, ... Continue reading »
Well, ... Continue reading »
1 year ago
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Btw, you're back on my work's block list. Sheez. Did you switch host's or something?
1 year ago
SolidWorks 2008 uses 16,204 Kilobytes
I verified and it should be 162,04 Kb.
bye
1 year ago
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1 year ago
I love this one:"8 Absolutely Odd Facts About SolidWorks 2008"
That was cool and I am waiting you finish the rest 119 Absolutely Odd Facts About SolidWorks 2008.
Best regards
1 year ago
1 year ago
More icons, more functions, more chaos. I have small brain. I dont save to my brain all icons function
1 year ago
1 year ago
1. If you open a file in 2008 and save it, you will never be able to open it with 2007. (And you can't save as "solidworks 2007 file") This is shameful, even Microsoft with all its power and customer bullying provides compatibility with at least one generation of older software made by them. Take Office 2007 for example. You must either be a cocky jerk that thinks you’ve made a flawless software everyone’s going to love, or are so ashamed of the program you wrote before that you don’t provide support for its format as if it’s some other company you don’t associate yourself with. I mean what were they thinking? Do you think the IT department of a large company can handle installing the new software on every single workstation over night? No they will have to do it slowly, mean while your engineers can’t work together because one of them already opened the file in 2008 and no one else can open it! RETARDED!
2. in 2008 if you have a part from an assembly open as well as the assembly itself, and you simply switch between the screens (NOT EVEN EDITING THE PART JUST SWITCHING) you will have to wait 40sec (depends on computer performance) to be able to click or type or even move a muscle, or else it will freeze or take longer to load.
3. In 2008 it will take at least double if not triple the time to save the exact same model and the file takes up more space. WHY?!!! This could only mean they are putting more information in a saved file. And last time I checked this is the wrong direction in software improvement. Every other software strives to make their saved file format a more efficient smaller code with every release, but the all mighty solidworks only does things backwards.
3. SOLIDWORKS 2008 SUCKS!!!! I’ve lost all faith and am switching to NX
6 months ago
I used to be a Parasolid developer ( now gone on to other things ) I worked on core geometry and modelling algorithms - I know things from the inside out.
Quote: "If you open a file in 2008 and save it, you will never be able to open it with 2007. (And you can't save as 'solidworks 2007 file') This is shameful, even Microsoft with all its power and customer bullying provides compatibility with at least one generation of older software made by them"
This is naive on your part - it seems you know little of the sheer complexity involved.
Backwards compatibility (ie port a 2008 part into 2007 software - for example) in three dimensional geometry, maths and derived data is horrendously complex - the part file is not just a snapshot of geometry and topology, it also represents decisions and derived data from mathematical algorithms that have improved from one version to the next - its not even that black and white - every improvement will cause one or two casualties - effectively solid modelling in its purest form is analogue computation but real numbers cannot be represented on digital machines and so they are represented by finite precision floating points - in theory software that is by its nature fundamentally digital - like a graphics package that deals in pixels - can be bug free but bspline surfaces and the like are defined by real numbers - and unfortunately only approximated by floating point numbers - this is a hint at just one of a myriad of huge technical problems that very smart and talented people have wrestled with to deliver what are actually rather incredible standards of reliability given the incredibly difficult problem being solved in free form solid modelling.
By means of example - if an interersection curve between two bspline surfaces (would be)miscalculated in 2007 and properly calculated in 2008 version software, the difference may have been minor and you as the user may have accepted or even been aware of the difference. This difference may mean that in 2007 software your 2008 part is not viable. In order to properly understand software as complex as CADCAM you have to think in terms of timelines where bugs, false turns and other such problems mean that simple minded forward or backward winding of the timeline in terms of parts or software version (as you demand) is extremely complex - I spent something like thirteen years fixing problems of huge complexity for bugs that relate to this topic. Your choice of Microsoft OS products for a counter example is not a good one - you compare such different beasts - there is little mathematical complexity in OS systems, the complexity is due to the scale of the software - solid modelling code is fundamentally complex even on the scale of just a few hundred lines of code - whatever problems those guys at MS face with forwards or backwards compatiablity I can assure you they will be totally different from those at SW and the fact that you quote this shows you have little grasp of the issues or technical complexities - as an end user that is fine you arent supposed to understand the problems so I am not criticising you but hoping to correct you a little.
