Today I go to Novedge as part of my day and I have to admit that it gave me pause to consider a long time situation. How is it that a major international corporation can’t do something as simple as a web page or blog? Is it because they hire such incompetents or is it because they starve good employees for budgets because what is important to the world is not to Siemens Muckymucks? Or is it because they starve incompetent employees of funds but funding would not matter anyway because incompetents would produce nothing of value in any case. So who hires these people anyway? Why even have a Marketing and PR department if they are not going to do anything? And then you have to wonder who supervises the playground and why errant children are never disciplined and made to do what they were supposedly told to do. Of course that opens up another whole realm of conjecture about who manages those who run the asylum if the inmates are the ones selecting what is done.
Or do they despise SE and just wish the problem would go away?
Matt Lombard has a blog “On The Edge” that he produces and is responsible for. He had to fight to get this and indeed it is the first time an independent guy produced his own blog outside of official Siemens Muckymuck auspices. This by the way is the only reason his sight works. So today as I peruse various sites with Firefox once again I am reminded of just how anal Siemens is and how impossible it is to get anything done there. Poor Matt is stuck with yet another rerun of SEU2014 because there is nothing new to talk about I expect and Summits I figure may or may not happen this year. I am thinking that they are still having meetings on the Summits and so there is nothing to talk about in this area yet. So just what can someone talk about without getting in trouble when there is corporate paralysis? Why the past of course. Now you Siemens nutjobs leave Matt alone about all this. I don’t talk to him anymore and he is not telling me this. I make these statements based upon what I see online and what I have personally experienced over the last five years. From the mouths of Solid Edge leadership comes confirmation of Siemens idiocy this year as they admit to Ralph Grabowski onstage at SEU 2014 that Siemens corporate CHOOSES to hamper SE. You don’t like what I post here talk to the idiots in Germany and not Matt.
But anyway to the topic at hand which is what do I see today. Here is Matt’s blog page.
Just for giggles here is Dave Ault’s $100.00 per year “SolidEdging” page which includes two domains and spam filters from WordPress. And yes my $100.00 per year page works with all browsers in common use. Shocking isn’t it?
Here we have the top flight professionally done Siemens corporate page produced I assume under the auspices of social media expert Chris Kelley and per Siemens corporate standards for Marketing and PR. Kelley and Siemens are of course part of a major international corporation with unlimited funds and abilities for those things which they find important. So let us go to the Siemens site today and have a look. Still the same mess it was weeks ago.
Chock full of information and all links work and the visuals are an integrated cohesive sight to behold. It is easy to see the professional standards that Siemens demands be present with their public face at all times is world class and without fail is ever present.
Do you people in Siemens Germany Muckymuck land realize how stupid you look here? Do you care? Do you ever do anything but have meetings where nothing is decided and no one is accountable for anything? Have you forbidden tie up shoes yet? I think if I were you I would because it is unseemly according to professional Siemens standards to fall on your face all the time while tripping over your own shoelaces.
Please please would you sell off this red headed step child SE to someone who cares? May I suggest you sell to Autodesk? They apparently have management that can put their acquisitions to productive uses and their meetings apparently also produce results and not just another meeting date. Why not get some cash for this thing you don’t want or care about and be done with it eh?
Say, would it help if I posted a screen capture of an Autodesk site? http://cam.autodesk.com/inventor-hsm/ It works with Firefox by the way. And check those prices out while you are there. Autodesk regards new customers as something desirable to have would be my guess.
Machined Audio Horn Lens 
Got an email (actually two identical ones yesterday, see below. Needles to say, I am in Australia….
