Tag Archives: Siemens

HEY, You Siemens Guys in Germany Listen Up

Posted on May 27, 2014 | Leave a comment

I can’t for the life of me figure out why you care so little for your public face and how the world sees you. So I get emails today and I think it is worthwhile to comment since the situation has me fired up anyway. Here I am less than a day later from the latest upFrontezine I commented on and this is what I get from you guys in my inbox.

Saratech

PLM web stuff

Please note that Saratech, a company that apparently does care about it’s public face although it is an infintesimal midget compared to the fiscal might of Siemens sends this email today.

Also note the email from the hapless incompetents you have hired to do a job that I get from Siemens. Complete with the only warning I will get today from any site or email. Let me ask you some questions. Why does this occur so often with you people. Do you hire and keep incompetents as a matter of policy or do you hire good people you then make look stupid by choking them for funds? I really wonder why all this is. And today I can’t login to the BBS or community once again and I just give up there. It is so surreal that nothing happens and broken new things all the time and old problems that never go away.

Let me ask you another question. Is the financial difference between 500,000 and 1,000,000 sold seats of no import to you? Kind of like what you could have had if you freed up your company to pursue these types of numbers. Dassault is begging you to take their customers and you just sit there twiddling your fingers.

And another thing. This Siemens publicity stuff you guys grudgingly produce. The one where all that is said is “Siemens” Siemens what, rockets, tiddly winks, time on a shrinks couch? What the heck are you selling? Let me tell you something. When I am looking for a product I need names and accurate descriptions of what you sell or I am not going to stop in to have a look. Read the following. This was a comment posted on my Lackluster SEU2014 launch post a few weeks back. It has been in my mind ever since. This is in England which I presume has some differing hands in charge. What is not differing however is the irrational and incompetent policies that are evidently being dictated from you wonderful people from Siemens corporate in Germany. Read it and weep for what you throw away. Unbelievable. I am disgusted with this whole situation and since I can’t figure out who is precisely to blame you all are. The thought though that the buck does eventually have stop at the very top does come to mind however. And the top is in Germany. Quit looking in mirrors and start looking around at what you have done. You guys worried about paid leave days a couple of years ago and made SE employees take them so it could help your books look better. I don’t know how that works but when in Huntsville that was the topic being discussed one day when I was there. So you guys save a few thousands of dollars and piss away over a hundred million in lost SE sales potential because that is how prudent German Siemens managers do things. Please explain the logic here to me?

“It is a shame that while Dan Staples and his team are trying hard to stay ahead of the pack in technical terms, the sales suppression team are also excelling in keeping their heads below the parapet.
I attended a 3D Seminar in UK the other week (Develop 3D Live), sponsored by Dell, AMD Firepro & Windows (interestingly, no Apple or Nvidia). The Gold sponsors were Autodesk (known for CAD software), Solidworks (known for CAD software) & Siemens (known for electricity generation and railway locomotives !?)
Once I could break into the staff’s holy-huddle on the stand I asked where Solid Edge was. I was directed to a line of writing about 1″ high near the floor on the back wall and told that Siemens offer so much that they didn’t want to be tied to one product at such an event. While the other stands were heaving, Siemens staff seemed to be enjoying their own company. Karsten Newbury had even flown over to give a keynote speech but Edge hardly got a mention. There was more mention of NX from the Red Bull Racing speaker.
I too have offered to support a user-group but have been told “feel-free”, but without a list of users and some heavyweight support (both required from Solid Edge) nothing will happen – nor has it.
Like you, I have to make my own way in the world so I will not be at SEU either. I was at the 1st in Huntsville, as you know, and I think I was the only “paying guest” from UK (if not Europe). It sounds like this year will be little different (except for me).
I have just signed up for 3 more years Edge support but having now been abandoned from the Newsgroup, as the NNTP contributors were apparently not worth Siemens’ effort to keep us online, there are fewer and fewer reasons to feel part of a community.
Who said work had to be fun?”

And to this users comment I would add who said corporate management had to be functional. Say, do you guys have dart boards to?

