Tag Archives: Autodesk Inventor

We Don’t Care If You Like Our Stuff

Posted on May 29, 2018 | 2 comments

Today I am reminded again just how remarkably tone deaf leaders of companies can be. This morning I get a “hurry it’s your last chance” email regarding PLM Connection and the Solid Edge University which resides in it this year. Now I don’t know if you can attend this marvelous event just for the SE agenda but I suspect not.

How Could You Refuse This Deal?

I like the limited seats comment too since I have experience that says it will literally be one room out of the dozens set up for the UGS side. So yes severely limited is the literal truth.

Now before you get all over excited and are frantically scrambling for your credit card in a frenzied burst of SE enthusiasm calm down and see what you will get for your dough.

The Whole Chillona

I completely resent the cavalier way Siemens has decided to treat it’s SE users and to clearly indicate once again that the red headed step child is someone they hide from themselves and the public. At PLM Connection they will sit in the isolation chamber down the hall in a room where it is grudgingly admitted that yes the DNA says Siemens but darned if we are happy about it. You UGS people disgust me with the way you scheme and maneuver to hide a product you are afraid of competing against. Unable to compete based purely on capabilities and pricing they sabotage the SE ecosystem and starve it into submission.

Can you believe they have the unmitigated gall to charge you full three day event price for one day of stuff that is pretty well useless to most SE users? I sure can and remember with extreme disgust dealing with these idiots and the PLM World mindset. They are God and you are the distasteful stuff on their shoe sole to be wiped off when hopefully no one is looking to observe this.

I do have to say though that in fairness to myopic management they have some justification for sending their Grindstaff smother SE henchman John Miller over there to do a job on SE and the University. As users the SE people were given a real chance under Karsten Newbury and Don Cooper to show the world and UGS/Siemens that there was interest in the SE University. For some years running users as a percentage that showed up was pitifully small and to be honest if I were over deciding to do these things and not dedicated to the idea of building a community I would kill it off to. Either the SE user base is FAR smaller than I think or for some reason the ones willing to show up percentage wise are far smaller than say SW or Autodesk.

In any case you reap what you sew and I blame primarily the UGS Cabal but users that don’t support anything should not expect to get anything either and by repeated years of no shows the excuse needed by Siemens UGS Cabal (Have you noticed I love saying this? These contemptible people deserve to get raked over the coals at every opportunity and since this is my blog I do so.) I suppose SE users are back to the 36 people total attendance at the premier Siemens software event. A towering monument to Siemens/UGS corporate stupidity that excels in back room skullduggery. I have to wonder how things could be if armies of corporate drones were not solely devoted to CYA and turf protection and useless make work meetings to plan the next meeting spent this same time and energy improving the product and growing market share to where it could and should be.

I notice with interest that Dassault has finally admitted that even though they would love for you to buy into their overpriced over complicated Catia ecosystem there are many millions of CAD users that have A, no interest in the cloud and B, no interest in spending tons of money for un-needed complexity that does nothing but make their lives more expensive, less productive and operates levels of complexity way beyond what they need CAD for. So this year they have reversed years of we don’t like you and want you to leave SolidWorks by agreeing to spend four times the money and buy what we like and not what you like. They have committed to the idea that SW users are a force to be reckoned with and respected and desired. Now time will tell the real tale but today they say this.

Siemens/UGS (you know what they are ;D) has never to my knowledge given more than passing notice of the cloud only as an ecosystem you would have to work in nor have they seriously thought about ending perpetual seats as far as I know. Unlike the complete fool Andrew Anagnost at Autodesk. Who in combination with hostile board members deciding that users are not customers but rather they are chattel to be extorted in ever greater ways and the concern is purely for how to forcibly raise more money from existing customers. The idea of mutual benefit as a business model has ended with these people but I can honestly say that is not true with SE since it is powerful design software that is improving and is still rent or buy and a darned good tool in the tool box in spite of the, well you know who.

But anyway the last five years have been interesting and from this software customers viewpoint a real exercise in corporate disconnect from the people who happen to pay their bills and salaries. It is not your corporate investors nor is it the stock market and mutual funds. It is people like me and companies large and small that hired you to make THEM more productive and they do not believe they exist just to make YOU fat and happy. Autodesk is learning right now what happens when you jettison this basic business principle going into their 13th straight down income quarter in a row.

May I recommend to you the best software you have never heard of? You won’t hear this from Siemens but I can tell you after years of use it is the best mid range MCAD deal out there. If you are silly enough to still be agonizing over what to do with Inventor and don’t want to be forced into Fusion360 I can say SE is a fine place to go. Being a Red Headed step child is not so bad when I think of productivity and this SE excels at.

As a snarky aside here I do have to admire Andrew Anagnosts ability to pare things down. He has eliminated 23% of Autodesks staff. He has eliminated profit margins and he is eliminating gobs of customers. One of his current fascinations is replacing people with artificial intelligence. I ponder the idea of considering his job and if Artifice could be replaced with Artificial. I mean could a robot do any more harm than he is? Plus they could hire an H1-B dude to program the new boss and what a wonderful world this could be.