—————————
Re-imagine what’s possible
Just announced Solid Edge ST7 delivers some key capabilities, allowing you to:
take your designs to the next level with faster, more flexible 3D modeling and beautiful photo-realistic rendering
complete design projects faster with design management that’s visual and straightforward
get more productive with powerful new Apps – for design, manufacturing and collaboration
Whether you design the products or the machines to manufacture them, we’re sure these latest enhancements will help you design better. We invite you to join us at any of the following events to show you what’s new in Solid Edge ST7:
Dates & Venues
Bangna, Thailand on 24 Jul. Register
South Vietnam from 5-8 Aug. Register
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 13 Aug. Register
Singapore on 15 Aug. Register
North Vietnam from 15-22 Aug. Register
Bangkok, Thailand on 29 Aug. Register
Manila, Philippines on 3 Sep. Register
Well that is better than what has been announced here. Some VAR’s are doing good ST7 stuff but Siemens has nothing in the hopper I have heard of yet. ST7 will be a good release and it deserves much better publicity. I hope one day the people at the very top will realize the money and market share some of their underlings are costing them. Maybe I need to start tracing down employees that have followed SE from the Integraph/UGS days on and see if any of these past obstructions to SE proliferating are still there. There is a culture of animosity towards SE with some of these people that I experienced in person at PLM World 2009. You would not believe they were products from the same company based on the crappy way the NX/PLM World bunch regarded SE. It was a real eye opener and today I still see being manifested a kill the SE mindset with these guys. Funny how ST was good enough for them and then they want to kill the messenger so to speak. I think they are afraid of SE taking their precious NX users away from them.
CAD blogs seem to be diminishing. I loved Matt Lombards Solidworks blog, his Solidedge blog was getting more interesting. The number of participants has declined. The Solidworks forums are seeing less postings. Solidworks Forum no longer has a space called Solidworks, it is now just parts and assemblies. Geometry definition is no longer important to them. Solidworks seems to be transitioned into a cash cow.
Hi Rick,
I can’t speak for other bloggers but I can guess why this is happening. I can for sure say why it happened for me. I find out that one rotten guy from UGS’s NX side who will remain un-named has a hard on for SE and hates the ground it walks on. He has the ear of Mr Big who goes along with this I am sure so none of their precious NX seats will be jeapordized by that worthless SE program. NX PLM etal you see is a huge cash cow here in the states and SE is just this bastard thing they won’t get behind. This is not conjecture it is what is happening. So you see this marvelous program and now know why it is starved for PR and funds and it’s rightful place in the scheme of things. Why in the world would I continue to support and advocate as an unpaid booster software that it’s own parent company does not? I have nothing but utter contempt for an organization like Siemens that allows imbecilities like this to exist and my free time for them is over.
I suspect that other bloggers have run into this same sorry equivalent with their software of choice. That leaves SE for instance with Matt Lombard who can’t say what he wants or be completely honest like he used to be with SW. He has no choice in the matter if he wants a check now. There is another guy from India who works for a VAR by the name of Tushar and he wants to be hired by Siemens direct so he blogs. There are no other really active bloggers for SE because Siemens has created an environment of contempt for SE and for bloggers who are not on a payroll. I figure the same is true with SW and all the bloggers I see now are paid.
Why would anyone want to be a fanboi and blog about their favorite CAD program under these circumstances? The SE ecosphere dies before it could ever flourish because of one idiot from UGS and I am not going to waste my time again supporting SE until they show me something dramatically different than this sad current state of existance.
Hi Dave, Yeah sadly it looks like Matt gave away posting to his SE blog a while ago. I don’t think he will be happy with how things have worked out considering the potential his job seemed to have in the beginning. Siemens obviously doesnt care if they sell SE or not and are content to have their marketing staff bum through life on corporate welfare. I can understand your reluctance to spend your time carrying their corporate baggage for them. Even if people inside and outside shout in their ear and tell them they need to get their act together it makes no impact on them. Go figure. There is nothing Matt can do about promoting a community or SE given those circumstances. Honestly it wouldn’t surprise me if he left. No one would hold it against him.
You can draw comfort from the knowledge that SW blogging is nearly all dead too. At one time I had quite few SW places I used to visit but hand on heart I can tell you I have no/zero SW bookmarks anymore, amazing though that is, and it is very likely I will also ditch SW forum entirely this week. True to form SW recently successfully reduced their forum to a piece of junk with an unnecessary makeover. They give all the indications they have decayed as an organisation to the point where they have entirely lost sight of their actual mission. I am talking about providing a tool for engineers and not social industry experiences. We even have had a couple of SW employees pop up in recent months to propose changes that indicate they have no idea what the existing program does or why. Honestly I dread what they will do next in the name of enhancement and that they won’t be caught beforehand…..
