Tag Archives: Chuck Grindstaff

Adaptive Clearing, The Secret Weapon of Autodesk HSMWorks and Inventor HSM

Posted on March 16, 2015 | Leave a comment

Well it is not really a secret for those of us who use it but for everyone else I am sure there is a lot they don’t know. In my last post I talked about the idea of software quality control. In that train of thought there were some pretty amazing results achieved by Helical in testing with HSM’s Adaptive that was something I could not talk about until today. But there are a number of things that go on under the radar with Autodesk HSM (A-HSM) that are parts of an ongoing quest to improve the program. To make sure that what is there works and then also steadily improves.

First though a bit of background for HSM Adaptive from my experience. Roughly three years ago I tried both CAMWorks and HSMWorks. Cutting “Jaws of Life” blades out of S-7 tool steel was the test at that time and Volumill in CAMWorks cut a more consistent chip load especially around the pivot hole where HSM spiked pretty badly in tool load. HSM was good but Volumill was a bit better. Fast forward to today when I was forced to look past Volumill due to Geometric’s failure with Camworks for Solid Edge and it is a different story. On same parts and work holding and cutters today I find that not only does HSM Adaptive find all levels better it almost always does so with quicker cut times when compared to Volumill and with chip loads at least as good at worst and better in most cases.

Today over at a post on Helical end mills http://camforum.autodesk.com/index.php?topic=6490.0 some interesting things come out. Volumill has used Helical as their benchmark endmills for the Milling Advisor speeds and feeds calculator available on their site. Keep this in mind as we delve into this thread. http://www.1helical.com/index.php/latest-news/8-latest-news/51-helical-autodesk will take you to the post referenced there and I want you to go there now and check it out. Especially the recorded speeds and feeds.

Using the Volumill Milling Advisor the closest I can come to the testing at Pier 9 was this. Don’t take my word for this download it and see for yourself!
Volumill Helical

I have not achieved this kind of dramatic end mill engagement improvement over Volumill in my shop but then I would never have tried something like this to begin with. My biggest improvements have been in the total number of inches of travel to cut a part. Since I use the Volumill derived Machining Advisor to guide me on speeds and feeds who would have guessed HSM Adaptive had such potential?

Judging by this comment from Helical in the Autodesk CAM forum post—

“Again, we achieved some impressive cutting parameters with Autodesk’s adaptive toolpath strategy conducted at Pier 9 and now are in the process of training our tool application engineering staff so that we can help mutual Autodesk/Helical Solutions customers at anytime. I must say that their pier 9 facility was very impressive and we anticipate more great advancements with Autodesk & Helical Solutions in the near future!”

I would have to say it was an eye opener for them too.

Movin on over Volumill, the big dawgs coming in!

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The Corporate Philosophy of CAMWorks For Solid Edge VS Autodesk Inventor HSM

Posted on March 2, 2015 | Leave a comment

I was struck by the difference between the public face of Autodesk HSM and Geometrics CAMWorks for Solid Edge (CW4SE) and Siemens Solid Edge last Friday. What started this has been an ongoing failure of Geometric to fix problems that are systemic and pervasive with CW4SE to the point where I just pulled it off my workstation this week. I have been using Inventor HSM for CAM for months now and CW4SE sits idle as I wait for an update some day some month some year. Who knows as Geometric does not keep its CW4SE customers notified about anything. The reason I pulled it off was licensing. Once again for some unknown reason the Sentinel dongle with CW4SE is interfering with the Sentinel dongle from SE and now I have to reload the license file to use SE again. That was it for me. I don’t even use this afflicted program anymore and it STILL messes with my day. This by the way is a known problem that goes back many years on the SW side of CAMWorks and is still not reliably fixed for either flavor of CAM. Funny how I have never had this problem with SE Sentinel dongles for the last seven versions I have been on board for. So, off it goes until the next service pack comes out hopefully within the next six months to maybe fix some of these problems. I would hope it to not be six more months but who knows as Geometric does not tell the CW4SE customers they have treated so poorly anything. No hope, no updates on why things are the way they are and what is being done. I have asked Geometric, yes they do read this blog so they know I have, to come here and give updates or good news or something. They hardly ever respond and I have found this to be typical behavior. Even when I was on good terms with them they had to be pursued for information. I guess their idea of keeping you up to date is hire some PR dudes to make some glossy ads that cover over how difficult this program is to get up and running and to work reliably and to do all these wonderful things they promise. That not ONE single CW4SE customer I know of has seen to date but still they try to sell new potential victims on this efficiency fallacy. Great sounding but completely untrue in the actual experience of every CW4SE user I know.

