Does Solidworks Lsten To It's Users?

Do they?  Let's see. 

If you have signed up for the early visibility program, you should have received an email inviting you to attend one or more of the Solidworks World Roundtable discussions.  These discussions are  the day before the conference begins.  At these round table discussions, you get a chance to interact with the product development and design teams from Solidworks.  Take your issue directly to the people that wrote the interface.

Have an idea for a new feature in a future Solidworks Version?  If you attend Solidworks World, be sure to stop by one of the many user enhancement request computers in the partner pavilion.  Each yeah, the top 10 are announced on Wednesday, and better than 80% of those top 10 make it into a future release.

Can't make it, but want to still submit an enhancement request?  Visit the enhancement request page in the customer portal, and submit your idea there.

Have a question about functionality?  Visit the discussion forums in the customer portal.  Many of the people responding to questions there are actual Solidworks Employees that are encouraged to participate in the discussions.

Attend a local user group meeting.  Solidworks Employees regularly attend meeting throughout the year.  Solidworks Territorial Technical managers are actually required to attend user group meetings as part of their job.

Each year at Solidworks World the various Solidworks Employees that present break out sessions, ask that if you would like to sign up for a customer visit, to drop off your business card.  Each year they visit over 200 companies to get a feel for whats happening in the industry.

Want to ask the CEO, or Founder, or Board of Directors Member?  If you see them walking around Solidworks World, they would be happy to sit down and discuss whatever it is you would like with them.

If there are any trade shows coming up in your area, chances are Solidworks will be present.  The people staffing the booth at these events are very technical in their area, and love to be challenged.

Those are just 8 quick ideas that I came up with off the top of my head in five minutes.  The fact is that Solidworks DOES indeed listen to their customers.  I have first hand watched the former CEO of Solidworks sit down at a computer and try to fix a users problem in the software.  And when he discovered that it indeed was an issue, he guaranteed the user it would get fixed. 

Is Solidworks perfect?  Nope.  But thats a good thing.  If a company produced a perfect product, there would never be a need for continued innovation.  As problems arise, their individual solutions promote further development.  It's beneficial to everyone that issues and problems get out there for them to be solved. 

Use your resources available to you to solve a problem in Solidworks to your advantage.  If done right, you will probably find more success that way, as opposed to ranting about it on the Internet!

Comments

[Anthony Gomez]

Mike I am the users group President in San Antonio, TX home of the next SolidWorks World. I attended SWW10 in Anaheim, I very much enjoyed your presentation about CSWP Certification. I wanted to see if you would like to come to one of our Users Group meetings here and discuss the importance of being a Certified SolidWorks Professional. There are only about 15 here in San Antonio. I hope you would consider this invitation.

[Ryan]

One big beef I and other co workers have and continue to have is the lack of being able to change the default values throughout the software to what I want them to be as opposed to what Solidworks feels they should be. The user should be able to set the default value of every setting in the software like other software do in a config file. Not being able to is like getting in your car and having to re-adjust the seat, the mirrors, the radio volume etcc. etc.. every time you get in the car. This is plain stupid and necessary. Solidworks touts themself's as trying to integrate things into the software that improve productivity, well we spend a good part of our day changing your preset values back to what I need for defaults based on my applications. this is plain stupid.

[Matt Lombard]

Mike,

If you have something to address to someone in particular, please have the courtesy to do it by name and to that person directly. Kind of like I'm going to do here.

This is a very naive post. It shows primarily that you don't have much experience with the process that you describe. And in the end, you are doing exactly what you are complaining about in the first place.

Let's see, users ask for some sort of reverse compatibility with old versions of software. SolidWorks solves so many problems that are technically difficult, surely they could take a poke at this one. This is a business problem, not a technical problem, which is why it is a user request that SW ignores.

How about Catia compatibility? We can trade files with Pro, UG, Autocad, but not Catia? Who is listening to that request?

Who is listening to the request that SolidWorks just slow down and fix bugs for a release? They don't even acknowledge these things.

I have talked to everyone from Hirschtick on down, been involved in multiple special initiatives to fix the software, the Part Advisory Board, Alpha, Beta, bending the ear of the customer relations people, and any other avenue I could, including interviewing for and being offered a senior engineer job in QA. I've tried tact, I've tried screaming, I've tried acting disinterested and bored. SolidWorks is listening to someone, as long as it agrees with their pre-conceived notions.

Anyway, if you have a beef with me, please take it up with me, as opposed to ranting about it on the internet.

[Jason Raak]

Fantastic post Mike! I really enjoy a point of view like this one. It seems that more and more lately if you browse the discussion forums that there are a lot of users complaining about the software. It is very refreshing to hear this point of view. Keep up the great work and I look forward to meeting you in San Diego.