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Siemens Marketing and Publicity Update 5-27-14

Posted on May 27, 2014 | 6 comments

You can blame Ralph for this post as my jaw dropped when I read the following in his latest ezine. But before we start in here is a picture from a secret spy camera somewhere in a Siemens parking lot as a Marketing or PR guy is driving in. It is kind of hard to tell which department he belonged to as they all look the same.

marketing guy arriving at work

Here is Ralph’s latest. A great read all the time on many topics and you should subscribe.
http://www.upfrontezine.com/2014/upf-820.htm.

“Re: What I Learned at Solid Edge University 2014
Thanks for attending Solid Edge University and publishing your article in upfront.eZine #819. I work in marketing for Solid Edge and just a couple of comments from me that may be of interest to your readers:

The Solid Edge Apps web page that you refer to is a new resource to help our customers find the most commonly used Apps by category (Analysis, Manufacturing, Standard Parts etc.). We are adding the most popular apps into this area right now and you are correct that there are just 30 or so listed here right now. At the bottom of the page is a link to “All Solid Edge Partners” and it is here that you can search on the 500+ technology partners whose software works with Solid Edge.

Great that you were impressed by the Create Sheet Metal from 3D Part capability, and we would agree we should have featured this more prominently in our marketing materials for Solid Edge ST7. It is featured in the “Fast and Flexible Part Modeling” video on our Solid Edge ST7 web page.
– David Chadwick, mainstream eng global product marketing
Siemens Industry Software Limited”

SO Dave, this Dave the user and not the marketing whiz-bang, what did you learn today reading the above quote from the esteemed Mr Chadwick? What I learn is that once again these people can’t be bothered to do their jobs. There are a number of reasons for this which I know but will not go into at this time. Any one of these, or all of these or maybe even some new monumentally idiotic reasons I may not be aware of apply here.

Suffice it to say that once again with a known convention date that presents a once a year opportunity better than any other by far to promote SE these guys fail to fix yet another website problem. LOOK HERE at all of our partners, 500+ of them!! Don’t you love it when you go there as Ralph did and see 30 some listed right now? And of course right now is heading into two weeks after what should have been a hard must make it deadline. I wonder how many of these are here from last year first off and secondly if they were at all worried about this there would have been more than 30+ even if they could not get them all in there. AND that number would grow rapidly each week until they were all there. Of course I digress because that happens elsewhere and not here in the land of never-ending meetings to decide web page colors. Clearly Mr Chadwick was not worried enough about this to do it in a timely fashion so the year’s best opportunity squandered again. For crying out loud my church just finished a web site and the links work and it is populated quite well and one person did it with a part-time effort in a few weeks. How is it that when Siemens M&PR get ahold of these simple things they never see the light of day?

You guys better wake up and realize that the brand you are making for yourself in the public eye is one of superior product and bungling navel gazing M&PR. Also known as the best software you’ve never heard of. Look people I have a serious question for you. How many times do you have to walk face first into closed doors before you begin to realize that opening the door first gets you farther faster and in much better shape? It will also allow you to take that big red clown ball off of your noses which is another great benefit.

OK I know this is hard for you all to understand but let me spell out why this is important to users who BUY your product. The larger the market share SE has the more we as buyers benefit from increased work that will come our way as a natural and inevitable consequence of growing market share. I said this FIVE YEARS ago and find it nearly impossible to believe I am STILL saying it to people who STILL don’t understand this. Oh, and you guys as a company will make more money too although I guess this must not be too important or else Siemens would be cleaning its dead wood out left and right.

Would one of you with some gonads please reply to this post and explain this situation to me? I want to try to understand this continuation of absolute and I fear deliberate evasion of duty to your customers and corporation to do what they and we have hired you to do. Really, I want to know.

From yet another secret spy camera purportedly in a Siemens M&PR meeting room where important decisions are made.

marketing decision process

A rather simple and elegant answer to determining what gets done. The Siemens gray color-neutral darts are labeled with cool to do M&PR stuff and the blindfolded guy whips it to the dart board which is invariably in the upper left quadrant of the selected wall as you face it. The tally guy writes down what makes it according to the points each dart gathers and this sets the agenda for the next meeting where highest scoring dart gets forwarded to a subcommittee for further study. This happens again for all the other darts until they all make it through the vetting process. Any darts that miss completely are discussed in another series of scheduled meetings where darts are labeled accordingly and launched with great hopes and expectations that these will graduate to the points category thus proving to themselves the great progress being made.

