Please visit the SOLIDWORKS Top Ten 3DExperience World 2020 community to participate in our survey concerning your experience related to using the 3DSwym platform for the SOLIDWORKS Top Ten list. Click here for a link to the community.
Not sure what the SOLIDWORKS Top Ten List is or how to participate? Please see the original forum posting for more details: 3DExperience World 2020 SOLIDWORKS Top Ten List top_ten_list top_ten_ideas 3dexperience2020
I'm with you John Stoltzfus. I really think that this forum should be the biggest impact on change and improvements. How much effort would it actually be to book mark key ideas, and ER's and have the Development team review them. I think they are missing the boat on this of they are not including all of this valuable user input.
BTW .. insert cheering here ..
ALIN
ALIN
ALIN
Mark Bradford wrote:
I'm with you John Stoltzfus. I really think that this forum should be the biggest impact on change and improvements. How much effort would it actually be to book mark key ideas, and ER's and have the Development team review them. I think they are missing the boat on this of they are not including all of this valuable user input.
I'd argue its less effort for end users to search the ER database and vote / submit there versus having staff dredging the forum all the time. I have in the past voted on ideas and in my comments link back to appropriate threads so discussion around ideas can be easily seen too.
John Stoltzfus wrote:
Kevin Chandler wrote:
The forum is an unformatted cluster. It's user forum where most come for help on implementing a particular issue and not necessarily for an SW improvement.
It would be a bear to have to use this forum for any evaluation. You'd have to excessively monitor it and pick out a lot of fly sh#t to in the hope of finding any pepper.
Speaking of bear, how are you, Dave Bear?
Kevin
I know what you're saying, but never forget that the Forum has been known to kickoff a lot of "Movements"
Large Assembly Performance Boost in SOLIDWORKS 2020
World Map of Support for Dave Bear
Forum contributor Alin Vargatu has been responsible for the most enhancements and at the same time the quickest implementation (my observation only)...
Mostly through the Challenges - SWPUC - SOLIDWORKS Power User Challenges
Can we chant...
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Alin
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He man
This forum content is far from ineffectual, but I can't imagine SW using it as an ER/SPR assessment and processing tool.
The forum itself (the Jive engine/infrastructure) is a social media platform and I don't think is designed for or is capable of such use.
Kevin
I'm just saying it should be considered. Not ruled out completely.
Kevin Chandler wrote:
This forum content is far from ineffectual, but I can't imagine SW using it as an ER/SPR assessment and processing tool.
The forum itself (the Jive engine/infrastructure) is a social media platform and I don't think is designed for or is capable of such use.
Kevin
FYI - That's not what I meant.
Kevin Chandler wrote:
John Stoltzfus wrote:
Kevin Chandler wrote:
The forum is an unformatted cluster. It's user forum where most come for help on implementing a particular issue and not necessarily for an SW improvement.
It would be a bear to have to use this forum for any evaluation. You'd have to excessively monitor it and pick out a lot of fly sh#t to in the hope of finding any pepper.
Speaking of bear, how are you, Dave Bear?
Kevin
I know what you're saying, but never forget that the Forum has been known to kickoff a lot of "Movements"
Large Assembly Performance Boost in SOLIDWORKS 2020
World Map of Support for Dave Bear
Forum contributor Alin Vargatu has been responsible for the most enhancements and at the same time the quickest implementation (my observation only)...
Mostly through the Challenges - SWPUC - SOLIDWORKS Power User Challenges
Can we chant...
A
L
I
N
Alin
H
E
M
A
N
He man
This forum content is far from ineffectual, but I can't imagine SW using it as an ER/SPR assessment and processing tool.
The forum itself (the Jive engine/infrastructure) is a social media platform and I don't think is designed for or is capable of such use.
Kevin
As informal and rambling as this forum is, it is far from unusable for the SWX developers to glean great information. The TTL in the past, residing on this forum, was a focused version of the great ideas and solutions proposed by the forum participants. However, even the regular forum is useful to the SWX folks. I had some great time with Richard Doyle and he verified that the forum is a valuable source of information for the folks in Waltham. It is relatively easy for us to specifically tag someone at SWX (if we know who to tag) and bring a thread to their attention. Even less direct methods are employed as they do have folks that cull through the forum. They are most likely looking for key words and using a script to search for those. Our good use of such words and even adding them as specific tags and putting the threads in the right places will help them to find the threads.