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You Own Solid Edge And Don’t Use Synchronous???

Posted on October 18, 2017 | 2 comments

Just some random comments today derived from the Huntsville SEU I attended on 10-17-17.

One of the things I have pondered for years is why the user community for SE is so small. One of the larger CAD bloggers and I have discussed this and he say’s that SE’s market share is far smaller than they want to admit to. Who knows since getting a straight answer on many things from a software company is an exercise in futility and if you do get a real answer often you are forbidden to talk about it.

As I was leaving yesterday I thought about this and for the first time I think I have a partial answer to tiny community size. I like many SE customers came here on a search for capable software. Unlike SW where there was a huge community of advocates willing to sway you SE had to draw the attention of serious lookers purely by capabilities. Yes SW is of course capable. But for me when I was shopping I went to two SW events here in Nashville to kick their tires. Both times it just seemed clunky and counter intuitive to me and the sales team was offensive. Big room full of people both times though. I ran across SE while searching for best in class sheet metal and kept running across comments about SE. They would say things like not well-known or not as popular as SW but had a great sheet metal reputation.

So in spite of all the cajoling to adopt the market share leader and adopt the program with the most employment possibilities I was looking for what would best benefit this one man basically closed ecosystem shop. What would work the best and the easiest for what I did was my question. This is a common thread with many SE users. We investigated and made software choices independently and not from outside influence’s like peer pressure and aggressive sales shmucks. We came here not because of community but because of capabilities and therefore community was not important.

UGS and Siemens have not helped in this area much and the proof this worked for SW did not mean anything to them since they did not care much what SE did as long as it never threatened to many NX sales. Therefore no community for SE to speak of today because it has to start with an aggressive corporate plan that is adhered to for the requisite number of sustained multiple years of effort and effective planning and promotion. Never has happened although a serious attempt at this was made under Karsten Newbury and Don Cooper and subsequently shot down by the UGS cabal.

Out of 32 attendees in Huntsville I asked the question once again of how many were using Synchronous Tech. Only seven held up their hands. To me this is just mind-boggling and the single greatest differentiator between SE and the other major MCAD programs IS ST. I did not bother to ask why because I have heard this before and the answers basically boiled down to we did not have time to learn to use it. Did not have time to learn once something that would save you time from then on is how I see it but what do I know? To me the very first time I saw Synchronous in use it was like a whole new world of freedom opened up right before my eyes. I hated the shackles of traditional history based modeling and ST was like hey, I can throw away the ball and chain now and start walking without dragging this huge weight behind me. I had no idea this capability existed but when I saw it I knew it was for me.

When I first started in with CNC milling I found out quickly you needed a CAM program. You then needed a way to feed the CAM program. The choice was working off of 2D like many were doing around here or embrace the future right away with a 3D modeller and a CAM program working off of surfaces or edges. To me it was a no brainer and I went straight into 3D modeling and never did anything like Autocad. I regard the power of ST that resides inside of SE to be just as fundamentally empowering as that choice for 3D for CAM was. I for the life of me can’t grasp why anyone would not adopt ST for at least a significant portion of their work. This is a failure of SE and UGS and Siemens to clearly demonstrate and educate users to the power of ST to existing customers which then in turn become ST advocates and create new customers for SE, UGS and Siemens.

I guess that my curiosity level is far higher than the average employed user. They do not want to be bothered adding yet another bit of work to the mix that they will not get paid extra for I suppose and so they stay with the familiar and don’t learn the new. I can kind of understand this mindset since production still has to be met and learning new things can initially be quite time-consuming. Owner’s or employers see work is still done according to traditional expected levels of productivity never understanding how much better it could be. Siemens UGS etal have not bothered to demonstrate this in any compelling way so they might become interested and so the single most powerful productivity tool remains in the bottom of the tool box where it never sees the light of day. Here we are some four years after I first asked this question of a group of users and nothing has changed.

Anyway have a good one everybody.

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Solid Edge Huntsville 2017 “Community College”

Posted on October 18, 2017 | 2 comments

Yesterday was the SE “University” event in Huntsville. Basically an 8 hour long way to brief and superficial imitation of the real deal which may have ended for good last year. I am not sure what is being attempted here and with the new Mr Big in charge of SE the anonymizer is back in place. I can’t even remember this dudes name and really don’t want to bother looking it up again. Suffice it to say that he has been assigned to squelch publicity and enthusiasm for SE so NX can garner more sales. In any case these little local events are not much and this is sadly by design I fear. I really miss Karsten who was active in the user community and cared what happened. This new dude no one sees or hears from and quite frankly I imagine SE employees wonder just what he does since nothing is done by him I can see except putting the annonymizer thing on SE. Maybe we should start a sort of internet game where you try to find things and see if we can figure out where he is and what he does for his salary. I have talked pretty badly about SE’s UGS and Siemens overlords in the past and still hold them in contempt. SE however is a superior product.

Saratech was the sponsoring VAR and as has been my experience with them in the past they do a good job. Of course they are there to sell themselves too but they are not offensive about it. I don’t know what if any help Siemens provided for this event although I am certain SE did since it was held in an adjacent building to the SE headquarters in the same complex. Sadly missing this year were any of the actual developers and focused in depth topics. There were no feedback sessions either since there was no SE employee presence there to collect it like was traditional with the real SEU’s. Thanks Saratech for helping this event out.

