Is It Time For SW 2008

Just a little over 7 months since its release, and over 2 months since the last significant service pack, has Solidworks 2008 finally come of age?  For our shop, we switched over as soon as the DVD's arrived in late September, and never looked back.  Along the way we had two bugs that really messed with us, and they were minor.  Those bugs were solved by service pack 3.0, but were never really significant enough to effect our work.  Granted we were prepared on all our workstations with graphics cards that were certified, and all of us had exposure to all the new features through the roll out presentations, and user group meetings.

Historically Solidworks usually reaches the 5.0 service pack level before the next release makes its way to the world.  So being that we haven't seen any service pack activity for a while, is it now time for the hold outs to join the ranks of those of us courageous enough to have already made the switch?

There are a lot of polls and informal surveys that a lot of blogs talk about, and there is also the 'official' migration number given out by Solidworks.  Neither one though give an accurate representation of whats really going on.  At Solidworks World, Solidworks C.E.O. Jeff Ray wouldn't divulge the number they had, but he seemed happy with whatever that value was.  I have no clue how they collect that information, but one obvious way would be to count the activations that are completed online.  The problem with that way of collecting information is that someone could simply install 2008, activate it, and then continue working in 2007 on the same machine using a side by side installation.

Informal polls on blogs, and surveys of members at user group meetings wont give you an accurate snap shot of whats going on either.  Who is answering those polls online?  How many times and from how many different computers are they voting from?  There simply aren't enough people attending user group meetings either to get a real accurate picture of migration to 2008.  If your meeting has 20 people in attendance, and only 5 have switched, is it fair to say 75% of Solidworks customers are still using 2007?

The problem with these polls, surveys, and press releases is that they can be skewed in any and every direction.  Heck, here in California in 2003 when the voters recalled the Governor, the day before the election, many polls had the recall failing by double digits, and everyone knows how that went.

So while personally I think you should have switched over back in October, when will the time be right?  In our case, there are way to many new features that simplify the way we do things in Solidworks to not be using 2008.  Is the software stable?  I would say so, but that depends on what you do.  Someone thats working with assemblies that contain hundreds of thousands of parts, is going to have a totally different experience than someone whose assemblies are less than 500 parts.  Solidworks, like just about every piece of software will never be finished, and thats a good thing.  Imagine if Solidworks 99 or 2003 was the final version.  Even if 2007 was the final version we would all be missing out on some great new features.

A lot of people would argue that Solidworks should just release one final version, and skip all the in between.  Now put that in perspective, how do you build a program that you can insure will work on every computer, is multiple languages, and being used for multiple industries?  Its impossible.

So if you are using 2007, and those 2008 DVD's are sitting there acting as a cup coaster, stick that DVD in, and never look back, I'm pretty sure you will be glad you did! 

Comments

[Brian]

Mike,

We would have rolled at initial release or shortly thereafter if I had my way. But were initially held back to February by a critical project we are working on, and that has now drug on since.

I have many users that could avail themselves of many of the new and updated features in 2008, and most of them are clamoring for the upgrade. Even my manager has tried to press for the upgrade.

I was offered the choice of upgrading all but one seat (to keep working on this project), but I declined that, as more than one person is involved with running SolidWorks on this project and I didn't desire the extra hassle of managing different versions and all the crap that goes along with that.

The big problem is, I have all the responsibilty, but almost no authority, of CAD administration.

I wonder how many others are in this situation?