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Siemens Marketing, PR and the World of Never Never Land

Posted on May 10, 2014 | 2 comments

Reading the statistics here on my blog today and something that has been drawing more of my attention is this. Months ago, 10-6-13 to be exact I wrote a post comparing the direct editing capabilities of SE and SW. It has been BY FAR the most read post ever for me and still comes in the top three read posts every day including the new one if there is one. Many thousands of reads. Of course Larry, Curly, Moe and Shemp are to busy setting up meetings to determine colors on web sites and the next meeting and on and on. Way to busy to directly compete with those who should be regarded as competitors. By my reckoning and the number of reads the CAD world is keenly interested in a direct comparison where it is shown on the same part how things differ and how file sizes and complexities grow. These are what my numbers PROVE to me. But the symphony of crickets is the stiff upper lip of competition these people bring to the contest.

Meanwhile back in the chirping crickets department life goes on. In case you don’t know who the Stooges are read https://solidedging.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/the-destructive-siemens-corporate-mindset/ and add the fourth one Shemp who is Jon Fox to the list. As the social postmortem for SE goes on in my mind I ponder how people who are supposed to be planning conquests and growing market share and beating the competition can possibly be this inept and still get paid by the company they are sabotaging.

Funny thing about the sound of crickets. It is meant solely to attract themselves to themselves and has no other purpose. Kind of like what happens in real life with the Siemens crickets as they plan another meeting. Heaven forbid a multi-year cogent and properly themed strategy and multi-year dedication in serious time and money to the same. It would interfere with the meetings where the cricket noises prevail and life is never bad.

Wait till Autodesk gets ahold of these clowns with plans that span years and have serious effort in community and identity. A crummy product can still prevail over a great one that no one knows about. SE is doomed to third place if nothing changes here. The real choice is the color of granite on the tombstone unless Siemens gets smart and gets real and sheds their dead wood. Funny thing about dead wood. I go out for firewood and around the bottom of the pile there are always crickets.

These people do not want to win.

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Solid Edge University and the Lackluster Launch

Posted on May 9, 2014 | 15 comments

I guess in writing this I have made a decision. I have come full circle and I find myself back where it all started, namely the best software you have never heard of. Here we are just days before SEU 2014 and the totally incompetent Marketing and Publicity departments with the Four Stooge’s combining from Siemens the top Marketing and Publicity incompetents and the cluelessness of Jon Fox for a powerful and deadly body blow to the user community and the future potential of SE in numbers of sales of seats. What first brought me here was complaining about the very same things I find myself complaining about today. For some years now I had entertained real hope things were going to change. On the technical side they have and SE is the best midrange MCAD program out there along with finally a true integrated CAM partner. But this social side of it all still reeks of the foul odor of either people who could care less about SE and it’s future or outright gross incompetence.

Some time back I had written a post on “SEU 2014 No News is No News” The purpose of it was to be a pre-emptive strike against incompetents Like Jon Fox and force him to actually have to do something. I was sent a letter that stated that if I wanted to be on the inside as I had been I needed to stop writing these types of things which were harming their attempt at building a brand name. Out of respect for the individual I did. But I have to admit the first thing that popped into my mind was what brand? Did I miss something here? Out of respect for that same individual I now address the same topic and let the chips fall where they may. I have very little desire to be a part of something that is doomed to fail unless big changes are made. Sadly I do still care and I care a lot. I care enough about what is going on to come right out and say can’t you guys see you are destroying any potential for SE to be #1? I understand that threat to not be a part of the “inside” is real but remember my primary loyalty is to USERS of which I am one and a failure to fix this long-standing problem is of far greater concern to me than someones opinion of me. In this day and time where sycophants are so easy to come by and real honest input is not, if honesty is secondary to hearing the glad handing and falsehoods about how well things are going from the sycophants take me off the privileged insiders list.

This is why I am not going to SEU2014. I am going to work and take a little time off and ignore an event that will have many more Siemens employees attending than actual users. I am privy to the numbers and it is appalling. What really got me going today was looking at Novedge again and seeing a continuation of week after squandered week where nothing much is made of the premier annual event for SE. Folks, if it is not showing up at Novedge it is not showing up anywhere and what I said about the incompetence of PR and Marketing is not only true but has now produced exactly what I feared it would and the indisputable truth is in the numbers.

