The "Old SolidWorks Forum"

[Roasted By John]

I first posted this in the Original Kitty Dump, so here is a copy

Dear Fellow SolidWorks Users…. (Sorry for the Long Post...



I cannot believe that the Forum we knew from the Beginning of SolidWorks is being dissected and shutdown forever. We knew, we felt it in our hearts a long time ago, you could see it coming. I would love to go through a lot of posts naming a lot more that are not listed below, I had to draw a line for now.



I am responding without any feelings, I am numb, not happy, not distraught and no moisture in the eyes, just blah.. The time has come where the SolidWorks Forum will be thrown away like a piece of toilet paper, wiped clean and flushed.



How is it possible to acknowledge all the people that I’ve spoken with, either PM, Email, or Telephone, how can I rescind when I pissed people off, like the guy that sent our owner a FU laced email about what I said on the Forum, none of you guys ever heard me say “All SolidWork Issues are User Input”, yep, that was enough for this guy to send the owner an email, with every other word FU…



How is it possible to acknowledge the great people over the years, there is no way that it would be possible to name each one by name, maybe someday. I do want to point out a few people, Number One ever Deepak Gupta thank you Deepak for what you have done for the community over the years. Personal most favorite SW Guru, making crazy stuff and crazy renderings, Paul Salvador – thank your Paul for your assistance and showing us your creativity – What can I say about Alin Vargatu – SW is truly a better Design Software because of his contribution and drive and his User Challenges – thank you Alin.. Who can talk the same language as Rob Edwards – Alin christened him SolidWorks Demigod. Who could ever forget the ONE – TWO spokespersons Rick Becker & Dennis Dohogne – How about the Help Posts by Glenn Schroeder - Josh Brady has been a huge asset to the forum, Roland Schwarz who will ever forget his comments, the greatest SW forum poster (in my mind) – All the contributions from Artem Taturevych – My Blood Still Boils Jim Sculley , thanks Jim – The Dave Bear Story by Todd Blacksher who rides bikes and wears funny looking shoes - – The Bridges by Matt Peneguy, amazing designs – The awesome contributions of Keith Rice Solid Air We will never forget the start of Maha Nadarasa the Youtuber, a sponge to absorb as much as possible, I will say if everyone would put in as much effort as Maha did in learning SW in five years we would have 1,000ths of Deepak’s, thank you Maha for your inspiration. Another personal favorite Kelef Man, love all of his rhythmic posts… Gonna miss Greg Hynd picture post, how about those awesome Grills and Outdoor Kitchen equipment by Adrian Crisci – The unbelievable talent of Sergey Novikov, do you need jewelry? – the unreal models by Chris Wilson & Craig Makarowski – The Awesome Renderings of Rob Rodríguez - Brian Hillner – Michael Lord - Alen Topic - Kevin Schlaepfer - Ron Bates – Benoit Gallice – the list could go on for a long time… The contributions of Dave Laban Tom Gagnon Jim Steinmeyer David Matula Dan Pihlaja Matt Juric Alex Lachance Scott Perman Rick McDonald Ned Hutchinson Dwight Livingston Christian Chu Tony Tieuli Karsten Meißner



Drum Roll……… Frederick Law the upstart take over the top spot of the Top Ten, proven and professional Snarky, love ya man



The Why people Dan Golthing The Merovingien Dan Bovinich ovinich



To the awesome ladies that cut their teeth in SW and have been a Huge asset in the SW communities, Anna Wood & Betty Baker & Carrie Ives

The people that are no long here Bernie Daraz and the greatest ever Wayne Tiffany who sent me an email making sure that I know the difference of the Your or You’re & Mauricio Martinez-Saez



To all the rest in one way or another you have contributed on a grand scale, anybody in the Top 500, great day to you, thank you for sharing your knowledge

[matt]

@Roasted By John Thanks for the nostalgic summary of our time over there. There were certainly good times and good friends.

But there is hope. Before the current incarnation of the SW forum that you eulogize, there was another incarnation, and before that was USENET - comp.cad.solidworks, started in 1996 by Greg Jankowski (author of the first SW book - SW for the AutoCAD User). And we did the same thing in the transition between each of those. So life continues.

I dropped out of SW around 2013, and started to show up again in 2017, so a lot of you who started after 2013 don't remember me as a central player, but I've been a SW user since 1996. There's a whole new set of players. Paul Salvador is I think one of the few that I remember who has been around since those old days. Anna Wood and Jeff Mirisola have both shown up here and were part of the original "Blog Squad" from ~2006 I think. Lots of names and faces...

[DennisD]

@Roasted By John Thanks for the nostalgic summary of our time over there. There were certainly good times and good friends.