Forwards compatibility is a major headache - its difficult enough to get all parts that rebuild fine in version X to rebuild ok in version X+1 but the reverse will in general be even more difficult.
By the way - NX is also built on Parasolid so my comments apply there.
I am puzzled by your hint that NX might resolve this issue, at the time I left Parasolid four years ago then Parasolid itself would not import a Parasolid part file made in version X+1 into version X this was deliberate - both SW and NX depend on embedded Parasolid part files although "you" the user doesnt usually see this since the Parasolid data is wrapped up inside their respective native file formats.
Maybe since I left the industry NX has provided some kind of ability to port parts back to earlier versions - your post seems to suggest this - but I can assure you that the underlying complexities are there in the maths and the algorithms and whatever the documentation says it will in general be difficult to reliably take complex models created in newer versions of software back to older ones.
Generally newer code should cope with product (part files) of older code since the new code is expected to match the capability of the old code (and then some) - however the reverse is generally not true and with good reason! It is not possible to port many of the major improvements because of data structure changes, algorithm changes, whole areas of code re-design and changes to the way data is archived (additional fields in a surface node for instance). Solid modelling code is like a tree of dependencies, when you port one change you end up having to port another and then another and so on - it snowballs and pretty quick you find that in order to reliably support all models made in X+1 in version X you pretty much have to make version X into version X+1 which completely defeats the object of having version code.
Jon
6 months ago
"3. In 2008 it will take at least double if not triple the time to save the exact same model and the file takes up more space. WHY?!!! This could only mean they are putting more information in a saved file. And last time I checked this is the wrong direction in software improvement"
Nima, the performance of modern CADCAM software is truely amazing, I spent thirteen years in the industry and parts that now fly at speed would have taken weeks with the algorithms of yesterday.
Performance and reliability are key issues, filesize is generally considered secondary since memory and disk space capacity and prices are cheap whereas end user design time is not.
Car and Aircraft manufactures demand ever increasing performance as each year part size and complexities increase as designers create ever more detailed and complex shapes - increases in hardware speed help but there is considerable pressure on the developer to increase performance in the software as well.
If you want higher performance you generally have to consider storing more derived data, this is extremely troublesome for reasons hinted at in the last reply I made to your post but thats another story. If capacity is cheap then developers may use it in order to please customers on some other aspect such as performance.
I cant say why 2008 files are larger than 2007 but please do reconsider making deductivce criticisms like this because they are very unlikely to have any kind of technical validity - you are simply guessing.
It remains my opinion that solid modelling is probably one of the most complex areas of software to date, I know of nothing more complex than the industry reality of an essentially analogue data set (geometry) subject to three dimensional algorithms compounded with the mindboggling complexity of software version and algorithm changes with the expectation that parts from an earlier version should still rebuild in a later version when the algorithm changes involved reflect improvements and bug fixes.
The fact that the team at SW manage to shield you...the end user...from all this complexity is testament to their sheer skill and dedication - similar comments apply to other developers working in the field.
Since I am no longer working in the industry I cannot say why your part takes longer to save - true it may be a bug but they may also be doing something smart to improve some aspect that you are not taking into account.
If I cant guess with my background then I doubt you can.
Why dont you stop guessing on online forums and instead help SW by submitting a bug report - that way someone will be able to do something about it ( if indeed there is a problem at all ) - conjecture on internals is very easy to write but in an area as technical as solid modelling it is very unlikely to have any value at all - I spent years fixing bugs just like this one. I would also add that such "reports" were often found to be part specific - testing schedules would usually catch any kind of general degradation that could otherwise be avoided.