Speaking of CW4SE customers let us take a peek behind the closed-door of the Geometric CW4SE forum which was started thirteen months ago. (“Program Smarter Machine Faster” right there at the top. Someone at Geometric has a twisted sense of humor.)
CW4SE forum on 3-1-15
There must be very few of us judging by the participation rate here. I found only one mention from Nishant about V2015 where he stated that they would typically release CW4SE within two months of the official SE release in July 2014. Took them four plus and then it was terribly buggy so what we have is still not usable in many cases. No word on why the delay for CW4SE 2015 and now no word on when the numerous show stoppers will be fixed either. It is not like Geometric or Siemens SE don’t know about user angst. They just prefer to ignore the situation when they have no good answers not understanding that silence is worse than saying here is the problem and what we are doing about it. Perhaps they are embarrassed about it all as they darned well should be and don’t want to talk about it.

As an aside here there is a new guy who replaced Karsten Newbury over SE a number of months ago and he has squat to say about anything. No direction, no communications with users and no public face I can find. It is like SE has dropped off the map as far as Siemens is concerned with Karsten’s departure. I am coming to the conclusion that Chuck Grindstaff who is over the Siemens UGS/SE software division, could care less about SE. That he has put a place holder over SE just to say the position is filled. What else can possibly explain why SE has for all practical purposes just dropped off the map and this new guy has had nothing to say and no interaction with users anywhere? I lean towards the idea that anyone who wanted to make SE a true success story has been run off because that is not the desires of those who run it all. I see some really great people leave and in some cases they have told me why. SE is in the same spot now as SW where it appears these lesser programs are not in the future vision of the anointed leaders. This by the way does not bode well for CW4SE victims looking for relief from the nightmare they are in.

So we have Geometric with a proven history of really buggy software and now add in disdain for SE from those who bought it to plunder Synchronous technology from to incorporate into NX and are now stuck with something I figure they don’t want but can’t sell off. Wonder if SE will be subsumed into NX one day like it appears SW will be into ‘Catia Lite”. In the mean time just what are we who have bought into this to think of our long-term futures here? Actions speak louder than words and I do not like what I see and hear darned little on top of that. Thanks guys, glad you like our money but could care less about us.

You know what, if you people don’t like the way I talk about things maybe you could make some sort of effort to give me something good to talk about. When you say nothing month after month what am I to think? My experience in life says that those who keep quiet at the least could care less and at the worst know there are problems and want to hide them. I get tired of having conjecture and lousy reports to give on something I had such high hopes for.

I have watched Autodesk for the past three years and have been quite critical of what I perceived was going to be a cloud only paradigm for its customers. Even in the middle of all that I have to say they were in communication with the world about what was going on. They were working on cloud based programs and told customers about it and then gave lengthy free betas of the products to work with. Things that actually did stuff and not vaporware like Dassault was so enamored of. My main point here is that Autodesk has been the epitome of open for scrutiny. Like or dislike what was going on you at least did know.

So I go to the open Autodesk Cam forum today and read this. http://camforum.autodesk.com/index.php?topic=6395.0

I guarantee you that over in the closed Geometric forums there is not one word to CW4SE users about the current situation with CW4SE 2015. Over on the Siemens SE forums the same thing for CW4SE users. They had a guy show up one time during all this mess and say they were appointing him to “look” into the problems. That has been the totality of the evinced concern for us there. If anything is being done by either company to remediate the CW4SE mess I don’t know because neither group cares enough about their customers to be bothered to tell us. HEY GUYS, you tell me and I will post your words verbatim. Watch me hold my breath waiting for that one.

Here is a little chuckle for the day. http://allyplm-solutions.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-latest-camworks-promotion-dont-miss.html
For $4,500.00 dollars you can have the same capabilities that SW and Inventor customers can have for free. The additional consideration here is that free HSM works and makes your day productive while the one you have to pay for brings a boat load of trouble to its SE customers.