32 in attendance.

Any major design program has gobs of things most users will never use. The primary focus this year seemed to be on reverse engineering. I have not actually played with it yet but there looks to be some fairly significant strides forward in dealing with point cloud data and of even more interest to me STL files. I had a Gold Faroarm some years back and the idea of reverse engineering has always appealed to me. Dealing with collected data is not a straight forward issue and any help in this area is a good thing. No I have no hands on experience with this new aspect of SE nor do I expect to but if your shop does deal with this check out perpetual seat SE (yep I had to say it since Autodesk wont offer you this) and see what it will do. You need to find the right individual to help you though since scan data presents all kinds of modeling problems. The guy who talked about this from Saratech was pretty good so they do have at least one real user on staff to help you.

Sheet metal as always has been one of SE’s primary standout capabilities and this has continued to be developed. Better Synchronous implementation in ST10 and the ability to create parts in place in assemblies is improved this year. Sheet metal is one of the things that drew me to SE in 2009 from VX now ZW3D and I have never regretted the move. There have been times where I have felt the pace of improvement was not sufficient to justify the yearly fees but after a few years with Autodesk I know it can be far worse elsewhere.

Can you tell Autodesk is someone I would not recommend dealing with? Here is another reason why. Support for Autodesk products is primarily we will help you install and get it running. After that they have their hand(s) out for more money to answer actual software questions. I ran into a familiar face from GTAC which is the corporate user support group inside of SE in Huntsville yesterday. It reminded me once again of how generous the support options are for SE users compared to, well, lets say Autodesk for instance. I can also say that support from my VAR over the years has been entirely sufficient in all ways except for CAMWorks for SE which I quickly abandoned and never intend to use again.

SE is by far the single best MCAD program out there as far as I am concerned. Having dealt with Autodesk Inventor for three years was a real personal hands on eye opener to the advantages of SE over other popular MCAD programs like Inventor. I have been an advocate of Synchronous Tech since ST1 and since ST3 can say it was for prime time use. Inventor was SO bad and their idea of direct editing so bereft of intelligence that after spending some time trying to learn it I just quit. It was clear there was nothing there for an SE user and so Inventor was relegated to being a parts placer so I could use HSM.

I don’t write a whole lot about SE anymore and I have not made a video in some time. I take for granted the capabilities of SE and to me they are just there and tools I have used for so long I forget how powerful it is compared to the other stuff.

May I take a second here to tell you that if you have not investigated SE for MCAD you should do so? Especially if you are an Autodesk Inventor customer I can tell you life is better here by far and SE does not intend to turn you into an on demand endless ATM like Autodesk wants you to be. Lets see here. Better software, perpetual or rental options YOU choose and real actual support for what they sell you. If you are an existing Autodesk Inventor user you better be getting your life raft in order because Inventor is I figure going to be phased out and replaced with Fusion360. Ending Inventor is the only legal way Autodesk can end perpetual Inventor seats and I figure this is their intent. Both Bass and Anangnost have stated in shareholder meetings they are going to subscription only and this is the only way they can do that. Solid Edge wants you as a customer and offers real value and continuing improvements as compared to Autodesk who wants you purely as a cotton picker and chattel for THEIR benefit.

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So, You Say You’ve Never Tried Solid Edge Synchronous?

Posted on July 17, 2017 | Leave a comment

So how do YOU want to work?

So choose, hammer or nailer.

 

Wandering through the SE forum today and ran across this. https://community.plm.automation.siemens.com/t5/Solid-Edge-Forum/10-Cool-Reasons-to-Start-Using-Synchronous-Technology-Today/td-p/420431

While I think the presentation is a somewhat corny and the items covered a bit rudimentary it got me to thinking of a few things regarding Synchronous Tech or ST as it is better known. For those of you who are not familiar with it ST is the very best direct editing method out there in the mid range MCAD program world. I forget that many have no idea of the power there and since I have been using ST since ST1 this power has become commonplace to me. I am accustomed to doing this and quite frankly any other way has become alien to me. I came here because I wanted to be freed from the shackles of straight parametric modeling and this is the simple part that opened my eyes just before the release of ST1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bk5-1sZ6cY

Using a straight parametric modeler and having no idea direct editing even existed back in 2008 seeing this way of working was a real epiphany. It was like a whole world of possibility opened up before me even though I did not know specifically how it was going to do so. In truth it was like the very first time I was shown how to make crude forming jigs for bending rods to make trusses with. It opened the door for all kinds of things that were far more complicated but based on the same principle. Both put power in my hands. Admittedly it was not until ST4 that the program conquered some serious problems but since then any owner of SE was crazy to not work with ST.

When I bought into Autodesk’s Inventor Pro HSM it was strictly for the machining program. CAMWorks for SE was a nightmare and I wanted shed of cumbersome tool path creation for simple intuitive and powerful which HSM was. Limited in what it would do but a world beater in three axis milling it was for me. But this machining program came with the CAD equivalent of CW4SE called Inventor and it was clunky and convoluted and difficult to use. So much so that after a few fairly serious attempts I just quit trying. After all why would I inflict such a cumbersome work flow on myself if it was not essential to do so.

