Friday Rant

[JohnSullivan]

As a long time user of proe and a having a continuous rant on:

The extra clicks that we have to go thru when we want to leave a feature or delete something.

Yes, when weclick on "delete" I really want to delete the feature!!!!!

Whenwe want to leave a feature "incomplete" yeswe really want to leave a feature incomplete!!!!!

Yes, when I want to leave sketcher, I really want to leave sketcher and all the other "do you really want to's and we have tomouse click our way outwhatever we are trying to leave andthat we have to go thru, please give me an option to turn off all these annoying mouse clicks! i'm a veteren user and I know what I'm doing!

And I'm not even talking about the mouse travel!! Click on something and a window pops up ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN! Hello carpel tunnel ___

I will be atOrlando, is anyone interested in meeting on this? let meknow. WF 5is no better.

John

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[sneg3691]

I feel your pain every day...we are currently working on a mold extract that
is 20mb...cant even move the mouse and all the geometry lights up like
fireworks..then wait, wait, wait , wait, wait for pro to settle down so you
can attempt to drill down and click some geometry that is deep as China. How
aggravating, let alone the wasted time..give me back my 2001 version and my
speed would double..guaranteed. Pro has become a joke...we were better off 5
yrs ago. I never seen so much wasted time working with this disco dancing
highlight, button pushing software...WHEH!!!!!



_____

[JeffHoracek]

And yet, for all the complaining, we all still use it ! Why ? Because it is still better than the competition. Some might argue that other packages a easier to use, and they probably are. But, can you do as much with them as you can with Pro/E. Gotta take the good with the bad in this world 😞

Can't have the whine without the cheese.

My $.02

Jeff Horacek
Sr. Designer
[cid:841182718@14052010-3191]
STERIS Corporation
5960 Heisley Rd.
Mentor, OH 44060
(440)392-7721 P
(440)392-8954 F

[JOES]

Mapkeys help!

I've use qq to back completely out of the UI, creating or modifying a
feature.

Regards,
Joe S.

[ptc-1932745]

//Rant On



Also when deleting sketch entities having missing references, having to
confirm each deletion is painful... This happens to me when I use
silouhette edges in sketches for die and mold work and the cavity
changes. Even though the curve is supposed to be 'parametric'. I guess
no one told this to sketcher. (WF 4)



BTW in Solidworks, you have the option of 'Don't remind me again' for
most dialogs. You can then go to a page in the preferences and turn the
dialog notifications back on if needed. (Great Idea)



//Rant off



Oh,... that feels better.

[scserep]

I particularly love how when you "use edge" in sketcher you still have to "trim" all the intersecting edges (creating "weak" dimensions") and when you trim arcs it ALWAYS trims to the wrong side.

Scott Cserep
Design Engineer
(ph)815-874-7821 ext 2920
(fx)815-874-2144


>>> Chris Gosnell <-> 5/14/2010 1:33 PM >>>
//Rant On



Also when deleting sketch entities having missing references, having to
confirm each deletion is painful... This happens to me when I use
silouhette edges in sketches for die and mold work and the cavity
changes. Even though the curve is supposed to be 'parametric'. I guess
no one told this to sketcher. (WF 4)



BTW in Solidworks, you have the option of 'Don't remind me again' for
most dialogs. You can then go to a page in the preferences and turn the
dialog notifications back on if needed. (Great Idea)



//Rant off



Oh,... that feels better.

[ArnoldCollett]

You can set the config option "prehighlight" to "no" and the model won't highlight when your mouse is over it.
You can also set the config option "prehighlight_tree" to "no" and the model won't highlight when you hover over the model name in the model tree.

Arnold

[koch_michael_j]

One BIG problem to turning off the prehighlight - PTC got rid of the RMB
query select pick!

I have resorted to mapkeying prehighlight on and off - major pain.





"Collett, Arnold B. (MSFC-ER34)[TBE-1]" <->
05/14/2010 01:43 PM
Please respond to
"Collett, Arnold B. (MSFC-ER34)[TBE-1]" <->


To
"-" <->
cc

Subject
[proecad] - RE: Friday Rant

[kwsauter]

And how about the fact that you can't reverse assembly constraints
(except mate and align). If you insert something and it pops in the
wrong way, you can't just reverse it (like in SW). You have to add
another constraint to straighten it out. And when using tangent
constraints, you can sometimes have 2 or 3 different valid solutions,
but there is no way to switch between them. I have to add datums, other
constraints, etc., just to make a tangent work sometimes. And how about
when you get a part situated just the way you want it, then say OK, and
presto-changeo! It reverses orientation! Seems to me a simple menu pick
to reverse orientation or pick between alternate solutions would be dead
simple to implement, but maybe not.


Ken Sauter
DRS Reconnaissance Surveillance and Target Acquisition
Infrared Technologies Division
PO Box 740188
Dallas, TX 75374
214-860-6826
-

[ArnoldCollett]

You can still RMB > Pick from list.

Here is my mapkey to turn pre-highlighting on and off, use once to turn off, then use again to turn back on.

!THIS MAPKEY TOGGLES PRE-HIGHLIGHTING!
mapkey vph @MAPKEY_LABELPrehighlighting;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Select `main_dlg_cur` `MenuBar1`1 `Edit`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Select `main_dlg_cur` `Edit.cbSelect`;~ Close `main_dlg_cur` `MenuBar1`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Close `main_dlg_cur` `Edit.cbSelect`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `main_dlg_cur` `psh_sel_filter`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `selprefs` `PrehButton` ;~ Activate `selprefs` `Ok`;

Arnold

[JohnSullivan]

I was going to add to my rant:

Please don't bring up mapkeys--I have a ton of them.

Please don't talk about complaining or whining or its better than the competion or we are using it and all that n.......

If it can be improved--improve it! Give me an option to turn it off! I'll take my chances!

I was at a WF5 PTC demo and part of the sales pich was "decreased mouse travel".

The firstitem I tried was atool bar click and viola, the menu popped up on the far side of the screen, the farthest possible distance from where the mouse pointer was. I called it to the attention of the rep and of course the reply was -- not my department!!

John

[ptc-593619]

I, too have had the WF5 demo and was told how much they have reduced the
mouse clicks and mouse travel. I asked the Demo guy how many clicks to
cancel out of a sketch. After his 6 clicks I mentioned that it used to
take just one - improvement, we aren't even back to where we once were.



And the only thing that "ribbon" is good for is utter confusion!

[jstarkey]

I am a contract mold/plastic part designer.

I totally and completely agree with the below.

Best regards,
James Starkey
Starkey Tech. Serv., L.L.C.

[ehill]

This is the very first "usability enhancement" that I turned off when Wildfire came along. I don't know how everyone else deals with it, it's beyond annoying, and never prehighlights what I want
anyway.


Here's my rant:

Everything that is pushed by PTC, consultants, design guides, whoever you ask, recommends to use surfaces as references whenever possible. Next, edges, then vertexes...all in the quest for model stability.

Why oh why does a query select return a list of VERTICES first? Then edges? Then surfaces LAST? It's bass ackward.

Best Regards,

[kwsauter]

Amen to that! And how about tab order in the parameter list? it jumps
all over the place. There is no logical order. Using the keyboard to
navigate is impossible. And how about the global interference dialog
where the list of interferences that shows up is always proportional to
the size of the dialog box? I can stretch the dialog box to cover the
screen and the list of interferences is only about ten items long.
There is room to show fifty items at least, but the dialog box won't do
it. This stuff is just plain stupid. It can't be very difficult to fix
these things, but they never do.


Ken Sauter
DRS Reconnaissance Surveillance and Target Acquisition
Infrared Technologies Division
PO Box 740188
Dallas, TX 75374
214-860-6826
- <">mailto:->

[wattsteam]

I have been a full time ProE user since 1993.

No question in my mind that ProE is probably still the highest capability package, but there are four areas that PTC is consistently terrible in, and should fix:

1. Stop screwing around with the front end/GUI (I do dozens of workarounds in WF to get back pre-WF functionality)
2. Not fixing existing issues and not improving basic functions on a timely basis, while pushing PDM software aggressively
3. technical support offshore is absolutely awful
4. value for maintenance charge dollar is extremely low for installs with few seats

For those who remember Computervision and their fall from greatness/number 1 position in the CAD world - I see a lot of parallels between what the management of CV said and did and what the management of PTC says and does.

My favourite PTC customer service behaviour is to be reporting a serious-to-me functional problem and be told "that is design intent of the software" - for who, Martians?

end of rant

Jeff Dayman

[sneg3691]

Yes we know that...once the preselect is turned off, then you are working
blinding because now they have taken away the query select when preselecting
is turned off...exactly my point..we have to create map keys upon map keys
to get anything thing half way accomplished. Preselecting is mans worse
nightmare when working on imported geometry, or mold extracts ..if its not
the preselecting then its chasing the model all over the screen because
somehow it fell off he screen..we all been there...it just kills me the
price that is paid for maintenance by all of us and they give us this -----




_____

[jlippeth]

** Rank <start>

And what about Over_All model size from Model Check to output more then
2 decimal places, C'Mon Man

6.5 years and counting, Tic Toc , blah blah blah

And a Friday rant is sometimes more about the rant then finding a
solution, but good solutions are always welcome!

** Rank <end>



JScott

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[jstarkey]

As a mold designer, I agree with the below.

I ask for and turned in a enhancement request for a config.pro setting or something, that would return selection functionality to Pre-WF. This for those of us with similar concerns, working on a lot of huge imported files and mold extracts.

I even followed up with Michael Campbell. Got no where!!!!!!!

Best regards,
James Starkey
Starkey Tech. Serv., L.L.C.

[amedina]

Have you ever tried the difference between being connected to PDMlink and
not? Its like night and day. Its like they added a "slow down" clause when
working on PDMlink vs off of it. For anything, for extrude or sheet metal
operations what have you, its always slow on PDMlink and fast off it. I
really like to be told that it is because I'm working on rev 8 and rev 10 is
so much better. that's it, that's all my venting... hey there have been 130
rants since 2006 according to my email here, that's kinda curious to know.
Some one should put together what each one was about and then sell the book
as a way to gage whether you need the next build yet. That or one of those
utube vids where they show you a time line of software release and then the
update rate, but instead of update rate it would be the complaints about
that release. That would gage how well the next update is working. hey its
not all rating, I'm trying to give something positive here.

here is a cool one:


I wish I could do this with my assemblies.. well I can, I just need time,
because all the data is in the oracle database, you just have to make a
graphical video of it somehow. Processing.org is a cool Java code that can
do stuff like this. PDMlink should incorporate it some day.

[lwh]

As a ProE user for over 15 Years I totally agree with all of You. Sometimes I get the impression that I know more about the workings of ProE than the support people...

I'm working with one of the big ProE customers and even their pleas go unheard.

Let's face it: The main reason is, people at PTC sell software, they never have to use it. So, their concern is to create features which look great to managers who make the purchasing decisions (but also do not use the product).

And for the concentration on Windchill: unlike ProE it also sells man-months of consulting, which is much more profitable than writing software (as I would know, doing both of it myself...)

BTW: I remember CADDS4x and CV / Prime - their decreasing interest in their users made us change to ProE - yes, PTC were better once...

[JonathanHodgson]

They've removed Query Select? Which version? I'm guessing WF5, as
we're on WF4 and it still works for us...

That's approaching a killer reason *not* to upgrade.

Jonathan

[STEVEG]

Query Select is there in WF4 M140 and WF5 M030. It's there whether prehighlight is on or off. Just slightly different for each.

When you right-click your mouse arrow over something...

and pre-highlighting is on, you just keep right-clicking and it will highlight in succession each of the possible features/entities. Pick the feature/entity you want. You can also hold down the right mouse button and select from the pop up menu the option Pick From List.

and pre-highlighting is off, when you hold the right mouse button down a dialog box will display with either Pick or Query. However, you do not have to hold down the right mouse button to get the Query option. Just by right-clicking and not holding down then it automatically changes to Query. Once you select something then the Pick From List dialog box displays.

You can right-click and scroll through the Pick From List dialog box whether the pre-highlighting is on or off.

Steve G

[DeanLong]

<beginrantfix>

Uh....have you guys tried just holding down the Alt key? It stops the prehighlight and still allows a RMB Query / Pick from List.

<endrantfix>