Subscription Portal = Enhancements

Just for grins let's flood the new subscription portal with an
enhancement request to make SW able to export SW models to previous
versions of SW. Why? This topic seems to not have a set of convenient
checkboxes and it sure needs one.

TOP

 

Here's my personal opinion;

1. It will never happen. Why should it?

2. I bet the amount of users that really need this are less than 10% of the
total.

3. If they did make this happen, then why upgrade? If people stop upgrading,
revenue will decrease, company morale will suffer, and the product will
stagnate. Sort of like AutoCAD right now.

4. For example, can you still purchase a brand new 1980 Honda Accord? Of
course not. Who wants to?

5. I like the status quo. In the end, each version is better than the
previous version.

Cheers,
Devon T. Sowell
www.3-ddesignsolutions.com

 

Counterpoints:

Because enough money is spent on the initial purchase that one should
be allowed to use it as long as they wish. You don't stop using your
car when the warrenty runs out because you no longer have permission.
(nor does one pay for a warrenty in the first place).

I would bet that this is not true. I encounter this problem all the
time. My company is still running 2005 even though we are current on
our subscriptions. It is too much hassle to get IT to go through and
upgrade everyone once a year. This must even be worse for companies
that require "Validation" before implementing new versions. It's not
hard to imagine the process taking 2 months. That's 1/6th of the year!

As a customer, it not my job to keep a vendor in business. It's up to
them to figure that out for themselves. My guess is that licencing
would not drop off all that much since VAR support is still very
necessary.

Huh? Bad example. Honda doesn't sell 1980 Honda Accords anymore., nor
would SolidWorks sell 1998 Plus today. However, actually 1980 is
nearing the age where the Honda will qualify as a collector's item.

 

RE: 1980 Honda Accord. Ok, try this, does the crankshaft of a 1996 Honda
Accord fit a 1980? Should Honda offer a Kit so that it will fit? And
guarantee that all parts will fit previous years?

This subject has been discussed many times in the past 7 years. If it hasn't
happened by now, it's probably not going to happen.

Cheers,
Devon

 

I really didn't want this thread to turn into another pro-con
discussion on this topic. That has been done ad nauseum. The answer to
your question will be forthcoming depending on how many people request:

A. The ability to write past versions.
B. The ability not to write past versions.

Either way you should try putting in an enhancement request. And
remember it was promised at SWW a couple years ago.

 

remember it was promised at SWW a couple years ago.

Huh? Promised? When, where and by who? I've been in SWW for couple of years
by now and I haven't heard a such thing. IIRC it was asked by someone in
Orlando in the public show, and it was told that SW guys are not planning to
do it in the near future because it is too difficult. Someone asked what
would happen if some third party such as ADesk would release
save-as-previous-version feature for SolidWorks (like SolidWorks did to
ACAD). The answer was something like "go ahead and do it then". I bet that
even though there are business issues related, it really _is_ a difficult
task to do.

-h-

 

Heikki Leivo kirjoitti:

Yep, Acad has also it's own "acad to older acad tool". It's so easy
with 2D. But 3D...take a part with some features, use Flex to twist it
little bit and so...then "Save As SW98Plus"...what you think you can
have? Parametric model that is easy to modify? I don't think so :-(

 

I don't recall that promise - Must have missed it.
I've only heard it promised (I think predicted is more accurate) that
it would never happen.
However, I do remember that macro that was discussed a couple of weeks
agao that automatically converts models when it can. I think that
something that works in 'most' cases (barring flex or other new
features) would be useful. We are working on two different versions
and we have to be careful that we don't open one of the 2005 jobs in
2006. If we mess up, a lot of work can be lost. Wouldn't it be nice
to get as much as we can (OK, no flex, but how about every other
feature in the tree? Or just the sketches and planes, with which you
can rebuild models pretty fast).
Of course, for mates and whatnots it would be nice if the converter
also converted over the unique model ID and of all the face/edge/vertex
IDs

-Ed

 

Another fun backward-compatibility obstacle...

Some features change algorithms with each new release. Loft has
changed almost every time. This was documented in the API help. Use
the same section and guides for lofts in different versions of SW and
you will get different results.

 

If SW can crack and translate Pro-E files to SW, then they can handle
issues like that for there own files.

 

Here's a thought.

I am sure that SW/Catia have several licences of Pro-E,A-cad, ect for
R&D purposes. Is SW on maintenance with them? If so, does SW corp call
Pro-E for technical help?