I am reminded on a regular basis of the philosophical difference between these companies and in spite of how clunky Inventor is right now compared to SE seeing more and more value with Autodesk CAM. It is nice to be wanted as a customer of a company that is making efforts to keep you in all the loops as compared to Geometric who wants you to be an ATM and keep quiet or SE where you can use a great CAD tool that “no one has ever heard of” but don’t look for anything else. Let me put it this way. I am excited about the upcoming release of Inventor HSM 2016 and I could care less about SE ST8. I used to laugh at “end of life” SW users and now have to wonder about the same for SE. I am so mad at Geometric over CW4SE and I have progressed from being excited and one of the four original CW4SE beta testers to complete fury over what they have done to the first and probably last shot ever at integrated CAM for SE.

All I can say is that if you are thinking about CW4SE stop it right now. If they started working on it seriously today it will still be some time before they can get it mostly right if they ever do. Software companies do not change things on a dime and Geometric is apparently incompetent and Siemens SE apparently did not care enough to check under the CW4SE hood to see what was going on. Let me rephrase that. Siemens SE did not and still does not even have a real oversight arm to see how integrated partners were doing. Not a stellar combination for you to put money into.

Folks, put 3-23-15 on your calendar as the day when Inventor Pro HSM 2016 will be out and we can check out some goodies worth getting excited over.

And Geometric, that lathe post you promised me in the beginning when I paid for turning over a year ago before I bought my lathe ? The one you won’t give me now but want to ATM me on? Pssst, it’s free for everyone over there with the HSM guys who care if I make money to.

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Are You COMMITTED To Your Customers ?

Posted on February 12, 2015 | 2 comments

As SW World winds down this year I look at the lack of involvement by users and Dassault. Yes there were a lot of people there but I wonder what the real reasons were? I wonder where all the hub-bub that used to accompany this event has gone to? I know if I go to SEU 2015 it will be principally to see my peers again and not because I expect to learn a lot there I could not elsewhere for free. I have to believe that outside of people in direct employ of those who intend to make money like Dassault or vendors SWW is mainly a re-union of peers. Then I look at Dassault and they trot out stuff no one wants and if you buy into your profits will diminish Dassaults will increase. Strange thing its that as far as I can see you wont get as a buyer anything you really need beyond what you have now for far less $$$$$. So users show up to see each other and Dassault shows up to talk to themselves about stuff that is overpriced and users don’t want. Here is an excellent article on just this thing. http://www.solidsmack.com/cad/pricing-next-gen-cad-dassault-systemes-lost-plot-3dexperience/ I find with great interest they also mention Autodesk. Autodesk is transparent about what they do. They have the best prices for what is offered. Autodesk is serious about gaining new customers and unlike Dassault and Siemens apparently does not believe your primary reason for existance as a company is to be a cash cow for others. I fully expect in this tough market to get new sales generated and where your best source of new customers is your competing software peers that over time this combination of leading best prices and transparency and features of the programs from Autodesk will erode the base of Dassault and Siemens. Autodesk, get busy and fix Inventor and you will get much more attention.

But there is another aspect of this and it is are you committed to your customers. Do you listen to what they want beyond the top ten things to be fixed or do you take your subs money and devise products they don’t want or will run up expenses needlessly or both? How about do you take integration seriously and spend time to make sure your “Gold Partners” so to speak are delivering what they promised? Once again I see the huge contrast between Autodesk and Dassault and Siemens where everything Autodesk does or intends to do is an open book with lengthy beta periods where they give users free use of a product to make sure it is what they want or if it will even work. And they are doing so at prices that businesses will appreciate. (It looks to me like Autodesk wants to be your partner and not your overseer unlike others that come to mind.) Thinking of all the vaporware Dassault has come up with over the years here. Thinking of Siemens where you have to inflict sales drones upon yourself to even get a price. And in particular thinking of Solid Edge where this wretched mess of CAMWorks for Solid Edge has been allowed to fester and only after some real public user anger did Siemens decide to look into it. I have no idea if it will go any further than this because Siemens is so bureaucratic that they could not decide on a plan of action in a reasonable time frame if their lives depended on it. CW4SE has had serious problems from day one and I am convinced that Geometric had no intention of fixing it. Indeed a comment to one of the users about problems that plagued him their reply was this was “intended behavior”. I kid you not. Then after the big stink starts and the heat is on they want to fix it. Does this kind of reaction inspire any confidence in you as a potential customer?

