CAD Forum

Hi All,

Working on testing 2021 sp4.1 before we pull the trigger on upgrading 50 or so cad workstations and another 100ish pdm/manage "contributors".
We've done a lot of testing, but thought I'd see if anyone has any pet 2021 issues that we should be aware of before we go live.

We are currently on 2020 sp4.
We've stumbled on to some annoying, but work-aroundable issues with the auto-balloon tool which I posted about previously. Other than that, mostly everything seems to be same or better.

Link to duplicate post in swym:
https://r1132100503382-eu1-3dswym.3dexp ... SNwTDNpxZA

Hey @Jim Steinmeyer, you want to explain what happened to you? (While I was typing this I found the thread, @nordstjernen740 take a look at https://r1132100503382-eu1-3dswym.3dexp ... VJJjadBJEQ )

@nordstjernen740, I applaud your enthusiasm for being on the cutting edge of SW adoption, but bad things have happened to people that have done that. I hope your testing was very extensive. It can be a case of what you don't anticipate costing you and your company time and money.

I have frequently seen a "This file cannot be saved" error when editing in context. It's usually caused by hitting Ctrl+S before returning to the assembly environment. The only solution is to close without saving and......lose all your changes. Oh, and sometimes I get it even if I'm not in context.

Just make sure to sacrifice a goat to the software gods before adopting a new version.

@mattpeneguy
I wouldn't necessarily call it enthusiasm. The problem is we have several major performance issues on the pdm/manage side that are pretty big time sucks that are costing us hours everyday. There are some pretty significant improvements on that side in 2021. We are really pushing the Manage envelope and actually have a pretty good relationship with that development team. Unfortunately, constantly upgrading Manage means we need to upgrade the "whole package". The solidworks side can have so many sneaky issues that can be real pita. Hence the question. We are doing lots of testing as well.
We always wait until at least sp3 before upgrading regardless (usually sp4 or sp5 in reality)

mike miller wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 12:17 pm I have frequently seen a "This file cannot be saved" error when editing in context. It's usually caused by hitting Ctrl+S before returning to the assembly environment. The only solution is to close without saving and......lose all your changes. Oh, and sometimes I get it even if I'm not in context.

Thanks! I'll have some users mess with this today in our testing session and see how they feel about it. Have you reported to your VAR?

nordstjernen740 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 12:31 pm @mattpeneguy
I wouldn't necessarily call it enthusiasm. The problem is we have several major performance issues on the pdm/manage side that are pretty big time sucks that are costing us hours everyday. There are some pretty significant improvements on that side in 2021. We are really pushing the Manage envelope and actually have a pretty good relationship with that development team. Unfortunately, constantly upgrading Manage means we need to upgrade the "whole package". The solidworks side can have so many sneaky issues that can be real pita. Hence the question. We are doing lots of testing as well.
We always wait until at least sp3 before upgrading regardless (usually sp4 or sp5 in reality)

You sound like you know what you are doing. I just wanted to enlighten you if you didn't know the risks.
There are no guarantees with sp4 or 5 either, they've had some regressive bugs with those releases too. And it sounds like @mike miller found one of them. Speaking of that, hey @mike miller have you reached out to your VAR on this? Seems that a bug like that requires an immediate hot fix, IMO.

mattpeneguy wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 1:01 pm Speaking of that, hey @mike miller have you reached out to your VAR on this? Seems that a bug like that requires an immediate hot fix, IMO.

I have not. It seems, quite frankly, to be a waste of time at this point. They are more interested in playing goal-keeper than fixing the software, and I have better things to do than try to sneak a ball past them.

@mattpeneguy Someone has to find the bugs, since Dassault won't.
Still waiting for my paycheck for all the detailed troubleshooting I've done for them.

@mike miller I get the same way sometimes. Its easy to do. The prospect of going through the same old VAR script every time there is some flaky issue is nails on a chalkboard. Wish I could just tell them to pound sand and figure it out themselves and no its not my graphics driver this time.
I have to keep reminding myself that the VAR report system really is the way that this garbage get fixed.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease at Solidworks.

mike miller wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 1:06 pm They are more interested in playing goal-keeper than fixing the software, and I have better things to do than try to sneak a ball past them.

That was my experience with TPM.

mike miller wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 1:06 pm I have not. It seems, quite frankly, to be a waste of time at this point. They are more interested in playing goal-keeper than fixing the software, and I have better things to do than try to sneak a ball past them.

Honestly there is probably little they can do, most VAR tech support are entry level engineers with a few exceptions. You probably know more than they do.

I've had to escalate issues and it takes a bit of work. If you want it listed as critical you have to write up a statement about how its affecting your business monetarily. Sometimes I put in some polite threats of getting our VPs involved which helps. They are level 1 support so I don't expect much.

I would be satisfied if they just added me to an existing SPR (or is it SR?) Even that was too much work.

Over on SWYM, Steven Dod has been mentioning what sounds like some pretty serious performance problems. Anyone here that can corroborate?

nordstjernen740 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 5:03 pm Over on sw*m, Steven Dod has been mentioning what sounds like some pretty serious performance problems. Anyone here that can corroborate?

As far as load, rebuild, and save times; I can't really tell a difference from 2020. 2021 was supposed to be something like 10x faster, etc., etc. but I don't believe any CAD vendor that makes claims on on such a level year over year. I would say stability has decreased, enough that I wouldn't upgrade without a compelling feature-related reason.

Well, since Matt pinged me. A couple of years ago we were getting the same "file cannot be saved" message pretty frequently. At that point we were able to save to another name and then save back to keep our changes. It was tracked, IIRC, by our VAR to an issue with auto-save being turned on. We turned it off and the problem went away. That issue was corrected in the next SP or in the one after it. We are back to waiting until SP 3 or 4 before upgrading. Actually we have yet to go to 2021 but that has more to do with not having everyone on Win10 yet.

This is what I'm talking about. The file is open and can be modified, just not saved. And it never tells you until you're all done, either.
And today I did NOT save while in-context.

We get that one occasionally now (2020 sp5), but I have mostly associated it (in my mind at least) with doing state changes on files in pdm while the file is open in solidworks. not that it should happen in that case either.
Do you have pdm?