The point is that this forum is valued by SWX as a great source of information, even if we don't hear directly from people at SWX. That is very much by their design, as they want this forum to be OUR place, and not taken over by (or even perceived to be taken over by) SWX Marketing. I highly respect they have maintained this position, even though there are many times I/we are begging for someone from SWX to chime in.
Alas, the 3DSwamp is a terrible bogg and far too cumbersome to use compared to the ease of use we have grown accustomed to here on this forum. I do not see how they will have anywhere near the level of participation and contribution that this forum has produced. SEVERAL people should be fired for that mess!
So I completely missed this survey... and cant find any whiff of it on the other platform. what were the results? how was the participation?
Prepare for a rant.
Firstly, 3DSWYM (which is supposed to stand for See What You Mean) is a terrible system to use. I have tried for years (it has been around for many many years now and really hasn't dramatically changed in all that time). The communities are tired spaces frequented by, er, nobody. It is a confusing system designed by a developer who probably thought it made sense in their head but failed to consult any actual users. I don't need to repeat what has been said here suffice to say that I reported many of these points back to SolidWorks when it was originally launched but nothing has changed.
Secondly, I , and many many other SolidWorks users, are fed up of being told by SolidWorks and/or Dassault that we have to:
1/ Contact our VAR to report a bug/request an enhancement
2/ Use some odd email format/web link/etc to upload example files for development to see what enhancements we are after.
3/Create a document that details the stage by stage issues/enhancemnets and how this improves things.
Just to re-iterate - we, the paying customer, are being asked to MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER. Sorry for the emphasis but this sort of thing angers me. I've done a lot of alpha and beta testing over the years. I've been approached by many software developers to assist with feedback on new features or they have picked up on things raised in discussions. I used to be a very active participant here - going back 10+ years ago. But I got fed up of suggesting things on here that I'd get the usual - post it to the enhancement requests/email to development/contact your VAR nonsense.
My answer to thatwas then, and is now, I am a paying customer. Your job is to make my life easier. If I suggest something that is based on 20+ years of using SolidWorks and using many other 3D CAD systems don't ask me to use my valuable time to reformat it into a format that makes your life simpler. I mean seriously, this forum doesn't get that many new posts relating to enhancements. How hard is it for one person at SolidWorks to trawl each day and pick out ideas? Then, I don't know, maybe follow it up with a direct message, phone call, web meeting or even a visit?
As mentioned, I, and my small team, have done a lot of testing of various systems over the years. I get approached regularly for comment from developers large and small about various features they are working on because they have read a post I made here on on another forum. let that sink in. I have been contacted by competitor products teams because they read it here and want further feedback. So I give it to them. They are working on geometry issues for part design. SolidWorks don't seem to care about that any more. We have two active licenses on maintenance - a minnow in the grand scheme - but that might well be two less next year unless we start to see some improvements. We bought into Creo 2 yrs ago and continue to use Fusion 360 and Rhino. Cost is not necessarily the issue. Value is. I know the sort of stuff we suggest comes into the "hard to do" category, but then we pay SolidWorks a lot of money each year (and if I think what we have paid over the years my eyes water) so I kind of expect them to pull out the proverbial finger and do something more challenging than features that competitors have had for 10 years.
So sorry for the rant, but I dived into 3D swym to look at the ideas list and there were ones that have been there for 10+ years. I even looked at one and thought sure that's good but how do you vote? Wait? I have to watch a damn video to see how to vote? What a stunning piece of UX that is. Like you can't just have a "vote for this" button on the post?
Final rant point. I've never been to SolidWorks World or whatever they are calling it now. It is always in the USA, so that rules it out on the grounds of cost and time for a micro business like ours in the UK (yes I know some UK folks do go but maybe they have more time than I do). From a non participant it always seems that all these annual enhamcement voting things are a total waste of time designed to fill 20 mins in the keynotes. Really, I would much prefer if the SolidWorks team actually dropped it all and spent the time setting up a proper forum that was monitored, responded to and logged.
Thank you to everyone who participated in this survey! We have taken your responses and made a new closed-ended survey that you can find here: www.solidworks.com/top_ten_survey
This survey will help us quantify your experiences using the SOLIDWORKS Top Ten List on 3DSwym.
New Survey Forum Post: SOLIDWORKS Top Ten Final Survey
Alexandra MILLER wrote:
Thank you to everyone who participated in this survey! We have taken your responses and made a new closed-ended survey that you can find here: www.solidworks.com/top_ten_survey
This survey will help us quantify your experiences using the SOLIDWORKS Top Ten List on 3DSwym.
New Survey Forum Post: SOLIDWORKS Top Ten Final Survey
Excellent questions, Alexandra!