In time this led to a conversation I had with an Inventor guru. He was asking me why I had bad things to say about Inventor when it had direct editing too. Which it did to some degree and I guess if it was all new to you it seemed just peachy. This was his problem and I had to explain to him that while both SE and Inventor had forms of direct editing SE’s was far more because of the intelligence that came with it, the range of things that could be done with it and the ability to work with imported files from other CAD programs when imported. I could work with them just like it was a native file. Inventor direct editing is just as sucky as their convoluted user interface and work flow. He was not interested in viewing the numerous ST videos on this topic would be my guess because after telling him about ST he never got back to me.

Running a user group meeting a few years back in Huntsville there was an SE dude there who was giving a demo. At the end of the demo two shocking things were made evident. One was that when asked who was using ST out of a room of SE users only one raised his hand. There were also three UAH students there and they were very intrigued with the idea of ST which their college instructor did not cover. Really? College students being taught SE but not SE ST? A college level course being taught to students who were theoretically being prepared to work in the real world and it did not incorporate ST? The professional users in attendance basically said they were all to busy to learn the new way. To busy to learn how to save time and become more efficient from that day on was my interpretation of the end result of their mindsets. Insofar as the college professor at UAH all I can say is tenured laziness bordering on incompetence since he could not be bothered to learn and teach the most powerful tool in the SE tool box. His students were shocked this ST thing existed and I was shocked they did not know.

To this day since I have been accustomed to the power of ST for so long, indeed it is the only way I have worked for years now, I forget that many for whatever reason have no idea what they are missing.

SE requires a different mindset to be successful and the biggest hurdle I have seen is people have to think in terms of manipulating faces or face sets rather than driving every single thing and edit with dimension driven sketches and planes. It was amusing to see die-hard parametric SE users slowly assimilated into the ST world. It was hard for some to let go of the old way which after all did work but when they were curious enough to finally try they to a man became advocates for ST.

So why if you are an SE user have you not made a concerted effort to learn to work with the greater efficiency ST brings to the table? Why would you prefer a hammer when on the shelf next to it is an air nailer and you already own the air compressor? For those in the Autodesk perpetual seat doomed to future slavery world and the apparent end of serious user innovations and improvements, why would you not be curious enough to at least try SE ST? Sold which ever way you want to buy it without Autodesk type belligerent threats to your future and the imports of your files will be far easier than you think. Indeed working with them when you get them into SE will be a true eye opener. I have had access to both programs the last three years now and I can assure you that once you leap over the learning hurdle any new program has Inventor will acquire its rightful place as the clunky offering from a company that has no regard for you as a user and customer. I chose not to further learn Inventor when it became apparent that it was inefficient since I had the luxury of having SE to work from. You give SE a serious try and I bet that will be your conclusion too.

I guess I could throw SW into this mix also but my experience with SW is VERY limited and I am commenting today on two programs I have owned and used in daily production. I suspect from comments received from past SW users and some companies that were SE users but bought out by SW using outfits and hating the new-found inefficiency SW is not as good for general MCAD. I believe from users complaints models can and will blow up with SW whereas in SE ST a proposed edit simply will not work rather than blowing it all up.

In any case SE ST deserves a long hard look from anyone who wants to become more efficient and profitable. At the very least look online for videos and have a look at what others are doing and think hard about how you have to work.

 

7-18 Update  From Matt’s blog today I find this.

“Synchronous Technology for History-Based Users

This was a book on Solid Edge, published using ST8 (~2016). It is 10 chapters long, in eBook (pdf) format with movies and sample files. It is free and downloadable, although you may have to give up some information to get it. You may find the book published under a different title. The book is meant to help users of history-based CAD understand why Synchronous Technology is a tool you will want to have.”

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Inventor HSM Pro and Solid Edge Update

Posted on May 18, 2017 | Leave a comment

As I sit here this morning pondering things it dawned on me that life goes on and it may well not include this blog very soon. Unless you have had a blog and spent serious time and years as I have you may not understand how hard it is to close a chapter of your life out. And make no mistake it is one and this one including my time involved directly in various CAD CAM communities took perhaps thousands of hours of my time over the past six years. Yeah it has been that long.

Today what got me going was looking forward to attending the 2017 SEU which I have been absent from for two years now. It is an event I was material in helping to get revived but after discouragement over Siemens jettisoning Karsten Newbury and Don Cooper I quit going. So as I decide I want to go this year I read that basically they are going to do away with this event. It will now be regional and I suppose much shorter and the networking that can only be done at a national event will once again die for Solid Edge. I had looked forward to seeing familiar faces once more.

I have ST9 loaded and have been using it for a while now. Like always it is such a pleasure to use the best mid range MCAD modeller that has such powerful direct modeling capabilities. I think of Inventor and just shudder over how convoluted and irrational the workflow is and the direct editing shortfalls so prevalent there when compared to SE. Yeah I am sure glad to be back.