What it says to me is that both Siemens/SE and Geometric will not do the right thing unless pressure is applied. What is also tells me is that a company like Siemens/SE has had no interest in what their integrated partners do and therefore no method of policing them for quality. At this time I can only say that by association and by their actions with CW4SE I would not trust a darned thing they have partnered with unless I first did extensive testing. They recently appointed some poor guy, that’s right one, to be in charge of this but I can tell you that in my experience with the gargantuan bureaucracy he will have to fight through this is meaningless. It is a see we are doing something now please go away action that will not affect the serious plight of every CW4SE buyer. So we will now have a barking dog on a chain who will be told when he will be allowed to do anything by those who have better things to do with their time than worry about their customers losing money with the garbage they produced.

In this day and time where people can verify statements of intent and the validity of promises made by software companies it becomes harder to fool them. What does a company do compared to what they say and what are the real life experiences of those who are users or buyers? Many years ago the automotive companies brought upon themselves the “Lemon Law”. It was a response to big-ticket items that were so fundamentally flawed they spent more time in repair than on the road. It was a legal response to companies who refused to honor the idea that customers had a right to expect a certain level of reliability in what they purchased. There remain whole industries that do not have protection of this sort for buyers and whose response seems to be too bad so sad. We have your money and if you don’t like it leave. You kept it past 30 days and now you are stuck with software that took you that long just to start figuring out you were had and the only lemon law here for you is the sour taste in your mouth.

Software in the business world is something that can make or break you. Remember some years back when K-Marts bought into that new whiz-bang inventory control system. The huge expense of this debacle is what tipped them over into bankruptcy and reorganization. The only recourse for the little guy is negative publicity primarily on the web where he can’t be shuffled to the side by excuse making corporate representatives. Most of the time this does not mean you get your money and wasted time back but you can prevent bad corporate entities from inflicting further harm on as many people as they would have otherwise. Over time when you hit their bottom line hard enough things can change for the better. I have two companies in mind here and one of them is duplicitous as far as I am concerned and the other is merely derelict in it”s responsibilities. Dassault and Siemens since you wanted to know.

Since this is the case and since we do not have a Lemon Law for CADCAM we will have to make do with user experiences. That word Dassault likes so much. Research carefully what other real users have to say and why. I have not seen one positive word about CW4SE for a long time online and this is for a reason.

Just like Dassault at SWW this year I have to sadly conclude that Siemens/SE is not committed to it’s customers. They have their own little worlds to live in and we are not decision making participants in it until we force them to listen by leaving and costing them potential business by warning prospective buyers off. Money, ours in their pockets and not ours by the improved bottom line for our pockets seems to be all they understand so here is some help. From a CW4SE victim buy SE because it is great even though Siemens will not work for you but put the ancillary products under a microscope before you buy and in any case DO NOT buy into CW4SE until (if ever) this mess is fixed.

Of the three big CAD dudes at this time Autodesk is the only one that looks like they care for the future of it’s existing and future customers.

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Discouraging Addition to the Semi Annual Marketing and Publicity Update

Posted on January 21, 2015 | Leave a comment

I have no idea what is in the water people in corporate boardrooms drink. No idea how they formulate ideas that are supposed to appeal to people like me who use their software. No idea why a cohesive multi-year organized effort to promote SE or a vibrant ecosystem or user community does not ever happen. No idea what salient features and promo campaigns they think are useful to grow market share because none ever survive long enough to even have results to judge by.

So today this is posted. http://community.plm.automation.siemens.com/t5/Solid-Edge-Blog/Interview-with-John-Miller-Senior-VP-of-Mainstream-Engineering/ba-p/288511

There has been a hiatus of driven and focused leadership for a while now with the Cooper Newbury team finally giving up before the Siemens corporate have meetings and do nothing culture. Seemingly obsessed with protecting make work jobs for those who could not produce real and meaningful results if their lives depended upon it and protecting NX et al at all costs SE has languished and continues to languish. So I read what this new guy has to say and I think empty words. Yet another Marketing PR guy with no real vision and no clue and no road map for success. I read what he has to say and think here we go with buzz words and catchy phrases that mean things only to the select group of psyco-babble market-speak cloistered company dudes. How many times do these guys think they can wrap up the same tired old promises and mantras and expect to be believed?

