Holy Cow! You're not kidding. Creo 3.0 F000 H1 of 2014! That is REALLY POOR FORM, PTC!
So people buying recently, now, or before July this year could miss out on a Creo 3.0 Maintenance release.
Oh this is sad! 
Lucky me, I didn't buy maintenance this year.
I'd be so mad now. 
When they say best possible release. Will they start over from M020? Because that is their best release so far.
?
Hello,
I enclose a document that can show us in a Webinar.
If this bit to encourage you waiting for new versions.
Cordially.
Denis.
Thanks Denis. That says Autum 2013 which was the previous planned release. Now it is not until sometime in the 1st half of 2014.
If you can get to it, this is the release schedule: http://www.ptc.com/cs/product_calendar/PTC_Product_Calendar.htm#RANGE!B297
And this time for posterity:
That's very good question. 
I don't think the maintenance is worth it for me atm. Yet, the longer I am without the maint the more costly it's getting. So, with that it's not like I'll be ever getting the maint.
Where's Frank when I need him. I wish PTC had stuck with some of the older menus. They were faster, easier to use, less cumbersome, less intrusive (screen real estate), and they could be incorporated into mapkeys FAR easier than anything in the ribbon or Wildfire menus.
Having said that, I agree we need to move forward. But my point was that this thread was nothing but one monster gripe-fest for no discernable reason. We're mad at PTC if they don't hurry up and release something. Then we're mad at them if it doesn't work. But if they delay the release so the end product has a higher quality, people are complaining that they're essentially being ripped off because they didn't see a new release this year.
Do you see how there's really no way to win?
I understand you take issue with the menu manager and 2001 style dialog boxes. Personally, this doesn't bother me one bit. All they will replace them with is a batch of icons that mean nothing... senseless pictures. For example... a stick with a green swoosh next to it with a small circle and an arrow with a little plus sign... that'll be the new symbol for "Split Balloon". It'll take me a year to remember what that picture means. Then, once I figure it out, someone at PTC will redesign the blasted interface (again), change the icon, move it to another location, and I'll be back to square one. Yeah, I personally don't care if they leave that menu manager stuff alone for the next 1000 years. At least I understand what they commands do because they're written in English rather than some insane heiroglyphic.
For my money, I'm concerned about real world usefulness. I want to see Sweep, Blend, and Variable Section Sweep all work from the same tool with the same features. And, I want tapers (draft) added to it. This is the kind of enhancement I want. I want to be able to switch between sketched holes, threaded holes, and regular holes without removing my patterns. These are things that I can use every day to make me more productive. I want to see GTOL fully compliant with the latest standards. I want detailing mode to be completely revamped so it functions like a modern 2D cad system. The list goes on...
My annoyance at some of the posts in this thread was based on the notion that PTC is doing "nothing" for the maintenance that they're paid. This may not have been something you said. Overall, its very easy to overlook all the good that's been done if you're really hell bent on looking at the bad that remains.
My only point was to say that progress is being made. Delaying Creo 3 longer than previously anticipated does not necessarily mean the sky is falling. To me, it's a sign that someone is listening to us. Yet to other people, all news is bad news. I just don't see how people get out of bed in the morning with that kind of attitude.
Let's give PTC a chance to deliver a good product. They've taken the bold step to delay Creo 3. Let's see if it was the right move before we rush to the conclusion that all is lost and the world as we know it is DOOMED.
Brian Martin wrote:
Doug,
...
Your point about PTC support is well taken. I agree, they are not very good at all. In my opinion, the market place is ripe for someone to start a company that just offers supplemental support for PTC customers. I was thinking of trying this myself... maybe $1-$2 per user per month for support that actually responds with useful, timely information? Or I could just keep coming here and giving away information for free...
...
Thanks...
-Brian
PTC must have read this post and responded...
Hi Brian,
Thank you for this insight. I know from very occasional Conference TCs (tyranny of distance) that discussion is always robust and I am sure glad that PTC listened to concerns about ongoing functionality as being very important and easily as important as the "golly gee whizz" stuff.
My take on releases.
We have always skipped alternate releases going way back 18 years so we have less concern about when release dates are. What we want are rock solid releases without new bugs added. We are finally looking to move from WF5 (sorry Creo Elements/Pro 5) to Creo 2.0 and are picking M040 as our adopting start point though I have M020 loaded to test.
And I am sorry but the first release of a major software product; expecting this to be near 100% correct? Not in my experience. That maybe OK in some industries; especially the ones that push through updates each week
As an old time user I railed against WF as a change from a very functional R2001. In that case for our experienced users the productivity hit was massive but eventually we got back what we lost and even progressed a bit. From what I can see of Creo 2.0 there will be much less performance hit as the base functionality still has similarities and this time there is the search function for commands which is useful to experienced users who know what a command/function is called. Actually I just want to be able to do my work using the tool that my employer provides without the tool causing me problems.
It is my opinion that far less effort goes into gradual product usability and most goes into "glossy" stuff that gives something to promote. Don't get me wrong; some of the newer functionality can be very useful and a timesaver but generally not saving as much time as improvements to the interface (optimization) would achieve all day every day.
And on the support side we are very fortunate to have a VAR that takes support seriously so we don't have to waste our time with calls to a hard to understand helpline. Actually most of our queries are not that easy for "paint by numbers" help service anyway which is the main reason we don't call.
Sorry to be missing going to PTC/User again this year so will have to follow goings on from afar.
Brent