Three years now and two of them with regional summits where interested people cared enough to attend. If there was a lick of sense in the idiot PR&M (Public Relations and Marketing) departments this would have been the nucleus of user groups across the country. Instead this data just sits and rots. Which brings me to another point besides outright incompetence which is after all so capably manifested by the four stooges. There has been basically no change in the status of users outside of the Universities. There are some VARs who are doing great work with information and reaching out but Siemens itself is a big fat fail. I figure that when the final numbers are in of actual USERS who attend the Nashville event from two years ago will have been the peak. however in the mean time these clowns can waste days talking about what should be the approved background color for the official Siemens website.

There is another idea that has been floating around in my mind for some time and it is not all bad either for the users. But it is a wretched thing for the potential for SE to have explosive and technically well earned growth and a thriving user community. Talking with an ex SE user last week and he came right out and said he could confirm my idea to be more than fiction. What if Siemens bought UGS for their own manufacturing ecosystem and their sole concern was to have best of class software for their own purposes under their total control? I can see that this would by and of itself be a more than adequate reason to buy UGS. It means that if you want to have software that is designed for manufacturing by a manufacturing giant that eats it’s own dog food you are in the right place.

What really puzzles me though about this is that I thought profit from any division of a conglomerate was desirable and funds and management would get behind an area like SE that has such potential for growth. Instead we get things like jackasses saying stuff like why should SE users be treated any differently than NX PLM World users? These Siemens people genuinely can’t see that different markets mean different strategies and no one size can fit them all. By math I have generated here before I figure these guys have saved limited budgetary expeditures on advertising and cost a ton of profits as a result. Penny wise and pound foolish. Quite frankly if I was an industry analyst I would be paying attention to this myopic treatment of SE and wonder just how many other areas of huge profit potential these same individuals in PR&M are costing the corporation in other areas to. Is there a point that can be reached where a company becomes divorced from what made the companies they buy out tech leaders because they are to big or to hide bound? Or smothered by self serving bureaucrats whose main concern is paychecks and fiefdoms?

After SEU 2014 I will have some other things to say about all this but for now I just shake my head over the management of Siemens that can’t see how they are enabling significant failure to utilize the profit potential of SE. For whatever reason. I fully expect that within two years if nothing changes and the current PR&M people are not fired and replace with competent individuals who are empowered and directed by upper management to prevail against the market the Universities will be a thing of the past. A fading but fond memory of SE users just as the Summit from 2005 in Cincinnati became to SE users for years.

A, you can’t take people and strategies that do not work and do the same things again and expect the miraculous to happen. B, You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. So what is it going to be Siemens? Are you going to fix it or do we play the dirge for what could have been and should have been under rational profit seeking hungry owners? I for one am thinking that this mess is just not worth my time and effort to support. I make no money from this and I am not an employee and your attitude has managed to take one of your biggest fans and destroy my desire to be anything other than a silent dues paying customer. Have a nice time at SEU 2014 and look at all the Siemens employees around you that far outnumber the users and remember that it could have been thousands of users with a sprinkling of Siemens types and your user base could have been the largest. But hey, at least I am eating the same dog food as is used in the Siemens kennel and that is not all bad.

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Huntsville Solid Edge User Group Meeting 4-17-14

Posted on April 9, 2014 | Leave a comment

Here is an update for our new monthly meeting in Huntsville. If you wish to attend please respond here and I will reserve a spot for you.