But there is hope. Before the current incarnation of the SW forum that you eulogize, there was another incarnation, and before that was USENET - comp.cad.solidworks, started in 1996 by Greg Jankowski (author of the first SW book - SW for the AutoCAD User). And we did the same thing in the transition between each of those. So life continues.

I dropped out of SW around 2013, and started to show up again in 2017, so a lot of you who started after 2013 don't remember me as a central player, but I've been a SW user since 1996. There's a whole new set of players. Paul Salvador is I think one of the few that I remember who has been around since those old days. Anna Wood and Jeff Mirisola have both shown up here and were part of the original "Blog Squad" from ~2006 I think. Lots of names and faces...

Matt, I am grateful you have put this forum together and very very pleased with how it has already gotten some legs!! My hat is off to all you contributors.

I pledge to make my own posts more on-topic and helpful than I did on the other forum. Most of the time I am reading and absorbing instead of solving. I've been using SWX since 1995 and am still learning!

[DanPihlaja]

I want to say a lot about the old forum but I rarely have time lately.

Anyway, suffice to say that I will definitely miss the old forum. Not entirely sure if I am going to embrace the 3DSWYM at this point or not. I have tried to log in, and apparently can't remember my password, or my log in ID, so I stopped there.

[jcapriotti]

I want to say a lot about the old forum but I rarely have time lately.

Anyway, suffice to say that I will definitely miss the old forum. Not entirely sure if I am going to embrace the 3DSWYM at this point or not. I have tried to log in, and apparently can't remember my password, or my log in ID, so I stopped there.

I login to 3DSWYM daily, see nothing new there and leave. Mostly just VARs and DS employers advertising something. Even the other Dassault products communities are dead. Where do CATIA users go to complain?

[mike miller]

I want to say a lot about the old forum but I rarely have time lately.

Anyway, suffice to say that I will definitely miss the old forum. Not entirely sure if I am going to embrace the 3DSWYM at this point or not. I have tried to log in, and apparently can't remember my password, or my log in ID, so I stopped there.

I login to 3DSWYM daily, see nothing new there and leave. Mostly just VARs and DS employers advertising something. Even the other Dassault products communities are dead. Where do CATIA users go to complain?

I think they go here.

2021-01-25 13_15_53.jpg

[jcapriotti]

I think they go here.

I can related, I used to be a CATIA user.....way back in the V4 days.

[jayar]

April 2nd, click on the SWX Forum link just to see if they were telling the truth and it would take me to the swamp. This is what I'm greeted with:

image.png

[mattpeneguy]

April 2nd, click on the SWX Forum link just to see if they were telling the truth and it would take me to the swamp. This is what I'm greeted with:
image.png

That's not how the web works. If you go to forum.solidworks.com you get the link to the Swamp. If you bookmarked a page from the old site, that link is now dead. So, I'd expect to see something like that.

[zwei]

4th April 11AM (GMT+8)
Well... try to login to the 3DSYMP and this is that i got

image.png

[jayar]

April 2nd, click on the SWX Forum link just to see if they were telling the truth and it would take me to the swamp. This is what I'm greeted with:
image.png

That's not how the web works. If you go to forum.solidworks.com you get the link to the Swamp. If you bookmarked a page from the old site, that link is now dead. So, I'd expect to see something like that.

Yeah, I had the '\welcome' still on the url, took it off and it 'works'.

[RickB]

According to my email, Christian Chu wins the "Last Post" Contest...

image.png

[mattpeneguy]

According to my email, Christian Chu wins the "Last Post" Contest...

image.png

Wow @RickB,
How apropos! Good Job @christian chu! You win the internet for today!

[MJuric]

I want to say a lot about the old forum but I rarely have time lately.

Anyway, suffice to say that I will definitely miss the old forum. Not entirely sure if I am going to embrace the 3DSWYM at this point or not. I have tried to log in, and apparently can't remember my password, or my log in ID, so I stopped there.

I login to 3DSWYM daily, see nothing new there and leave. Mostly just VARs and DS employers advertising something. Even the other Dassault products communities are dead. Where do CATIA users go to complain?

There's a lot more DSS presence on the Swym forums than there ever was on the old forum. I took a look at the new forum today and it looked like it actually had decent traffic, but just as I thought questions where getting rolled off the back end in a hurry and when that happens no one will get answers.

[christian chu]

According to my email, Christian Chu wins the "Last Post" Contest...

image.png

I still have trouble to view and post mesg there

[christian chu]

According to my email, Christian Chu wins the "Last Post" Contest...

image.png

Wow @RickB,
How apropos! Good Job @christian chu! You win the internet for today!