My understanding is that for ST10 the new modeling paradigm, whose name eludes me right now, (congruent modeling?) that was included in NX last year will be in SE this year. I hope this is getting back to the leaps in capabilities SE used to have each year and away from incremental improvements that were nice but left you wondering why you had spent so much money for them. However a trip with Inventor reminded me that incremental improvements with SE were far better than the subscription Hell that Autodesk is morphing their products into. Or the 35% increase in costs by 2019 for perpetual seats with the loss of some features which will become additional costs to license what used to be included.

So Yes nice to be back. Hate to see the end of SEU once again though.

Autodesk. I was asked for reasons I can’t reveal to become a beta tester this year for Inventor. So I download it and tried installing it on both a Win 7 and 10 box. Did not work and I got to thinking about it. Here we go again another hassle just to get running and then more time to give feedback to a company whose operational policies towards customers I despise. Scott sorry about this but I am just not going to help Autodesk out when all they want to do is stick it to me and all the other perpetual seat holders. I am getting, no I have gotten to the point where I don’t care what Autodesk does because I am not going to be there with them unless they have a complete change of heart.

They are right now changing the lack of forward motion with HSM and have assigned a good guy to be over finishing what they have started and promised. For years in some cases. Problem is that with the new anti seat policy it will be too late for many of us since we are leaving.

Talked with a support guy at my Autodesk VAR and mentioned I was not going to renew. It was kind of funny to hear his tone of voice when he asked why. I bet he is hearing that a lot lately and it has to be discouraging to work for a company that seems Hell bent on ruining what they spent so much time to build up. Hey Solid Edge here is another opportunity for you to acquire customers. I wonder how all the Delcam victims feel? I know how the HSM victims feel and we are not happy.

This is my first post using Win 10. I don’t know if WordPress has changed their site since the last time I posted or perhaps Win 10 just displays it differently. Don’t you just love it when software companies change things around and you have to spend your uncompensated time to learn how to do the same thing all over again?

Anyway you have made it through all my ramblings for yet another post. Fare well until next time.

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Used Car Dealer Autodesk Says “Trust Me”

Posted on March 9, 2017 | Leave a comment

I was thinking today about all the words coming from the poor Autodesk employees who are paid to defend the actions of upper management. These poor souls have families to feed and bills to pay and what an untennable spot to be in. So I see the defense of the promise made by Autodesk to honor perpetual seats forever still stands and they swear it is true.

Here’s the thing though. I fully believe the screw you love letter I received as truthful about their intent and here is how I am going to prove they want to kill off perpetual seats.

We all see the accelerated maintenance cost through 2019. What we don’t see are the costs afterwards. What I believe is that just picking a number, well lets say perhaps five or six thousand and skip the cents, could very well be the real number by that time. They never promised to outlaw perpetual but they did promise in their screw U letter “now we could see the way Autodesk was going.”

So you have these lawyers and they say OK you can’t end perpetual seats legally but you can end them through cost attrition. Autodesk has never made a commitment to cost contain increases to perpetual because they intend to outlaw them through the wallet.

Now Dave you have such a dirty suspicious mean little mind! Gee I wonder why?

Autodesk could quite easily come out with a firm commitment to perpetual. It would go like this. Yes we know the cost of perpetual has risen. But to you dear and valued perpetual seat customers we guarantee to you that perpetual will never rise above X % of the cost of subscription. So there you go Autodesk. A very simple and easy way to prove that you do honor perpetual and customers that have been with you in many cases for decades. I mean you did speak the words that said you value us did you not?

The proof is in the pudding. An honest man even if he is doing things he knows you do not like will tell you the maximum damage you are going to incur. You people however have no honor because you have malign intent. Real simple to prove me wrong by clarifying this. Put into finite numbers what is in store for say the next ten years. You do have the ability to do this since perpetual has been around for far longer. I do not expect there will be an answer though since once a thief is caught red handed at the scene with the jewels in his hands what defense is there?

Hey you guys over at Solid Edge. Have you started your leave Inventor promo yet? Might be a good time to do so.

Update.
Steve Johnson author of http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/ has a post regarding future costs today I have just become aware of. http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/2017/03/09/autodesk-license-costs-options-3-4-5-bait-and-switch/ will take you to it.

One of the comments to Steve’s posts from Ralph Grabowski is of great interest to.

According to http://seekingalpha.com/article/4051716-autodesks-adsk-q4-2017-results-earnings-call-transcript , the post 3-year price increase will be 60% for maintenance customers , and then prices will just keep going up to generate ever greater revenues. Here’s the money quote:

Amarpreet Hanspal: So there’s a different price for each year, when that three-year lock in expires that customer immediately goes up to the terminal loyalty price a little over – roughly 60% more in their maintenance price, and then they’re kind of subject to ongoing price increases that will affect with our long-term pricing strategy.

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Autodesk’s Patronizing Screw You Love Letter

Posted on March 7, 2017 | 5 comments

So today it was my turn to get the notice from Autodesk of their new and improved upcoming subscription only paradigm. I really wonder what goes on in the minds of corporate and marketing officers as they struggle to arrive at verbiage that will supposedly make us all happy. I find it infuriating that what they say implies we are so grossly stupid as to believe a word of their garbage. They cater to a market segment of people of above average intelligence and then spew utter nonsense like we are complete idiots

Read this duplicitous garbage I was sent today.