OK John you like the word passion. I used to have one for Solid Edge but nonsense like this empty rhetoric you bring to the table has killed it. All I see here is same old stuff new suit and SE is going nowhere. Yeah yeah synchronous. The best single thing to come down the pike for CAD and Siemens SE has been so inept at convincing users of its value that it’s power as a sales tool has been completely squandered. I sit in user group meetings where I am the only one who uses ST and the students who are supposed to be part of the future for SE are not even taught ST at the University of Alabama Huntsville. I don’t know which is worse. Teachers who are so lazy they can’t be bothered to put this powerful tool in student hands or the dumb company that gives software away and then never follows up to enforce what is done with it. Or VAR’s that should be showing the value of ST to customers who would then adopt it. Really, they don’t go out and prove this so customers think they have no time to learn new things when in reality if they did learn this new thing their time savings from then on would dwarf this supposed “expense” to switch over. But one thing is for sure we don’t have to worry about “passions” running amuck with you Siemens UGS SE guys and planing for and demanding results with cohesive long-term pervasive strategies. The market has been there to seize and Dassault did their level best to give market share to you all but corporate backstabbing and NX UGS turf protection stopped the only guys who wanted to deliver this.

Another year, no summits, no user organizing, best software you’ve never heard of campaign still going strong and no growing ecosystem to speak of to contend with SW’s large and established one. Big whoop, finally got rendering. Last one to do so. Finally get integrated CAM which then falls flat on its face because you don’t care enough about what is associated with your products to police your partners. Further more you have no established method for doing so and the belated chasing after Geometric to do right was started by disgruntled users because you guys failed to do your jobs. But meetings. Oh those wonderful meetings that go nowhere and do nothing were quite prolific and lots of wages were earned with them while staving off the dreaded specter of concrete positive results.

Or the ecosystem being assembled with bought outright superior tools by Carl Bass who does have a plan and desire and the ability to make it happen which is coming your way to make life even more difficult. I quite frankly can’t see Siemens or you ever coming up with any kind of strategy to beat SW or the giant billy club Autodesk is going to hold over your head later this year. You guys have no clue what you are facing although we little people here in the trenches that you would like to have as customers are certainly paying attention. I am completely thrilled that you are going to have meetings and conferences to jump-start your new way. Oh goody I can’t wait. Another SEU where over half the people in a rather small crowd are employees of Siemens one way or another or VAR types because you guys have totally failed to convince the world there is a reason to attend. And conferences too and all this nonsense that leaves convincing people to become your customers as an afterthought while you professionals talk to each other and mirrors.

I read this interview today and just shook my head. Not in disbelief anymore but rather with a sense of resignation to the idea that SE is never going to amount too much in the world of MCAD. We have come full circle back to the sad days of Bruce Boes Velocity Series genius I fear. I hope I am proven wrong about my suspicions. I would like for SE to have it’s technically deserved place in the world. I will however go to sleep tonight convinced this will never be. Whether it is Siemens culture or outright UGS veteran hatred of SE does not matter. The results are going to be the same.

It is a sad contrast to what I am seeing with Autodesk Inventor HSM after you guys forced a loyal customer into looking elsewhere with the Geometric CW4SE debacle.

Update 1-23-15

Yoo Hoo John new leader guy looky over here.

Anyone but Solid Edge

I figure you don’t mean any of the PR babble-speak emitted and I figure you are just there because there is a position that has to be filled. Even though the job description is to keep SE under the radar for the majority of potential customers so it can’t grow or possibly threaten any precious NX seat sales there still has to be a warm body there so why not you eh? Siemens will not take the chance of putting an effective person in this position again because, well you know why. You took the job and have your instructions so you do know. Be their rubber stamp take your pay and don’t rock the boat. Have all the meetings you want but don’t make progress OK. Here you go John, enjoy. The sublime irony of a job title like VP Mainstream Engineering when the function is Forgotten Pond Engineering.

Question for the day. Is there any particular mid range or high end MCAD program missing from the Dell list? If there is would there be any particular reason why?

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2015 Solid Edge Semi Annual Publicity and Marketing Efforts Review

Posted on January 7, 2015 | Leave a comment

Continuing a tradition of heralding the single most important key component to the success or failure of SE to thrive. The program is and has been quite competent for some time now and with the level of capabilities existing in ST7 especially with Synchronous there is no technical reason for SE to be the best software you have never heard of. But we know there are core software competency technicalities and then there are Marketing and Publicity technicalities. The second has been and continues to be a failure.