For what is worth, Solidworks had a very aggressive stance on bugs, quality issues and performance whilst I was working in the industry - individual accounts may vary but the big picture is that they made quality, performance and reliability very high profile and they do not deserve the characterisation you put forwards here.
Disclaimer - I have no remaining connections to the CADCAM industry other than friends I have kept in touch with. I have no reason to defend anyone at Solidworks other than my memories of working in collaboration with an exceedingly clever and dedicated team who worked very hard to make solid modelling appear easy and intuitive to the end user when the internal reality is anything but simple. In a way it is probably testament to their skill that quite a few contributors to these forums seem to think that solid modelling software is as simple as the other applications sitting on their machines when infact it is a magnitude more complex that most software that your average private person or small company will ever buy.
Jon
1 year ago
I don't know what kind of computer you are using, but your second point is something I have never seen--even on the worst of our computers.
1 year ago
i thought i did something wrong and asked my reseller and he said that's how Solidworks 2008 works.
i then went to Solidworks support website thinking that i could download the Solidworks 2008 SP8 DVD, but all I got was a installer which would download the 3GB and install Solidworks 2008 on the machine. no 2008 SP3 DVD!
the folks at Solidworks must be trying to be funny? some manager there trying to sabotage the company before resigning? if not, would anybody be so insane to expect his customers to download 3GB just to do an upgrade???
Solidworks sucks! big time.
1 year ago
I don't really give a crap about how fancy looking the interface is... all these new pop-ups, icons, and backgrounds are annoying and distract me from the work I am trying to do. I've spent the last hour trying to figure out how to turn this damn wrinkled paper off in the drawing view! Does anyone know how to do this??
1 year ago
If you have some specific questions let me know. You can get all your setting over to 2008 and even get it to function similarly.
1 year ago
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Jake, I’m running, AMD X2 4000+, Geforce 7900GTX (512MB), 2GB RAM and I guess if you care, 2x 500GB HDD RAID. The toggling between screens (assembly and part) issue I mentioned happens more visibly if you have a few parts from the same assembly open. Also Im not sure what size work you do but my examples are from automation machines that run 75-300 parts in an assembly.
I wrote my previous comments based on 1 month of work with 2008, now 3 months into it my list has even compiled to be larger! Im not going to bore everyone by trying to convince you that 2008 is a step back from 2007, don't believe me go ahead and switch and you just might realize. But one particular thing that’s just been getting on my nerves so much that I now have a permanent black mark on my monitor due to my forehead banging into it is the crashes! Crashes happen at even more random times than before and while doing the stupidest things like say, selecting an edge. in 2007 if solidworks crashed, the program would die, you would get an error report from windows (send/ don’t send) and when you restarted the program it would apologize for its crashing and 90% of the times have some sort of backup file. Now, my computer goes from select edge to ..... RESTART! No error message, no "Im sorry" and most ridiculously it had no chance in saving a recovery file, so say goodbye to the last 0.5 to 3hrs of work (depending on how often you manually save). I know Im going to get people who say "Well you should save your file more or make auto recover do its thing more often" so here is the response in advance. 1. I shouldn't have to constantly save that’s the whole point of having software in its 10th generation. 2. If it crashes like this, the auto recover does not WORK! Regardless of frequency of save! Oh and please don’t tell me I may not know how to use the software or Im just bashing it because I like some other software, I started with solidworks 97, and I
To JIM, NX is a software by unigraphics, its more expensive and harder to crack if you don’t want to pay for it. But once you get it and you learn it (this will be easy if you already know solidworks) it will just always work. most importantly its capabilities for FEA in solids, fluids and heat transfer as well as machine mechanics far surpass solidworks. at my company a $4000 workstation runs COSMOS and if he goes anywhere beyond 1mm grain size for meshing, he will NEVER find a solution (I mean he leaves it over the weekend!). Meanwhile based on test lab data the error in yield strength calculations reaches (44%)! are you kidding me!?