I live in the Westcoast and California time is 3 to 4 hrs behind your

[zxys001]

I first posted this in the Original Kitty Dump, so here is a copy

Dear Fellow SolidWorks Users…. (Sorry for the Long Post...

I cannot believe that the Forum we knew from the Beginning of SolidWorks is being dissected and shutdown forever.

..so... just saw this...
https://r1132100503382-eu1-3dswym.3dexp ... OV87aEPAdw

[Roasted By John]

image.png

[MJuric]

I first posted this in the Original Kitty Dump, so here is a copy

Dear Fellow SolidWorks Users…. (Sorry for the Long Post...

I cannot believe that the Forum we knew from the Beginning of SolidWorks is being dissected and shutdown forever.

..so... just saw this...
https://r1132100503382-eu1-3dswym.3dexp ... OV87aEPAdw

And as far as I can tell it doesn't work. Search for "Solidworks forum Kitty Dump" and you get a link to the thread. Click on it and it brings you to a random post in that thread and it looks like this. There is, as far as I can tell, no way to get to the content of the entire thread.

image.png

[zwei]

A lot of the link still not working (Coming soon button, but how soon, no one know)
Not to mention even for those link that has a redirect, you will be asked to LOGIN to view the stuff... I really had enough with all these login wall...

[David Matula]

Yep the old forum was nice.
So I was looking around, for an answer to a problem. Could not find it anywhere and since 2008 I have submitted 40ish enhancement request and voted on a few more because they were close enough to what I was looking for.
I got so lost that I missed the time to go home.
Y'all have a great day and hope to be seeing y'all a little more.

[mattpeneguy]

Yep the old forum was nice.
So I was looking around, for an answer to a problem. Could not find it anywhere and since 2008 I have submitted 40ish enhancement request and voted on a few more because they were close enough to what I was looking for.
I got so lost that I missed the time to go home.
Y'all have a great day and hope to be seeing y'all a little more.

ya got lost in, "The Dark Pit of Despair and Frustration"?...surprising...

[David Matula]

"ya got lost in, "The Dark Pit of Despair and Frustration"?...surprising..."

I tend to get lost in the burning ring of fire. Hit the save button and end up waiting 30 min to get the program back to where you can do something.

[BuseHase]

I was also confused of that decision to close this nice froum, but hey surely there were experts at work. From now on I'm here

[Glenn Schroeder]

I was also confused of that decision to close this nice froum, but hey surely there were experts at work. From now on I'm here

The old forum was on the Jive platform, which was no longer being supported. I wasn't confused by the decision to move away from it. What I was confused by, and still am, was the decision to move it to that god-awful platform it's on now when there are numerous dedicated forum platforms out there that would have worked many orders of magnitude better than the one they went to.

I'm very happy @matt started this one.

[MJuric]

The old forum was on the Jive platform, which was no longer being supported. I wasn't confused by the decision to move away from it. What I was confused by, and still am, was the decision to move it to that god-awful platform it's on now when there are numerous dedicated forum platforms out there that would have worked many orders of magnitude better than the one they went to.

I'm very happy @matt started this one.

What really sucks is that they appear to be getting quite a bit of traffic over there. Problem is that there is really no good way to answer questions and "Diagnose" stuff. If it's not a question that can be answered in a single response, more than likely it's not getting answered or solved over there.

[SPerman]

What really sucks is that they appear to be getting quite a bit of traffic over there. Problem is that there is really no good way to answer questions and "Diagnose" stuff. If it's not a question that can be answered in a single response, more than likely it's not getting answered or solved over there.

A good bit of that traffic is guys harassing them, but like I've said, the people that run that mess think traffic is traffic and they conisder it a success.

[matt]

Meanwhile, here, we're seeing a real uptick. We had that initial spike all new sites get, and then settled into real growth. We're above the initial spike now, and the growth is accelerating.

In the same way that much of the traffic over there is complaining about over there, a good bit of the traffic here is also complaining about over there. Which is not ideal, but it comes with the territory.

This chart shows the daily traffic at the bottom, with the rhythm of low traffic on weekends In the middle is the weekly traffic, and at the top is the monthly traffic.

image.png (13.46 KiB) Viewed 8694 times

[BuseHase]

The old forum was on the Jive platform, which was no longer being supported. I wasn't confused by the decision to move away from it....

You are right Glenn, that's what I meant. They shuted down the whole forum and switch to that "super-duper" new plattform with such of great (rather not so great) functionalities, while there are other and imho better possibilities.

[DennisD]

The old forum was on the Jive platform, which was no longer being supported. I wasn't confused by the decision to move away from it. What I was confused by, and still am, was the decision to move it to that god-awful platform it's on now when there are numerous dedicated forum platforms out there that would have worked many orders of magnitude better than the one they went to.