Autodesk’s Screw U Love Letter

Words have meanings. Intent has meaning to. These words say to me here is the lipstick on the pig now don’t you feel better? Please ignore that squishy goopy brown stuff you are laying in with the glamorous pig. Here let us spray a little “Eau De Verbiage” parfummy and the idiots will think what stinks really does not.

Let me extend an offer to you Autodesk in plain speaking words. I too have a profit picture and outgo equals less profit for me. I am not in business to make you succeed at my expense. I am in business to make MY profits grow and you were hired to assist in this because you offered good value for the money at the time. What is happening now is the acceleration of the slowdown of new features and the increase of problems with unfinished new features and legacy problems that apparently are not going to be fixed. EVER. I am also not willing to become a data hostage to people who clearly do not care about my profit margins or security agreements I have to sign with my customers.

So my offer to you is for you to go get screwed. I am not at all interested in sending money to thieves and liars which you guys clearly are. So much for the promise of perpetual seats going forward and thanks for the complete education in corporate treachery this little notice of yours brings.

You people who consider Autodesk for anything in their little subscription world have to be crazy. I can’t wait for these ethical geniuses to demonstrate cost creep to all those silly enough to become captives.

To all the people who work with HSM. Please understand I am not unhappy with you. While some things are slow to be fixed or improved HSM is a proven money maker in this shop. I wish most fervently neither you or I were in this situation but we are. I came here strictly for HSM and intend to continue using it well after your mercenary lying money grubbing corporate overlord execs run it all into the ground. Good luck guys and start building a way out if things turn ugly. You may never have to use it but at this rate I would not count on that hope.

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IMTS And Autodesk CAM

Posted on August 2, 2016 | Leave a comment

I have been invited to attend an Autodesk Cam Customer Advisory Meeting  at IMTS this year. Before I get into that though just some reflections on events of the past few years.

Dealing with different companies is an interesting thing and how they interact with customers varies wildly. I remember the days of Solid Edge where bloggers and those fellow travelers of SE who were fans of the product were pretty well ignored. Now I don’t mean important people did not listen and do the right things I mean the corporate money never reached out past the SEU events to the outside world.

After each SE University in years gone by when Karsten was in charge there was a by invite only meeting after all the official events were over. He collected important users to sit in a round table and talk about what was most important with the community and as users regarding the state of the software namely SE.

To the best of my knowledge there was never any aid provided to any SE bloggers to be there although one year a couple of SW bloggers were there with some pretty sad results. And of course people like Ralph Grabowski as industry analysts and commentators were assisted in being there. People who agreed to run a session and after being approved to do so were given a free pass to the University but I don’t know if anything else was covered.

I remember sitting in Kris Kasperzak’s office one day  in Huntsville before he moved on to the NX darkside. I was trying to get him to see the logic in paying the way for friendly voices from the user/blogger community to have their expenses covered if they wished to go. It was not for me as I was paying my own way but it was to try to open the door for others who would presumably write favorable things about SE. I knew some that I had in mind who would have.

Kris was a good litmus test for prevailing mindset and thoughts of Siemens type corporate management. His reply after politely listening was that it was just to expensive to do that. Now I figure by that point in time I had hundreds of hours into promoting SE and the community for which I had never received a penny. I worked out a deal for SE before I was a blogger and paid for it all along out of my pocket. I paid my way to the SEU’s where I spent the majority of my time talking to these industry analyst reporter types and meeting with SE people. I might get to three or four sessions. I did it because I believed in SE and wanted to see it take its proper place in the scheme of things.

His reply was pretty humorous to me later that same year as I find out that out of approximately 500 people who showed up only 174, if I remember right, were actual SE users. The rest were mostly Siemens employees who did nothing and were going to do nothing to promote SE and they did not use the program to earn a living. You SE programmers in Huntsville know I am not talking about you guys. I am not talking about direct SE employees who had a future in part staked out on the success of SE. I am talking about purely wasted dollars spent on Siemens people who were paid to have a good time to fill a room up for publicity purposes. That must have been what the Kasperzak etal mindset considered a wise use of funds.

Perhaps it is a form of benign insanity to do such a thankless thing as blogging out of loyalty and regard for a software program. For some reason CAD CAM software excites people and creates followers and many of us each year look with anticipation to see and use what is new. Some companies get that and others don’t. I do know that over the last five years most bloggers that did so out of their own pockets in regard for a product are gone. Today the vast majority, I mean like 95%+ as far as I can tell, are VAR or software authoring company employees. This result directly parallels the perceived and actual regard software authoring companies have for their users is my guess.

 

IMTS Meeting

I have no idea what to expect here nor what the potential results may be. I don’t know how assiduously Autodesk pursues responding to customer opinions. For instance the subscription policy now in place is a direct slap in the face of users first, customers first and they choose what they want. It is a repudiation of the idea that quality should sell your product and the installation of a top down CPA MBA dictatorship meant solely to increase unavoidable costs to all who enter into this dark world. It has no regard for users other than as ATM’s.