1 year ago
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we used sw 2007 and they introduced sw 2008 ...it was frightening
now i'm stuck with software that is simply not as good as its predecessor
only use I can find for it is to use the box to hold backup disks..and the installation disk as a cheap 'frisbee'
when will we, the billions of people on the planet finally get the right to sell software secondhand
if we could, sw2008 second hand would be cheap to buy (no one would want it) and this would force the new price down and send a clear message to sw
we would have 2007 back in a month..they should have stuck with what they had in my opinion
i completely agree re crashes, its like demolition derby but what erks me most is the way the software keeps getting in the way with 'presupposing what i want to do'....
1 year ago
I have also been on SW since 1997. 2000 was by far the best version. 98 was pretty good too. There is absolutely nothing that I can do with SW08 then I couldn't do with 98, nothing.
Oh you might say, cosmos and color drawings and all this fancy interface. Its all junk that has nothing to do with me creating drawings for manufacturing and has done only one thing, make me spend more money time on computer software upgrades.
SW 98 for example, ran on my first computer, an aptiva 300mhz with a 64mg graphics card, 128mb of ram, oh and bus speed was 133, an antique, practically a calculator compared to todays standards however. With this computer and version of SW, I modeled and drafted and rendered an entire motorcycle, every part, every bolt, every wire, everything with the exception of the tire tread, revised it several times and though it crashed a few times, I still have it and I can still open it and manipulate it.
SW 08, will not load this exact same assembly on my new laptop, which is a dual 1800 with 500mb graphics and 2gb of ram, bus speed is 800. Not even if I go through the years and update one SW year at a time, which I do anyways for tests. Both ways, doesn't open, crashes instead.
Also, when I tried to do a complete bike on SW08 with my desktop, which I spent about 5 grand on (I won't bore you with the details of each component) I got the model done, renderings done, draftings done, then, two days later, when I tried to revise something, the entire assembly would not open, draftings would not open, crash instead. So I had to re assemble all parts, re assign relationships, re do everything!
SW is garbage don't waste your money, your energy, and most importantly your life, sitting in front of it.
Every day you continue to use it you perpetuate your frustration.
Take 2 weeks to learn something else and you will be proficient enough to work.
Tell your employer to buy something else. If you don't, you might as well go and work in a factory putting cardboard boxes together because if you only know SW, you are letting SW dictate the value of your skills and where you can work.
Cad Monkey is a real thing. My definition of a Cad Monkey is anyone who cannot do something without their computer or software of choice.
A Cad Monkey does what he is told, with what he is given. Go eat a banana.
SW has turned its users into Cad Monkeys.
1 year ago
1 year ago
Solidworks 2008 Service Pack 3.1 crashes daily on my machine and I hear it crashing around the roon on my coworkers computers, lots of loud sighs. It uses 100% CPU just rotating a medium sized 100 part assembly. It has lowered our company productivity at every seat. We have ordered new computers for everyone in hopes that we can get back up to speed. We have decided to tolerate 2008 until 2009 and if performance doesn't improve we are going shopping for a new CAD system.
1 year ago
While Solidworks is crashing all day long I have plenty of time to hang out in the forums.
The reason why Solidworks is selling more then ever is because they give companies that have 5 or more seats of a competitor the initial replacement seats for FREE.
They manipulate controllers into their cheaper and inferior software with cash savings. Think about it, if you could save a half million dollars by not having to upgrade 50 seats of Pro e, you might think its a good idea. These people are SALES people, not users, they are not engineers, they are not designers, they sell you their product, sw.
I know because this is the offer they gave me. They dropped their pants when I said I was looking at alias.
Then they get the company stuck into upgrading every seat the next year.
I can name 20 companies around Ontario that have done this but I won't.