Hi Neil,
Truly the interesting things in CADCAM world are going on with Autodesk now. Inventor is still wretched but Carl Bass is serious about improvement and he gets the manufacturing idea and he does not apparently listen to idiots like the UGS SE hating creep. SE is the most capable mid-range modeler in most ways out there right now and by far best for what I do. But I look at Inventor getting access to direct editing tools from Delcam and other things happening to to improve the product. I do not believe any more that Autodesk is going to be cloud only. I look at the combination of HSMWorks which is a great CAM program and Inventor which is not but you can still get most things done and they have a package price of $10,000.00 for the top of the line Inventor suite AND CAM up to 5 axis with lathe. The same thing with Dassault is going to cost you more each year and up front. With SE only being integrated with CAMWorks your costs for an “equivalent” package would be over $20,000.00 and $4,000.00+ each year for maintanance. Autodesk wants $1,500.00. Mid range CADCAM suites will soon be owned by the next market leader Autodesk instead of delusional Dassault and Solid Edge hating UGS clinging Siemens. I watch Autodesk now. I use SE and CAMWorks but I probably wont renew with CAMWorks as it is just to expensive each year for what you get in improvements. I will spend the $1,500.00 to renew with SE again this year although it has become just a tool with really sad connotations in my mind and brings no delight in use any more. I think real hard about the idea I can have CAD and CAM each year for the same price at Autodesk as SE alone charges me though. At this time I can state that from my viewpoint Autodesk looks like the only mid-range MCAD outfit that WANTS your business. To the rest we are stupid for wanting what we want and not visionaries like Dassault or treated with contempt by people who don’t understand why we just don’t man-up and get real and get true design software like NX and ignore the bastard red headed step child SE. What a wonderful world we live in and what sterling inducements to spend our money with these cretins.
When Matt agreed to work for Siemens none of us had any idea how fast it would fall apart nor did I for instance know that, beyond conjecture anyway, Siemens UGS people really were conspiring to limit the market share SE could ever have. These people will suck you dry and talk about how the community needs volunteers to make it all work and then do everything they can to make you fail. They have a phony PR face and then they have a real UGS corporate face which is hidden and quite execrable. Siemens and the UGS boys will run off the good guys eventually. I don’t talk to Matt any more and I miss doing so. I can’t speak for him either but if it were me I would be building a life raft.
On the flip side of things I am getting a new CNC lathe this month and probably new software from Autodesk later this year and Siemens will in all likely hood be a memory soon. Or I may buy nothing and just coast on my permanent seats just like you SW guys are doing. Since most of my work is design build I don’t really care if I can’t import your latest file anyway. I LIKE that idea of cutting off Siemens from the burden of accepting dollars from that filthy SE program they despise.
Forums, funny you mention that. SE keeps fiddling around with theirs and I could not login AGAIN a few months back to the new improved Siemens catch-all website. I thought about that and the idea that once again I was going to have to fool around with these people to get access and I walked away. I have not been past the public face nor have I commented because I just got tired of fooling around with stupidity.
Neil,
I have enjoyed your wit and no bullshit blog posts. There was a good feeling of helpful support in the blog community. Matt Lombard’s dezignstuff bottle model challenge was a high spot.
I still get good work done with SW. The bugs used to drive me crazy. The bugs are still there. When one pops up, I enter it in a document along with how to work around and get back to work. I do not need to remember the bug or the bad feelings.
Hi Rick,
Yeah I miss those times too. Its a pity we lost a useful soap box and enthusiasts hangout for SW when Dezignstuff exited.
I have thought about a blog/forum of my own to fill the gap but I am not sure I have the time to make a good job of it and I am much less enthusiastic about SW since DS took over the reins. It would however be a kind of industry contrarian space for users to post to and discuss things as they are and not as marketing would propogate to us.