Attention Solid Edge users,
Get ready for the launch of the revamped Solid Edge users group for our North Alabama / Central Tennessee users. In the past we have had meetings on an irregular haphazard schedule but this next year we are going to try something different. We will be meeting every month on the third Thursday at Siemens in Huntsville. I know this is short notice for the first meeting but it was decided that we would start anyway. We are going to have a greater emphasis on students this time around as not only are professionals important so are the future professionals. Whether you are a seasoned grey haired dude or a student this is for you.
I think the whole idea of a local network that exists for users is important enough to have committed my time for the next year to participate. I think if you consider the value here you and or your company you will consider this to.
What is the value? Speaking personally for me I now have the possibility of future work with a facility in Huntsville because of a contact made through past meetings. The obvious benefits of knowing other users results in opportunities you would not have otherwise. Who do you turn to when your VAR or GTAC have gone home for the night and your rush job HAS to be done? Other users you now know of course. Remember when you had mentors that helped you out when you were first learning? Return this by seeding what could be your future peers and employees with the knowledge you have to impart. Take a part in training those who will in all likelihood be employed by you in the future. Learn from your peers and from actual SE employees how to make your work days more efficient.
Students may I point something out here? There can be a world of difference between what is taught and how real users do things to earn a living. Get insights into how our practical experience will improve your skills and abilities in SE.
Did you know that Solid Edge is developed right here in Huntsville? When you attend meetings here I can honestly tell you that you never know who might show up but there have always been those who do from SE. You can’t get better information on your software of choice than that which is available from those who write it. Dan Staples who is over Solid Edge will be at this meeting and I expect others to. This is one of the great sides to SE that I can vouch for with my own experience. They make an effort to listen and incorporate features into SE based on user feedback. Just like the opportunity you will have to give feedback at this meeting. These guys actually use and like their software and they are well worth meeting for the knowledge they will freely give you.
But you can only benefit from this if you attend so BE HERE. I look forward to seeing the familiar and the new faces. Please reply to this email to let me know if you intend to be here and to let me know you received it.
Regards, Dave Ault

Date: April 17th, 2014
Time: 4:00 to 7:00 pm
Place: 675 Discovery Drive NW, Suite 100, Huntsville, AL 35806 – In the Training Room on First Floor
Agenda:
1. 4:00 – 4:15 pm – Information on Solid Edge University
2. 4:15 – 5:00 pm – Modeling Techniques for Solid Edge, Dave Ault
3. 5:00 – 5:45 pm – Solid Edge Tips and Tricks, Dave Ault
4. 5:45 – 6:00 pm – “We are Listening” – feedback session with Dan Staples, Vice President, Mainstream Engineering
5. 6:00 – 6:30 pm – Open Session
6. 6:30 – 7:00 pm – Networking and Mingling, Pizza and Drinks will be provided.
This is a great opportunity to network with other users, students and Siemens employees. Bring your own laptops if possible.
Please RSVP by April 15th so that we know how many pizzas to order.
Best Regards

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Solid Edge University 2014 Update for 3-25-14

Posted on March 25, 2014 | Leave a comment

Folks most of the updates about Solid Edge itself I am going to be posting are strictly CTRL-C CTRL-V types. I am not a beta tester and even if I was Siemens is pretty tight lipped about new things so I could not say much anyway. And what is out there is generic stuff so that is what I am going to post links to. The CAMWorks stuff I am involved with and I can say with certainty BE EXCITED.

· ST7 sneak peeks http://community.plm.automation.siemens.com/t5/Solid-Edge-Community-Blog/bg-p/solid-edge-news

· Info on the Solid Edge University 2014 site http://www.solidedgeu.com/

· SEU14 Associated events: Developer Day, Design Management Workshop, FEMAP Symposium and this info can be found at the SEU 2014 site above.

· Solid Edge Certification at http://www.solidedgeu.com/assets/files/Siemens-PLM-Solid-Edge-Certification-FAQ-Sheet-Y5.pdf

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Big Changes On The Way For CAMWorks for Solid Edge

Posted on March 25, 2014 | Leave a comment

I am sitting here excited this morning about some upcoming changes to CW4SE and I assume this will also bleed over into the SW side of things too but I have to confirm this. How many of you remember the transition from SE ST2 to ST3 and what made it so powerful? In truth this was the most beneficial of all the ST series version updates for the simple fact that it unified and made far easier work flow and file management. It took various aspects of SE from the Synchronous side and the ordered side and made them play together. Since then there have been a number of great refinements to how it all works together. Indeed not only that but in general how well the ST side worked. Ordered was not new and so it did not need this degree of work although the ability to blend the two work flow types was important.