So it is with some surprise I receive an invite and expenses covered and find out that there are those from as far away as Denmark with the same invite. Apparently someone is serious about finding out what CAM users think. I know some of the invitees and they are loyal users with however some unpleasant things to say. Kind of like me.

I don’t know how successful this subs paradigm is working out for Autodesk and we will never know until time reveals their reported income and from whence it was derived. Of course manipulative CPA MBA dollar experts would never put a spin on anything don’t you know but still truth will eke out.

At the very least I can say that Autodesk CAM is willing to listen and pay to listen to customers. SE would listen but only if you were willing to pay to be listened to.

Hoping for the best and that this is a harbinger of good things to come.

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Solid Edge ST9 On The GTAC Site For Customer Downloads

Posted on July 25, 2016 | 4 comments

I used to get real excited about this time of year and with great anticipation looked for the latest and greatest from Solid Edge. This is the first year since ST1 that I am not a customer of this great design program so I will have very little to say about its capabilities as an actual user. I have also lost most interest as a blogger in this product so I won’t comment on much else about it insofar as new features above and beyond what I have already said. Namely that genuine game changing innovations appear to be giving way to cutesy marketing gimmick stuff some of which from what I gather in reading on the Siemens forums is only partly done. The pace of transformative innovation regarding pure cad design improvements have slowed down with SE in my opinion but it is the best mid range MCAD program out there as far as I am concerned. To bad it is owned by people who hold it in contempt

In any case if you are a current customer check in to GTAC and get your latest and greatest. If you wish to try SE, and if you never have I recommend you do so, they have a 45 day trial period. We all know how quickly 30 days goes by so 45 is much better.  Solid Edge has not gone subscription only stupid so this is a HUGE plus for them. I intend to use SE ST8 for as long as I can. I try to learn Inventor on occasion but it is so clunky and un-intuitive to me compared to SE that these brief sojourns into masochism quickly end. I see the great work done with Inventor so I know it is capable. The mindset behind how it works is alien to me compared to SE though which just clicked for me right away. I don’t have to learn it and at this time don’t intend to either.

To bad the only  integrated CAM program for SE is such a PITA to use and of course Cam Express which clueless sales droids will sell to you in a heart beat is not integrated at all. Such is life here sadly. Going by the CAMWorks for SE site this week and there has been one post in the last sixteen months. SE users are not amused nor enticed to be there.

Is this a new trend with software companies? To release something to say there is fabulous new stuff you just have to have even though it is not finished and has serious usability problems? Looks like Autodesk Inventor Pro HSM is doing that and Siemens from what I read is too with SE. Just a tip here to software authoring companies. Something actual manufacturing concerns learn very quickly which is sales people will get you in trouble every time with promises just to close a deal and then YOU have to make it work. Or not.

I think with SE and Inventor Pro HSM the sales guys have run ahead of reality and just to let you sales brainiacs  know customers are not amused when their yearly fees produce new features that do not work right or at all. Carts do not pull horses although the cart driver can choose to get on a steep hill and run over the horses. Sales and Marketing or is it  S&M ?

Moral to the story is do not let sales people or Marketing and Publicity off the firmly held short leash of reality if you want happy and satisfied customers.

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Inventor Pro HSM 2D Chamfer Milling, Tips and Tricks and some Commentary

Posted on July 11, 2016 | Leave a comment

Before I begin just some thoughts. It is getting harder and harder to find the desire to write about CAD and CAM software. As I become more convinced over time users are in corporate eyes just a necessary evil that must be forced into accepting ever dwindling software improvements and or subscription rake you over the coals gouging and extortion. That we must become subservient to their financial needs first and foremost and what we want is not relevant. The philosophy that good products sell themselves based upon merit and improvements is history with Autodesk now as they move to subscription only where any who enter in give up all control over their future and improvements will dwindle and costs will skyrocket.

OK Fusion 360 is cheap right now but do you honestly think it will stay that way? That Autodesk would set up a direct competitor to expensive programs like Inventor Pro HSM at a fraction of the cost and keep it that way forever? I remember iPhones and unlimited data when they first came out to get users in. Could you perhaps tell me the current status of unlimited data on your iPhone and what that might cost? ATT is $10.00 PER GB for overage. Solid Edge is in corporate Hell imposed upon them by a cadre of NX UGS backstabbers and is in terminal holding pattern like SW is until the overlords can figure out what to do. The days of rapid and profound meaningful improvements appear to be over and what is being done is in many cases window dressing or rolled out with drum and fife but not complete. (Will it EVER be complete?) More and more I think of alternatives like Ironcad for design as there is being created a great void of customer regard by the majors and surely someone like Ironcad will step up to the bat and find much greater usage.

Anyway lets move on with Inventor Pro HSM 2017 specific topics.