I still get stuff done with SW2009 and have no plans to upgrade. I very strongly considered moving to SE but now I am not so sure. I will hold off for a few more cycles and see what happens. Perhaps OnShape has something to share by then. I think Matt should do himself a favour and see if he can go and work there instead but that’s just my opinion…. Anyway keep at it 🙂
A new CNC lathe eh? Sounds good. If you feel like posting some photos and such if/when that happens I would be interested. 😉
Hey Neil you bet I will. In the mean time it is a Haas TL-2
OK I found a brochure. Very nice. I see its going to be a 2 tonne baby. I’ll bet the father is very proud of himself 😉 I’ll check back here later this month then for all of the details of how the arrival and install went…
It’s a compromise which allows for a full CNC operation on a lathe with a big through hole, large cutting diameter and length compared to what you would get in a turning center at probably four times the cost to equal the overall size of part envelope. Manual toolpost where you have to change the tool each time yourself or set up gang tooling. True CNC in every other regard though and the possibilities are unlimited compared to the old manual one going bye bye.
I have to admit Neil you have my thoughts going. I have enough machinery now. The controllers will not change and these will last me the rest of my working career. I know that the CAD program can to and just like you are working with five year old stuff and doing well so can I. I am thinking real hard about never sending another dime to SE hating Siemens again. I slide in just under the wire this month for ST7 without any more costs and the more I think about it all the more I may just end it here. I have everything I need and why subsidize those who have so thoroughly made me mad.
Sad thing about SE is that they appear to have hit a creativity ceiling anyway with much of whats going on I think, since I have not seen it yet nor have I heard all that much about it yet, improving how you work but not revolutionary in how you work like some past releases have been. Part of what was the primary reasoning for ST7 was goodies for SW user refugees which I am not. HA HA HA, create enhancements for SW users the UGS creep etal won’t allow you to pursue. Is there some sort of irony here or what?
Well if ST7 was intended to entice SW refugees I think the refugees have mostly been put off already and walked on by. The welcoming reception really didn’t last beyond an a courtesy answering of the door bell. The few things that arrived in ST6 would seem about as far as they were willing to go in our direction although there may be a few bits held over for ST7. I don’t have the impression Siemens were ever genuinely interested in picking up SW users although a few decent SE employees and enquiring people like myself may have rather foolishly thought that was a viable possibility for a couple of months. Under closer scrutiny Siemens don’t even seem to have an interest in their own existing SE customers. It is starkly obvious to me now that Siemens are a hopeless outfit in the same way as DS are for SW.
Make sure you can get any SP for ST7 if you decide to get off the upgrade bandwagon.
When I found out that one of the two people most responsible for the birth of SE as it should be was leaving because Dr Siemens was forcing birth control pills on them I went ballistic. I suspect that if this miasma of UGS/Siemens stupidity continues Karsten will leave to. You can only hold back talented people for so long by telling them here, run this while I make sure you can’t win. The planning for a release takes roughly 18 months from beginning to end. I honestly believe the good guys at SE felt they were going to have a real shot at doing things right and made plans accordingly.
Siemens absolutely does not care about existing SE customers nor do they care about enticing you SW guys either. Ya wanna buy NX or Teamcenter or PLM Whatever come on down. These despicable and worthless individuals would rather see Siemens bottom line shrink a bit than to see SE thrive as it should. Part of the same company but subject to the turf wars of a tiny petty UGS mind SE rides off into the sunset as another episode of the “Best Software You’ve Never Heard Of”.
You will love the Hass lathe. Be sure that it has enough travel for boring bar tool change clearance. The machine is very stiff and will cut with a damaged insert. Check the inserts often. Save some budget for heavy metal boring bars. Threads will have a beautiful exit. Unlike a mill the lathe is most often programmed at its screen.
This one will have plenty of clearance as it is a tool room type and not a full turning center. The work envelope is huge compared to most turning centers. Went to a Sandvik Cormorant tooling demo last Wednesday and one of the things they were showing was internal and external threading with a vibration dampening bar with “modules” you could change out at the end. Far better than heavy metal if you have a big enough hole. You are sure right about spending money on good insert holders. Threading is one of the chief reasons I needed a lathe and you bet I look forward to using this.