But what this whole transition was really about over the years was taking concepts from academic to work place practicality and putting tools of productivity into user hands. I will be able to go into far greater detail soon but rest assured that this year Geometric is taking CAMWorks into an evolutionary process every bit as great as ST2 to ST3 was. The effort is on to have some of this finished before SEU2014. In some ways I think there are two parallels here between SE and CW. Just like the progress in capabilities happened. And just like the capabilities progress happened many thought, and I tend to agree, that the real launch of Solid Edge Synchronous Tech was in ST3. ST1 and ST2 were the warm ups to a full-fledged program ready for prime time manifested in ST3. This is the significance I attach to what is going on with CAMWorks right now.

I am a shop that builds more than I design and so the ability to manufacture here is probably more important than designing here. We all know shops that are job shops with little design capabilities that have just enough design talent to bring in files to be used for CAM plans. The other end of the spectrum is a shop like mine where we design build and reverse engineer and go through all the steps. But the truth is that at the end of the day my manufacturing software is often of greater importance. I can take a mediocre design program and fiddle around with it until I get to a workable part. But when it comes to machine time on expensive equipment and consumables that can run you over $50.00 per hour in addition to the cost of the shop and the material used your CAM program becomes extremely important to your bottom line. I only have to design a part once but may have to cut it thousands of times so the most beneficial efficiency dollar saved/earned improvements will be found for my bottom line in production software. Like CAMWorks. The basic power of CW is a given but getting there has been a problem for some time and unless you have dedicated programmers on hand to correctly implement the program as it has been you never see its potential realized.

This is all being changed in a big way so stay tuned. If this is all done right I believe that CW will become a force to be reckoned with in the CAM world instead of just another good but complicated to use CAM program.

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Aspire to be the SEU 2014 “Downunder Blunder Wunder”

Posted on March 5, 2014 | Leave a comment

Cat design problem

Yes there you are, two designs and one of them is problematical. So you get to figure this out because it is your job to. Which is which? At SEU2014 there will be competition for the esteemed title of Downunder Blunder Wunder. Go here for more information on this. http://community.plm.automation.siemens.com/t5/Solid-Edge-Community-Blog/SEU14-Fix-the-Downunder-Blunder/ba-p/24445

What I want to do is give a little more background on Rick Mason who is the creator of this and the presenter. Rick goes all the way back to V1 of Solid Edge. I don’t recall any other individual I have met who can claim this except some of the developers with SE who came with SE all the way from Integraph days to now. Rick has been quite active in the past as an advocate for SE and more importantly doing footwork that benefited users. Rick’s Rules is still mentioned on occasion by developers in Huntsville as a seminal work on how to properly do sketching so things work predictably and reliably.

I first knew Rick back when I was an unwelcome disruptive influence at the then very insular BBS forum. Remember those days Rick? 🙂 He was one of the leaders and chastised me for improper topics and also my silliness for believing in ST. But things change and I have to say that over the last five years it has been my pleasure to know him and watch his opposition to ST morph into acceptance and indeed endorsement. He is perhaps one of the most knowledgable users of SE for the practical side of how to do things in fool-proof ways and I always listen to what he has to say. Sadly I hear that Rick is thinking about retirement and that this may be his last showing at the annual SE event.

I can tell you he is always engaging and well worth your time to attend anything he is involved in. I fully expect that this contest will not only be challenging but knowing Rick will be instructional as well. Have fun and learn and be there. Anything Rick is involved in will be worth your time and if I show up I am most certainly going to see this one.

Thanks for your time and dedication over the years working with users Rick and if this is your last time here all I can say is you leave a pair of big empty shoes that will be hard to fill.

PS. By the way, these are not Ricks cats and no animals were hurt while sunbathing in his back yard.

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Solid Edge University 2014, No News is No News

Posted on March 3, 2014 | 3 comments

Obviously the content of this post has changed. In thinking about all this Marketing and publicity controversy I have come to some conclusions. A, that it has become no fun as a blogger to talk or post on this. I just get angry and frustrated whenever I think about this topic. Siemens policy is what it is and SE is my CAD program of choice and I am going to leave it at that. B, I am not going to beat this drum any more for a number of reasons including I think that it has become counterproductive to continue in this vein. Rather than sit here and get angry over something I have no financial interest in I am choosing to go back to the technical aspects of the program I use and keep my opinions to myself on corporate policies. I can see why bloggers quit posting for a while or entirely and until you have been here as a blogger you may not understand. You can get wrapped up in a product and forget that it is at the end of the day just a tool of production. So, I am going to put things back into a perspective that makes this enjoyable again.
I am also seriously reconsidering commentaries on other software to. I am losing interest in what Dassault and Autodesk may or may not be doing in the cloud. I choose not to go there and if you do you make a choice as a consenting adult and live with it. If indeed they are even going to force you there which is becoming questionable in my mind anyway. This is another aspect of blogging that tires me and it is just what is really going on? No one ever completely levels with you so you are left with snippets of news and conjecture quite often. At least with the technical side of the software it either works or it does not and these are truths that can be verified.