I have recently become a customer of Autodesk because of this and let me explain why. Marketing, unless it exists in a mental void where meetings to plan for more meetings is the penultimate goal has to be aware of what draws and keeps customers and plan accordingly with a consistent multi year endeavor to both create an integrated software ecosphere customers will want and then consistently without fail year after year MAKE people aware of what you have. Geometric’s CAMWorks for Solid Edge is an example of where SE might have been heading until the powers that be set about destroying what Don Cooper and Karsten Newbury wanted to establish. The only major new integrated ap for SE in some time besides Keyshot and the first and only CAM program truly integrated with SE. But apparently with turf war troubles beginning some time back eyes were taken off of CW4SE and focused on who knows what. CW4SE is if Geometric would ever get it’s act together and stop stonewalling customer improvements and make the workflow reflect the way machinist’s work with current modern tools and strategies in the TDB before shipping pretty darned powerful. Recently Geometric had the heat put on them to get their act together and seemingly within a few weeks fixed a lot of problems they had maintained were “intended behaviors” prior to that point in time. Why weren’t they fixed sooner? Why were these things, numerous and aggravating to say the least and show stopping at worst not audited by Siemens SE and prevented to begin with?

Now no one from Siemens or SE comes right out and tells me much in this area but I can see what happens as time passes year after year and even though my comments are my opinions try and disprove what I say. So M & P who have no plans and have had no plans drift along grateful I suppose that the nuisance of Cooper-Newbury are gone and they can go back to doing nothing which they excel in. In the mean time CW4SE which they probably never wanted runs unattended and into serious trouble before any oversight agency at SE is aware there is a problem. You see no one really cares at Siemens SE anymore or else this would have never happened. Now Geometric much to my disgust was willing to stonewall a lot of these things and the idea they would do so deliberately bothers me a lot. Does this mean they will revert back to doing this junk again when the heat is off? I hope not but they have had problems with the same things year after year and somehow never finally fix them. I will say this current version of CW4SE has been the most painless install and the TDB for the first time is working correctly as far as I can see. But why did they have to be forced into doing this? This behavior by both Siemens SE and Geometric is pretty disdainful towards cash customers who have to guarantee what they do to for their customers only to find out that there is no guarantee of quality from Siemens SE CW4SE for them. A double standard that is not unique to them perhaps but never the less sure is in the minds of those who buy and are then abused by this cavalier treatment.

When I lost three weeks recently to problems that was when I jumped in my life raft and bought Inventor HSM. But this was dwelling in my mind this New Years as an example of how things never have really changed with SE. Back in the recent Halcyon days when it looked like SE was finally going to be the big dog it deserved to be on it’s merits one of the things that were done was the hiring of Matt Lombard. For a brief while he actually had some spot on stuff before the slimy psuedopods of the Siemens SE amoeba got in there and made sure nothing of even the slightest controversy could get out. In part thinking of all this today it was an old article from On The Edge that made me think about the way it is and was. He was the ONLY bright M&P spot I can think of besides the creation of the Universities for SE.

Here is a link
http://ontheedge.dezignstuff.com/is-solid-edge-the-best-cad-program-youve-never-heard-of/1044

Inside of this as I read through all of it I reread something Al Dean had to say. This time however I went to the article he referenced which was
https://web.archive.org/web/20031203205940/http://www.cadserver.co.uk/common/viewer/archive/2003/Aug/1/feature2.phtm

So this M and P failure precedes Siemens by many years apparently. I just don’t understand it and I guess there will never be an end to it either. This attitude is why the header in my blog was changed early last year and this is why it will remain the way it is.

The question I now have is was the original source of the Naegleria fowleri M&P amoeba from EDS and spread to UGS and then Siemens or was there an independent transmission vector causing all three companies M&P to independently fall prey to this only to then combine pockets of lack of vision and abilities into a large singular morass of the same?

2014 as far as I am concerned is another year of abject failure of SE to deliver value to it’s customers beyond the basic capabilities of the software which is considerable. Giving you an ecosystem like SW to thrive in with increasing market share for them and jobs for us? Nah not gonna happen. Like Autodesk where the guy running it is a builder and he understands every aspect of design to building far more than any other major CADCAM software company executive is planing. Giving his customers extra value with extremely competitive prices and a big ecosystem with lots of jobs and future workforce guarantees for employers and as the circle goes around more jobs and more jobs for Autodesk customers. From a guy who is hungry for conquest and is going to use his unique ability to use the software produced under his direction work. Now I say this and think about Inventor with crossed fingers in hopes for may things to change there. But even so just because I don’t get it yet I see lots of people who do good work with Inventor so I know it can be done.