There are some good things in Inventor Pro HSM 2017 and some oddly half done things. One of them is the 2D Chamfer tool path. The 2D Chamfer tool path will not work with chamfered edges on a solid model. It works only with corners/edges without those features. If you want to machine the part just as it is in real life use 2D Contour. 2D Chamfer is great on raw edges and also has collision avoidance built-in but it is however a promise of things to come yet not here. To many limitations on its use to recommend as your primary Chamfer tool path creator at this time. Personally speaking it is wise to avoid having to edit  solid models just as used in your assemblies or parts files just to cut a part. Why double your file requirements when properly done CAM paths should recognize the part as it is in real life?

Another feature I had REALLY looked forward to was probing. Based upon what had been shown to me regarding feature probing on parts and the idea of incorporating it directly into your HSM tool path it was exciting to see. However the reality is that what is there right now is pretty well useless. It is limited to recognizing a corner be it part or stock only.  Further it will not recognize your stock block unless you create an additional “stock” part. The correct way to do this is to recognize the stock you create for the CAM plan as the program already has to recognize a shape to work after all but such was not to be. They are working on this but I find it really silly this was not done before any official release user ever had a chance to use it.  In any case in its current state how would it know where to find your desired setup block corner anyway? It is too quick and easy to use  your Renishaw probing routines built into the Haas control to do this. The probing icon is merely a promise that someday something good will appear but not today. Probing as it is in today’s HSM will not be in any use in this shop.

Thus 2D Chamfer and Probing both fall into a problem that seems to be growing with HSM. Add to this the really slow development of Turning and you wonder why they talk about something and release it with so many shortcomings. It would be better for them to knock off promises and concentrate on FINISHING something and then moving on to another item. It is like the problem of lack of user manuals to go with HSM. You wont find documentation for the tips I give below. Tips that can save you lots of time and grief. They have finally hired someone to do this but how urgent is the desire to see it completed I wonder? It is like a group of well-meaning programmers with great ideas and visions somehow get bogged down in the day-to-day world and all the promises and problems get worked on but few actually and truly finished. Start with A guys and work to Z but don’t go to B until you are done with A.

These are gripes I have but the core product of HSM has given me many trouble-free days of production and I don’t regret being here at all. I just don’t understand the rather disjointed development of HSM. I however use it for a living and programmers live in another world and get paid irregardless of what goes out the door to the customer so our goals probably wildly differ. I want to finish something so I can be paid and they see it as a work in progress where years passing before completion is OK and the paychecks come no matter what is not done.

As always now since Autodesk has gone gouge your wallet subscription only there is a caveat to HSM. If I did not like HSM I would not write about it. I do however despise the sales model it now resides in and you need to know upfront the price of admission here now has very onerous conditions. You have to wonder if subs only is partly responsible for the slow down in the actual finishing of features in HSM since the forever pay to play subs ecosystem means they don’t have to improve much anymore to keep getting dollars from their newfound captive audience. Improvements and actually finishing improvements can easily become avoidable expenses in this corporate model especially with corporate investment sharks now having a presence on the Autodesk board. It is going to be a very interesting year ahead for Autodesk product users as we see how all this shakes out.

How do you find information for many hidden nuggets of HSM CAM cooking gold right now? Well you often need to find someone who can fill you in because many key tricks and tips are not documented. However HSM has just hired a person to create documentation so this really problematical lack is perhaps now being worked on.

Now Onto The Good Stuff

I spent the better part of a day recently trying to figure out why I could not consistently create results on a simple part. Admit it you have too and it is quite frustrating is it not? Fortunately courtesy of tech help from the hidden HSM bunker I have some answers for you and I. Thanks Tim!

I have some of the tips below but the video will go further into how to use them. In general though I think it would behoove most of us to take the time one day to right mouse click everything as we go through a CAM plan and see what shows in the pop up menus and what these things do.

For instance you can right-click on a setup and select “default folder” option to make that setup the one you are working on. If you have noticed with more than one setup your default setup “work folder” is the last numerical one in the list. You go back to set up 3 out of five and you know you are there but unless you clicked “default folder”on that setup before you pick a CAM path for setup 3 it will default to the last folder where you have to remove and start over and ask yourself just how many more times will you do this?

I can’t say how many of these hidden nuggets are in HSM because like most of us I get to where I can make a CAM plan and make it work to my satisfaction and stop right there. After today I am convinced this is a big mistake and intend to look deeper in my spare time. Part of the reason I stop looking sometimes is the hope I can blunder through it faster than I could dig and dig and dig for answers that may take a lot of time to find. I really look forward to the upcoming new help goodies in hopes this will be a central clearing area for this kind of information.

Even a searchable tips and tricks section on the HSM CAM forum would be of help. Here are some chamfering tips that may help you.

For 2D Contour using chamfer mill and corner round mill contour click and hold Alt key and left click lines and pick lines just like you were climb milling starting at one end of chain if this is what you want and pick each line. On a part with chamfer features or corner round already on part click lower line(S)

Press and hold ctrl key and left mouse click to remove lines from selection.

2D Chamfer tool path will not work with chamfered edges on a solid model. It works only with corners/edges without those features. If you want to machine the part just as it is in real life use 2D Contour. Chamfer only at this time and corner round tools do not have a dedicated tool path like “2D Corner Round” yet
Here is the video.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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