These companies that switch to Solidworks have budgets controlled guess what, not by a cad guy, not usually by an engineer or a designer but by a bean counter who will never use cad ever. Second, most of the places that are controlled by engineers or designers are that of senior citizen age, they do not know any cad and generally talk out their ass about how good something is but dont know anything about using it.
Solidworks bought its popularity and it is evident by all the multi year SW users who at first thought it was great (yea, compared to going to school, getting paid to use SW is great however) after a few years realise how shit it is and how stuck they now are with a masters knowledge of a pile of crap.
Solidworks is good at one thing only, marketing and as you all know, all marketers are liars.
1 year ago
1 year ago
Surfacing power is finally getting close for me, I didnt have the features I needed in the earlier versions.
Spline tools are way improved as well and the splines dont move as slow as the used to when doing edits in the sketch.
I'm using Vista 64 bit (havent had ONE problem in 2 months with Vista believe it or not) Dual core 2.8g Dell laptop m6300 with 4meg and a desktop dell with dual core 2.8g
I havent had such few problems with the computer or Solidworks in a long time, granted I deal with organic shapes and chassis my assemblys are very simple but I'm pretty pleased. My 08 sp3.1 has never crashed, I use it 3~5 hours a day
Having said all that, for what I do I like Rhino3D more, I dont really need the parametrics or drawings (I can live without them) Rhino3D 4 now has some history, we go straight to CNC. Sometimes simple organic surfaces in SW makes me nuts though, the lack of support for layers also makes me crazy.
But I'm not feeling the pain you all are and I've been using it for 10 years.
The interface can be tweaked to be familiar.
1 year ago
In a lot of cases Anti Virus software is a big culprit. You will find that after installing a new service pack you see some instability. Some antivirus software prevents the installation from completing. The registry is not updated correctly and this instability will continue until you rectify this issue.
You need to restart your workstation without the antivirus software starting as well. you can then restart the service for the antivirus. (The restart without the Antivirus should do the trick) If this doesn't work uninstall SolidWorks and the antivirus then install SolidWorks and service packs, restart the Workstation and then re-install the antivirus.
You should actually do this for all new installations of software of upgrades, including driver upgrades as well.
Furthermore I have had serious issues with networks as well.
Try disconnecting from the network and see if the problem persists stop all service connected to network function. if the problem improves then the problem is with the network not the SolidWorks.
And finally you need to make sure that you are running a decent workstation and not an oversold PC, supplied by "fly by night" IT supplies. I only use DELL precision workstations with very good results. The fact is that non branded PC'c are just not up to the task.
1 year ago
We use nothing but Dell on the workstations as well. thanks for the information...will try the suggestions.
1 year ago
1 year ago
We have been using SW for five years now and have generated thousands of Engineering drawings. We updated to 2008 this morning (which soon became this afternoon) and have realized to our horror that SW have changed something in the operation of the Centre-lining tool that makes all the dimensions attached to centre-lines on our previous drawings dangle. Apparently we were the first company to report this to our distributer!?!?
Apparently, there is a new service pack on its way that may fix the problem, sp4.0 (it's in its alpha version at the moment - so it could be weeks away).
HERE'S MY ADVICE - Don't update to 2008 until at least 2009!!!!
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I find Rhino3D is a better program for my purpose and it cost less that 1 year of SW maintenance. I'm lucky that parametrics dont mean very much to me. I can do without them. I just need great surface, 2D curve tools and layers on export!. Then we go to Mastercam to cut.
So good luck with SW all!
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Then the blame goes on. "You must have installed it incorrectly", or "your virus software (that we don't run) is to blame" Or "your video card hasn't been tested". What has that got to do with anything in practical sense? I could be running the best SW video card ever made and the fact that it hasn't been tested makes it crash the software? What will the technician do, test it for me on the phone? What is the point of such a statement to finding the cause of the problem? What is he going to do? Give up the troubleshooting process because my card hasn't been tested?
