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Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Bags of Money

One of my customers sent me this email today: "If you can come up with a piece of software that would allow SolidWorks users to save to a previous version of SolidWorks you’d do quite well with it. That’s a major problem for all SolidWorks users, lack of reverse compatability. Even if the file wasn’t fully functional (a newer version may have features that didn’t exist before) it would still be useful to save a file that was a solid with some features in the feature tree. Just a suggestion, you’d make bags of money with that one."

I replied, "Yes, and most probably get myself fired from the SolidWorks Partner Program as well."

posted by Deelip Menezes at 9:51 AM

9 Comments:

  • "I replied, "Yes, and most probably get myself fired from the SolidWorks Partner Program as well.""

    In my opinion you could safely remove "most probably" from the above and be even more accurate.

    Products like Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology and SpaceClaim help to make this kind of issue less of a problem.

    Jon Banquer
    San Diego, CA

    By Blogger Jon Banquer, At 2:07 PM, July 08, 2008  

  • SolidWorks currently has the ability to most of what is required;

    1. Save as a dumb solid
    2. Open in previous version
    3. In previous version, use FeatureWorks to apply Features as needed.

    Devon Sowell
    http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 7:22 PM, July 08, 2008  

  • Devon,

    If that is true, then why don't they have a "Save As" older version and do the same thing internally. Why put their paying customers though all that pain?

    The same goes for all the other parametric modeling software vendors as well.

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 7:26 PM, July 08, 2008  

  • Logically thinking, I upgrade for new features. I stay at the same version, so I can open/save that version.

    If I could open any version with SolidWorks, I would be more likely to upgrade because I can save versions down for others and have the new features.

    I think not being able to save down to other versions prevents just as many people from upgrading as being able to save to previous versions. I would also think more would upgrade.

    Saving to previous version isn't necessarily common, but is is an added benefit.

    regardless of making bags of money, it should be done. If I had the knowledge about how to do it, I would do it for free.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 8:03 PM, July 08, 2008  

  • Josh,

    I agree with everything you said. All, except the last part about doing it for free. ;-)

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 8:10 PM, July 08, 2008  

  • Hello Deelip-

    RE:"If that is true, then why don't they have a "Save As" older version and do the same thing internally. Why put their paying customers though all that pain?

    The same goes for all the other parametric modeling software vendors as well."

    Of course, I can't answer that question..but SolidWorks can.

    Devon

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 12:59 AM, July 09, 2008  

  • FeatureWorks has been around for many years. The problem with FeatureWorks is that it's very slow. Additionally FeatureWorks often fails to recognize features.

    Machining job shops don't have the time to apply FeatureWorks.

    If FeatureWorks was fast, and if it was practical, there wouldn't be the tremendous interest we now see in Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology.

    Jon Banquer
    San Diego, CA

    By Blogger Jon Banquer, At 5:27 AM, July 09, 2008  

  • I just created a model in SolidWorks similar to the SynchTech Live Rules example you showed, and saved it as a Parasolid file.

    I then opened the model in SolidWorks and used FeatureWorks to interactively recognize the features.

    As a final step, I fully defined the two sketches created by FeatureWorks, and modified the overall length of the part.

    All of the constraints were maintained, and the results matched what SynchTech perfomed.

    The total elapsed time was 45 seconds.

    It's a shame that FeatureWorks didn't get the same recognition (no pun intended) as SynchTech when it was added to SolidWorks YEARS AGO!!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 6:43 PM, July 09, 2008  

  • "It's a shame that FeatureWorks didn't get the same recognition (no pun intended) as SynchTech when it was added to SolidWorks YEARS AGO!!"

    It got plenty of attention from lots of CAD and CAM users. It's very badly lacking because it's slow and often fails on anything but the simplest parts.

    The exact same technology that is in FeatureWorks is in CAMWorks. Many CAMWorks users don't use automatic feature recognition in CAMWorks at all and instead manually tell CAMWorks what feature they wish to machine.

    Here is a quote from Jim Peyton CAMWorks user that was posted to Usenet.

    "We usually bypass AFR and define features interactively for all but the simplest parts."

    Jon Banquer
    San Diego, CA

    By Blogger Jon Banquer, At 6:25 AM, July 10, 2008  

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