I'm very happy @matt started this one.

AMEN, Glenn!

Where I work we often use the metaphor of a relay race. When you are running and handing off the baton to the next person, you DO NOT LET GO until you know the other person has a firm grip on it and knows what to do with it. In the case of the forum transition, not only did the next forum not have a firm grip on it and did not know what to do with it, they even went off the track!

We are like the spectators watching our goalie make a self-goal for the other team! We cannot believe what just happened! The angst!! (Wow! Two sports metaphors and I'm not even a big sports guy!)

Though I am in their user focus group meeting bi-weekly, I have to bite my tongue and hold back what I really want to say because they just shut down their listening. (For a while I even had my meeting name changed to "Dennis-Bad Cop".) Some things I recently told them they are perking up and going "Yeah, we should do that." or "Great idea!". But almost all of these things I told them over a year or two ago. They did not listen then when they had the chance to do something with them and avoid the mess they now have on their hands. And I was not the only one.

Many, many times I go to the trouble to write up my ideas in a separate Word doc so I can review it and edit it to make the idea clearer and better organized. I find these to be more complete and easier to review than just the dynamic comments and conversation in a GoToMeeting so I am offering that same thing to the other members of the group. I submit it to the group and only get an obligatory acknowledgement of receipt - there really has been no further discussion of these ideas.

About two or three months ago I put together a good collection of suggestions and links for addressing the Top Ten List debacle of the last couple of years. Two weeks ago that was finally the focus of one of these meetings and I unfortunately could not attend. I didn't even know until a few days before the meeting this was going to be on the agenda. Afterwards I watched the recording of the meeting and reviewed the notes and then provided a thoughtful response. That was a week ago. In our meeting yesterday it was not even mentioned. I have absolutely no idea what if anything is going to be done with the TTL this year. There has been no follow-up discussion. Really?! Yes, I was very critical of how the TTL has been conducted the last few years, but I was not alone. However, I also offered a lot of constructive suggestions for making the TTL great again.

Their official forum was clearly guided by upper management and marketing types and their "futurist" visionaries and evidently without a single person representing an actual forum and SWX user. I must be a glutton for punishment because I keep attending the meetings and keep trying to push for improvements. It seems like frustration has become my hobby.

[mattpeneguy]

AMEN, Glenn!

Where I work we often use the metaphor of a relay race. When you are running and handing off the baton to the next person, you DO NOT LET GO until you know the other person has a firm grip on it and knows what to do with it. In the case of the forum transition, not only did the next forum not have a firm grip on it and did not know what to do with it, they even went off the track!

We are like the spectators watching our goalie make a self-goal for the other team! We cannot believe what just happened! The angst!! (Wow! Two sports metaphors and I'm not even a big sports guy!)

Though I am in their user focus group meeting bi-weekly, I have to bite my tongue and hold back what I really want to say because they just shut down their listening. (For a while I even had my meeting name changed to "Dennis-Bad Cop".) Some things I recently told them they are perking up and going "Yeah, we should do that." or "Great idea!". But almost all of these things I told them over a year or two ago. They did not listen then when they had the chance to do something with them and avoid the mess they now have on their hands. And I was not the only one.

Many, many times I go to the trouble to write up my ideas in a separate Word doc so I can review it and edit it to make the idea clearer and better organized. I find these to be more complete and easier to review than just the dynamic comments and conversation in a GoToMeeting so I am offering that same thing to the other members of the group. I submit it to the group and only get an obligatory acknowledgement of receipt - there really has been no further discussion of these ideas.

About two or three months ago I put together a good collection of suggestions and links for addressing the Top Ten List debacle of the last couple of years. Two weeks ago that was finally the focus of one of these meetings and I unfortunately could not attend. I didn't even know until a few days before the meeting this was going to be on the agenda. Afterwards I watched the recording of the meeting and reviewed the notes and then provided a thoughtful response. That was a week ago. In our meeting yesterday it was not even mentioned. I have absolutely no idea what if anything is going to be done with the TTL this year. There has been no follow-up discussion. Really?! Yes, I was very critical of how the TTL has been conducted the last few years, but I was not alone. However, I also offered a lot of constructive suggestions for making the TTL great again.

Their official forum was clearly guided by upper management and marketing types and their "futurist" visionaries and evidently without a single person representing an actual forum and SWX user. I must be a glutton for punishment because I keep attending the meetings and keep trying to push for improvements. It seems like frustration has become my hobby.

For anyone who doesn't want to read this whole post I'll summarize it for you...Dassault be like:

[BuseHase]

For anyone who doesn't want to read this whole post I'll summarize it for you...Dassault be like:

image.png

Gold

[Glenn Schroeder]

AMEN, