Some time back when I was more enthused about SE I requested and received a copy of most of the QA hurdles SE had to jump through before release. Some was proprietary and not released to me but the majority was. It is pretty amazing what people who are serious about what they produce go through to make it right as much as possible before release. In addition there are a number of beta testers that go to Huntsville each year where they receive some training and are then cut loose to use the software for a week while in Huntsville. With immediate access to the developers who wrote the code to see any problems testers come up with on their work flows and parts. This process goes on for months and is pretty darned thorough. I have been with SE since ST1 and as for bugs that affect what I do there have been very few. Yes ST1 and 2 were rough but this was new technology for SE and you still had traditional to work with if need be. The folks in Huntsville really know what they are doing and my hat is of to them for a great bit of software.
On the other hand we have Geometric which on it’s best day comes nowhere near the quality of SE on its worst day. I have been told there is no internal Geometric machine lab here in the States to proof out what is put into CW4SE. I don’t believe there is one in India either as the staggering amount of bad code that gets out indicates this. The flip side to this would be that they do have one but have so little regard for customers that they don’t care about what they find and send it out anyway. Personally I think they don’t have a lab, don’t care and use coders that are not qualified to fix problems. These coders also apparently have no machining experience to correctly determine how things should work and to be able to see that what they write will work correctly and not just shove an end mill through a part or cut gobs of air.
I quit talking to anyone from Geometric when they hurt me with a terrible ST7 beta release and huge delay in the SP0 release for the same. I just got tired of hearing stories and then having to deal with something that was so bad it did not really even qualify as beta worthy. Beta to me implies that there has been internal testing and QA and while it is not a finished product it should be usable. Beta evidently to Geometric means something different and what they put out to waste our time with was impossible to use. Considering this I moved on to Inventor HSM.
This led to a kind of good cop bad cop situation with another early CW4SE adopter and I with Geometric. While I did not pull any punches and had nothing but disgust over the whole mess the good cop still made an effort to communicate and plod through repeat email streams and videos and more and more time-consuming communications regarding flaws he would find. Time and time again where even elementary problems had to be explained to Geometric techies who could not seem to grasp the issue. In addition the idea that these should all have been found before we ever saw the program seems to be a thought that had never occurred to the staff in India. The good cop finally had it this week and in an email stream we have had for some time regarding CW4SE he had this to say. Now before the quote I want to say that Dylan is qualified to make comments on this topic and he has really made a great effort to make it all work out. To no avail and the people in India don’t seem to even remember they have had prior conversations about the very same problems that don’t go away time and time again. A history that is verified by comments on the closed Geometric forums where the same problem topics appear year after year.
I remember being on a conference call with a real machinist employed by Geometric and one of the guys from India where the machinist mentioned that now would be a good time to change language to reflect common usage and the India guy got kind of mad and said we have talked about this before. Bull nose instead of Hog nose for end mills for instance. Or open pocket instead of open slot for another. Or a tech data base that would reflect current technology. To much work to make things act like machinist users think and work and once done carved in stone forever. In any case on to the quote.
“On 1/28/2015 7:15 AM, Dylan wrote:
> Vivek asked for my input after 2015 was released. What a huge time-waster to have to go and prove out a million bugs again to him and the team and take video and evidence and explain things…all for bugs like SCREWED UP LEAD-INS AND FEATURES THAT EXPLODE. You guys really need customer input to figure that s— out?? I feel like I signed up for some experimental drug therapy, and now they’re hacking off limbs and going “Hey, does it affect your mobility when you’re missing this leg? Yes? Ok, how about if we cut the other one off? Better or worse?”
This is from a guy who spent his cash and now has to go and use his friends laptop and seat of Mastercam in the evening after hours to get his CAM plans done. This is where I found myself also using a demo version of Inventor HSM and or ZW3D 2012 just to get the work out. You can’t imagine the time spent trying to get things done right with CW4SE. The only reason he too has not left is that the high powered Geometric money vacuum has sucked up all his available cash for such things and he can’t for now.
Geometric in our cases has taken people who wanted the promise they portrayed and integration with SE and turned them into angry users and new hefty dues paid members of the CW4SE Masochists club. My recommendation would be that you not waste your time or money and run don’t walk past anything to do with CW4SE.
Machined Audio Horn Lens 