We recently went through all the hoops they could think of to find out why our software was crashing the instant we clicked on an annotation. Couldn't even delete the thing because deleting it requires you to CLICK ON THE FRICKING THING!!! In the end they found a bug in the code. The fix was SP4. So here we are in June and finally the software might be ready to released. They kept their revenue streaming going though, that was the real point to begin with right?
We contract with a designer that has every CAD package known to man running on his server. He is an old timer with tremendous knowlege and a real pleasure to work with. He has to be able to handle anything that comes his way, so needs everything. His favorite is CADKEY. He freely admits it won't do everything, but says it is easier to build your stuff in CADKEY then import it to SW to do annimations, etc. That is a sad commentary on SW, isn't it?
Has anyone besides me noticed there are no keyboard equivilents next to the commands? Talk about a bunch of lazy developers. A good GUI has multiple ways of doing things and it is easy to see the keyboard equivalent to any commmand next to the menu item. SW didn't bother. They took away the "EDIT SKETCH" text, I guess that was too helpful and would've been a great place to put the keyboard equivalent, and put an icon in another area. It took me five minutes to find out how to edit a sketch. Multilpy that by all my guys, all the commands they changed and it ads up to a lot of wasted time and money. They could care less though. They sold another round of support licenses. It is the attitude that really sticks in my craw.
jam
And only when your backs are against the wall admit SW2008 has bugs. All software has bugs, it is a mathematical impossibility to fully debug an application when the complexity reaches a certain level. There are whole books written on the subject. SW has the artificial deadline every year to come out with wiz bang new package to keep the revenue flowing. Even giants like Microsoft slip their deadlines for practical reasons. Only sheer arrogance ships something when it isn't ready. 2008 out of the box was not ready for release. 6 months we crashed over here every single time we opened our design. The box says I have 90 day warranty or I get a refund. How about a refund for the 6 months we couldn't use it?
11 months ago
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I know how to work very well in all the first three and in the last one.
Now I've got the NX 5 and also the new NX 6 but I haven't tried much in it. Though it's easy.
I hate that Dassault Systemes are running the 100 m with the SW 2008 and SW 2009. And I hate that in a company the last guy to be asked what software to use for CAD is the one man that actually uses it.
I'm tired of all the crashes, in every software and tired of the constant upgrading I have to make to my PC.
But, you know what, it's not worth fighting for.
Instead, I would like to ask any of you, if you have some modeling to do, I offer my help.
Just send sketches, drawings, scans, you need making.
I am asking no money for it.
Of course, you should send only thing that are not very urgent. Beacuse I'll work on my free time. About 4 hours a day.
Thanks and good luck to you all.
PS: If someone can help. I want to learn FEA. Please send documentation if you have any!
e-mail:hack3ru@gmail.com
7 months ago
Windows cannot find '\\server\...\filename.SLDRPT'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, ...etc
7 months ago
7 months ago
And what's this new feature where the parts double in size every time you save them, no matter what... I could go on and on...
Sorry guys, just needed to vent a bit... back to work...
7 months ago
If you try to make a configuration of a part with a folder in it, everything in the folder will go to shit and get all messed up........................
6 months ago
Also the pricing is nothing but extreme highway robbery. Jesse James, Ronald Biggs and Ned Kelly were all thorough gentlemen compared to SW.
Here in Australia we are forced to py more than double what they pay in the USA.
Many SW users I know have 1 or 2 licences and then purchase additional licences from the internet at significantly lower prices as the local distributor will not give decent pricing until you have at least 50 seats.
I have also seen SW 2008 on sale in Indonesia and other parts of Asia for only a few dollars. I know at least 2 users that purchased the cheap SW2008 and it works as well as the SW supplied versions.
About the best facility they ever offered was the home licence version.This was marketed as a major feature in Australia but they were very reluctant to tell anyone that when you upgrade to SW2009 you will automatically loose the feature. This absouletly SUCKS and is in blatent conflict with Australian fair trading laws but they don't care they just keep taking your money and giving you less.
6 months ago
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