Just finished the survey. Thanks for allowing us to provide you with feed back on the Top Ten List.
Thank you Alexandra for adding this so the thoughts of the users will be heard.
I only tried a couple times to look at top ten ideas and ran out of time trying to get what I wanted to see.
With the old forum method it was easy to go to the Top Ten area and see a list of all the ideas without all the clutter.
Then we could easily scroll through the ideas and select and we would see a expanded comment list like we are used to that was easy and clear to navigate - again without the clutter from other subjects, comments and whatever we were not interested in viewing at that time. We were able to make Excel lists with links to the actual post and were able to easily navigate to posts, keep our own lists of what we voted on and didn't and easily return to recheck for comments and updates.
I, as many of us forum users know that this old forum is now unsupported and has it's faults.
However, something as important to us as the Top Ten was the wrong post to do a LAST MINUTE switch to the new 3DSwym platform - no training, lots of problems in how it worked, lots of confusion and frustration.
I can see that we will be migrating but we needed more warning, testing by users and practice to work out the confusion on or side and the bugs on the SWym side.
Think of it this way - if you went to the airport and you are about to get on a plane to go overseas, and just after boarding and finding your seat, they inform you that you are about to travel on the newest Boeing supersonic jet and that it has never had a full passenger load or in-depth simulation and the pilots only had made one practice takeoff and landing and they took off all the safety rafts, vests, and similar equipment, -- Would you still want to be on that plane ????
That's basically what was done to the forum users - we were thrown into a new, virtually untested system (except by DSS people who had been playing with it for a while and understood its operation) with no backup, no training, no options & no choice.
I tried to navigate a few (of the few) Top Ten posts and gave up trying - never went on to vote (never even tried) - People who would have posted Ideas didn't know how to, gave up trying to didn't even try.
The proof is in the meager amount of ideas posted and the incredibly low amount of votes.
The amount of ideas that have come out of the Top Ten over the years that have been implemented have greatly improved the abilities and power of Solidworks. These would have not been known if not for the users posting on the Top Ten and voting.
This should have been TEST RUN by users - in parallel - with the REAL Top Ten being as it has been on the regular forum and the users should have been requested to make simulated or test runs on the SWYM platform and respond with there questions, concerns and opinions of how they wanted it of function.
We enjoy coming to the forum to share ideas and thoughts to make our lives easier and learn - and the new SWYM format needs more testing and tuning and learning to make it work For us instead of Against us as it did in this case.
I hope this is taken as constructive Criticism (as it was ment) to improve the system for all of us.
Monday Rant Over
Well said Rick.
It seems like users want to use the new tools, but the support has not been there so they feel lost.
Rick McDonald wrote:
Thank you Alexandra for adding this so the thoughts of the users will be heard.
I only tried a couple times to look at top ten ideas and ran out of time trying to get what I wanted to see.
With the old forum method it was easy to go to the Top Ten area and see a list of all the ideas without all the clutter.
Then we could easily scroll through the ideas and select and we would see a expanded comment list like we are used to that was easy and clear to navigate - again without the clutter from other subjects, comments and whatever we were not interested in viewing at that time. We were able to make Excel lists with links to the actual post and were able to easily navigate to posts, keep our own lists of what we voted on and didn't and easily return to recheck for comments and updates.
I, as many of us forum users know that this old forum is now unsupported and has it's faults.
However, something as important to us as the Top Ten was the wrong post to do a LAST MINUTE switch to the new 3DSwym platform - no training, lots of problems in how it worked, lots of confusion and frustration.
I can see that we will be migrating but we needed more warning, testing by users and practice to work out the confusion on or side and the bugs on the SWym side.
Think of it this way - if you went to the airport and you are about to get on a plane to go overseas, and just after boarding and finding your seat, they inform you that you are about to travel on the newest Boeing supersonic jet and that it has never had a full passenger load or in-depth simulation and the pilots only had made one practice takeoff and landing and they took off all the safety rafts, vests, and similar equipment, -- Would you still want to be on that plane ????
That's basically what was done to the forum users - we were thrown into a new, virtually untested system (except by DSS people who had been playing with it for a while and understood its operation) with no backup, no training, no options & no choice.
I tried to navigate a few (of the few) Top Ten posts and gave up trying - never went on to vote (never even tried) - People who would have posted Ideas didn't know how to, gave up trying to didn't even try.
The proof is in the meager amount of ideas posted and the incredibly low amount of votes.