So far I really like HSM and it is the program I had originally wanted integrated with SE. Inventor is painful to use compared to SE and I struggled today to just try and figure out how to apply dimensions to parts. A lot of my problems are newby problems but the way things flow in Inventor just don’t make much sense to me yet compared to SE. But by golly I CAN hire someone trained to use Inventor and HSM is a breeze.

I have to admit that the move to Autodesk for HSM has relieved a lot of pressure on me but I find myself in two worlds now. SE for CAD and HSM for CAM and quite frankly hoping for Inventor to dramatically improve so I can go with just one company. If Inventor was as slick as SE I would leave Siemens today. I am tired of the treatment SE customers get and I am tired of wrestling with CW4SE and I just want my days to be trouble free. I don’t trust Siemens SE to have my interests at heart after Don and Karsten left and I don’t think they much care about things like CW4SE either or this 2015 mess never would have happened.

So another half year passes and the fine tradition of the best software you’ve never heard of continues and you won’t hire in the state of Tennessee anyone trained in state in SE at any Tech school High school or University close to where I live that I am aware of.

I get tired of running into my peers who when they find out I use SE tell me I am the only one they know doing so. Thanks M&P for all you do and may you prosper for another year with your endless meetings and empty works.

May I propose a 2015 campaign for you. Yes our combination of CW4SE and Solid Edge will cost you twice as much up front compared to Inventor HSM and yes the yearly fees are almost triple but we give unto you dear customer the absolute thrill of being a part of Siemens. You won’t have to lift a finger to do this as all the real work is being done by Autodesk to your benefit. I mean judging by the last eleven years this is the way you want it isn’t it?

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Solid Edge, Siemens/UGS and the Inevitable Consequences

Posted on October 20, 2014 | 6 comments

So today I read that Karsten Newbury has left Siemens.

Well first off I want to say that there are two people who I hold most responsible for the brief renaissance of SE and a period of time for hope for bigger and better things. Now Dan Staples is high on my list too but for technical reasons and not as a spark plug for serious growth in numbers and community for Solid Edge. Dan is perhaps more than anyone else the reason Don and Karsten had something truly great to sell to the world. But with Don and Karsten was hope for better things personified and moving forward in tangible ways that could be seen and touched.

I remember getting a call from Don about five years ago when I was expressing frustration in public with Siemens who seemed dead set on hiding SE under a rock and keeping it there. He told me he had a guy who was going to call me that I would find of interest. Karsten called shortly after and told me what his plans and goals were and we basically wanted the same thing. SE to take its place as its capabilities deserved as the company that would overtake SW. This began a five-year journey where at times it was kind of surreal. I mean just how in the world a single man shop ends up helping to influence the outcome of the software he uses is still something that surprises me. I guess I was a pretty good litmus test for how users felt about things and so off we went.

I can say as a guy that had a peek way behind the scenes of SE that neither Don or Karsten ever said they would do something and then not do it. They had a vision and goals and were steadfast to both SE and it’s customers as tireless advocates for the product and it’s users. They were serious about SE and us.

While I have fallen out of the “inner circle” so to speak of SE and Siemens and don’t have much contact with anyone there any more I do wish to say this. I have nothing but admiration for Dan and Karsten both as corporate figures and personally. They both had correct visions of how things should be and could be and eminently qualified plans on how to get there. Over the last year and a half though it became clear to me that they were being hampered in their efforts by Siemens.

I knew these guys and their goals and it was clear people above and around them did not share the same vision. Primarily North American UGS guys who had convinced Siemens that SE was a threat to NX. I think they were becoming quite alarmed at how good SE was becoming and the true potential that SE under Don and Karsten represented in possible sales. I consider Siemens to be quite anal and navel gazers to boot who sadly are stupid enough to believe these UGS guys, some of who have had a real hatred of SE that surpasses mere protection of NX sales. They have deliberately starved SE of funds and permission to market themselves adequately and the really sad thing is that this was with the very money SE had earned for itself. It is so pathetic that the public face of SE through the website had an $80,000.00 a YEAR budget and thought control police who hated SE making sure nothing right or wonderful could ever happen there.   Matt Lombard with a following that was staggering at one time was brought in by Don and Karsten as part of a master plan to eat up SW. Right off the bat Matt was shoved of to the side and deliberately throttled and his value to SE killed.