Paul Waddington used to post a lot and so did that Steve http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blog.cadnauseam.com%2F&ei=EZAaU-3tJY_IkAeZx4G4Aw&usg=AFQjCNHxi6AdkxqCTHZzL3nQ1ewYFKhH0g&bvm=bv.62578216,d.eW0&cad=rja guy who was a fencer from I think AU. They have both just disappeared from the scene and none seems to know why. I have to wonder if the negative side of the software companies finally outweighed the positive aspects of the software for them and when the fun left so did they. Both of them were pretty unhappy with Autodesk before they went away. In any case I am thinking hard here about it all and just what I wish to derive from this blog.

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Reality of Cloud Throughput on Public ISP’S

Posted on February 26, 2014 | Leave a comment

It has been my premise that the cloud is not ready for prime time for a while now but actual studies done proving yea or nay for the cloud are hard to come by. I suspect the cloud people deliberately choose to avoid any proof of concept. Why the opposing side does not have more readily available information is done for a reason as they surely have had to do internal studies at the least. I think they know things they would rather not talk about. “Windows Secrets” is a newsletter I have subscribed to for some time and I recommend it to you. There are two flavors with one being free with abbreviated content and the other subscription for a minor fee with more content. This particular article was from my copy of their paid content and quoted here with permission. First off here is a link to “Windows Secrets”. http://windowssecrets.com/ And here is a link to the article of interest. http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/sorting-out-the-revolution-in-pc-backups-part-2/

The article talks about online backups and the speed with which this can be done compared to other backup methods. What is of interest here is the relative speed of a local LAN or an additional internal or external hard drive compared to over the public ISP throughput rates. We have all heard the silly claims about how the cloud will be much quicker than anything we could do for ourselves autonomously. Claims minus proof of course.
Data saving rates

Now I am not going to quote a lot here nor am I going to talk about methodology. The link to the article will put you in touch with a comprehensive explanation of what was done and why. Suffice it to say that there are a ton of people like me, the vast majority of all CAD CAM users I suspect, who have less than ideal conditions to work under RE data and ISP’s. The overall size of the files used for this study though is of interest to me because I can see data quickly reaching these limits when you think of CAD creation and updating and sharing between all related systems for an average days work at many major companies. The same companies who are major targets of this cloud initiative.

I fully understand the value of something that would automatically update file versions across a whole company reliably. I can’t sit here and tell you that some compelling arguments for some things to be done on the cloud don’t exist. But I can say that the infrastructure at this time and for the foreseeable future is not ready for these types of demands. And of course security which some tell me is ready. Empirical evidence in the form of daily stories about yet another breach or government sponsored intrusion into supposedly secure situations of course belies these claims.

Perhaps the most damning thing to me about this whole cloud idea is that those who propound this as the end all be all will not legally stand behind what they want you to use and they make no serious effort to produce any conclusive evidence with actual working scenarios to buttress their claims. Cost efficiency, unlimited cores for unlimited power, fire your IT staff and the rest and never a full accounting of the costs, of ALL the costs, needed to do this.

It gets back to what I was saying about the impressions Autodesk has given most all the people I talk to about their cloud intentions. If all you ever talk about is cloud this and that then why should I not presume that all you are going to do is cloud this and that in the future? In the same frame of mind if all I ever hear are wonderful claims for the cloud but somehow these claimants never produce actual case studies with all pertinent data over typical ISP conditions I have to presume they are hiding bad things.

Can any of you think of any other reason for such pervasive lack of real life studies by these cloud companies? If I had a bullet proof product I wanted to sell you I darned sure would be busy laying out facts and studies to sell you by and not just empty words of promises where the only concrete thing offered is price tags.

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