The amount of ideas that have come out of the Top Ten over the years that have been implemented have greatly improved the abilities and power of Solidworks. These would have not been known if not for the users posting on the Top Ten and voting.
This should have been TEST RUN by users - in parallel - with the REAL Top Ten being as it has been on the regular forum and the users should have been requested to make simulated or test runs on the SWYM platform and respond with there questions, concerns and opinions of how they wanted it of function.
We enjoy coming to the forum to share ideas and thoughts to make our lives easier and learn - and the new SWYM format needs more testing and tuning and learning to make it work For us instead of Against us as it did in this case.
I hope this is taken as constructive Criticism (as it was ment) to improve the system for all of us.
Monday Rant Over
Rick,
I know you are at ??World this week. I really hope you have the chance to tell this face-to-face with the appropriate folks at SWX/DSS.
The TTL was a horrible disaster this year. It is something that people look forward to every year and even save their ideas for so they can get input from others. I sure hope they learn a lesson from this year and can tell you how they will fix it for next year.
We look forward to your assessment of what they tell you.
We had a good and informative meeting. The room was packed and several people standing in the back.
It seemed it was a live broadcast but I am not sure. They had the camera crew there recoding . That team had shirts on that indicated they were a live broadcast crew.
See Alin Vargatu post in the "Did you watch the General session's on Wednesday...." post for a lot of details.
It was a good meeting and GP came in after the main presentation was done. GP spoke for about 20 minutes and discussed some of the changes and directions for the future. That would have been the session end time, but he stayed around 20 longer to listen and discuss our questions and concerns. The cameras also continued at that time. We all appreciated his openness and acceptance of our thoughts. He did not dismiss any of our thoughts or comments and truely listened and heard us. We all felt this a very positive discussion for impro ment. We included how the last minute change to the (user untested and poorly described) 3dswym platform was a major factor in the poor turnout and left a very bad feeling for us.
After GP and most of the other people left, a small group of us continued with Bruce and Jim for probably another 15 minutes. Bruce requested our business cards so he could contact us to have future meetings. They listened well and want to make the needed improvements. We were all blunt and didn't hold back, even with GP.
Thank you
What was your general feeling towards the direction the event is taking? Did you feel it was somewhat moving away from SolidWorks? What was their response towards the TTL comments you guys made?
I read Alin's post but as much as I like him I always take what he says with a grain of salt, he is passionate about his job but it is still his job and there are things he just could not say. I feel as if the general concesus is closer to what James Pare and Jason Capriotti said
It is funny you are saying that, Alex. From all those courageous users in the room, I was the one who asked GP the toughest question.
I understand where you reluctance is coming from. I am sure Rick McDonald, Steven Billeter and Grant Mattis can tell you more about that.
For all the other users who attended the conference and have opinions about how things should change or not, GP had a good question: where are you?
Alex
In the past I have always said exactly what I think on here with the goal of always trying to make SWX the best design software possible
I can honestly say I no longer believe it's the goal of Dassault to make SWX great, but to try & force me over to the dark side of the platform. What investment did I see in SWX this year - very little.
I do see a lot of my SWX subscription fees going into additional software that they want me to purchase
Buy software, pay for support to help develop new software, buy new software????
Am I missing something?
James Pare wrote:
Am I missing something?
You forgot your credit card number.
Alex,
GP, in several instances, emphasized that SolidWorks is in no way being pushed away. The 3D EXP will be in addition to. The core Solidworks will remain and the other products will enhance and expand the abilities.
The TTL discussions were taken with open minds and follow up discussions /meetings will be held. That was why Bruce requested contact information so he can contact us to have followup meetings. I took it as very positive and welcome information from us to them.
I don't think I have enough room on my credit card for what the "platform" is going to cost me
Rick, if I was to guess how much of my money do you think is going into the "platform" & how much is going into SWX?
10% - SWX, 90% 3D Platform
What's your guess
If what you say is true they did a really really bad job with their PR this year.
Why would you have the top ten list in some back room conference, where was the upcoming features for SWX
Do you think they are going to tell you that this is the beginning of the end????
on Dec 3, 2019
I know what you're saying, but never forget that the Forum has been known to kickoff a lot of "Movements"
ONE and TWO
Large Assembly Performance Boost in SOLIDWORKS 2020
World Map of Support for Dave Bear
Forum contributor Alin Vargatu has been responsible for the most enhancements and at the same time the quickest implementation (my observation only)...
Mostly through the Challenges - SWPUC - SOLIDWORKS Power User Challenges
Can we chant...
A
L
I
N
Alin
H
E
M
A
N
He man