So in my opinion to protect a few lousy seats of their precious NX they sacrifice tens of thousands of SW conversions and increased overall profit for Siemens. And sadly really talented guys like Don and Karsten who are not going to work for people like this forever. Can you imagine being in charge of something as wonderful as SE and then have board room politics by simple-minded venal corporate turf protecting back stabbers shooting you down? Would you stay under those conditions? So the Siemens quality filter works and good people leave and the bad ones stay and now the whole future of SE looks bleak. Yeah, SE is not going away but until there is a shakeup of upper level management SE is doomed. It going to become like one of those little orange and black spotted Salamanders. They are around but you have to turn over rocks to find them. We have now gone full circle and the bad guys have run off the good guys and SE will once again take its rightful place as the best software you won’t hear about. It is clear to me the Siemens/UGS people who hold SE in contempt have won and will win for some time to come.

I would say that it is Don and Karstens gain and Siemens loss but that presumes Siemens even has the corporate mental capabilities to understand that losing a right hand is not a good thing. They can have a bunch of meetings and talk about all this while they try to figure out if losing body parts is good or bad. I guess the old adage about body parts and who really runs things at Siemens is true. The brain says it is in charge of things and other body parts chime in with why they are the most important. But the winning body part of this debate is the North American UGS a– hole that says if I close myself off none of the rest of you are going to work.

Guys, best of luck in your new jobs and I sincerely hope you both prosper at whatever you do. Your abilities and dedication deserve to be rewarded by someone who judges on merits and not short-sighted little boardroom weasels with axes to grind.

An additional comment.

Sometimes the sublime humor in life comes from strange places. Perhaps there is also more than a little bit of truth to saying like what goes around comes around. Just for the heck of it this evening I went to read the spam posts that accumulate with the filter WordPress provides. The post most frequently generating spam mail is, are you ready for this, “The Destructive Siemens Corporate Mindset”.  Uhh well lets see. Brilliant minds think alike,  birds of a feather flock together. Just some amusing thoughts going through my mind right now. Feel free to post any witticisms you might have in regards to this to dear readers.

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Autumn Colors

Posted on October 4, 2014 | 4 comments

I know, the way I have been talking about Siemens Mr UGS anti Solid Edge campaign I bet you thought I was going to mention drab sterile Siemens Grey and cloudy dreary days without a ray of sunshine. Or Fall which precedes the coming Winter for SE if Mr UGS is not fired and the upper management he has led astray reformed.

But no, I have another thing in mind. And after a week like the last two have been where I have spent lots of time and money trying to get an Elgi screw compressor and an ADX American Rotary unit to play together to no avail I have to find something nice to talk about. But before that have you ever been in a spot where you open your wallet and pour out the money and it all just turns to garbage? The rotary people say it is not their fault and I tend to believe them as their units have a fine reputation and everyone I know that uses them is satisfied. Elgi on the other hand certainly does not in my opinion now. Talking to their stateside engineer and he has no problem running this E07en unit off of a phase converter. But then we get into try this and try that and yes some of these did get out of the factory comments. So it finally works for a day and then here I am Saturday morning with a new problem. The motor will barely start and trips a 100 amp breaker and this on a 10HP compressor with no load. Some days it just does not pay to get out of bed and I am so mad I could spit nails. If they can’t solve my problem today I am going to just have them get it and I will probably buy the replacement unit from Eaton Compressors just like my friends have and run for years with no problems.

I have a Phase perfect true digital phase converter which fires this baby up with no problem but the rotary and the E07en compressor combination at this time is junk.

So I think of fall and the fall colors nature brings. I live in the country by choice and each season has it’s own visual panoply of beauty and fall has some of the best. Now the leaves are OK too don’t get me wrong but the best fall colors are the ones which ripen up this time of year. DSC_0007 Guaranteed to take your mind away from the onerous vagaries of equipment problems these little babies are just bursting with flavor crystals and bound to please any pepper head. Ahhhh, the bliss of Fall Colors appealing to all the senses from one end to the other 😉

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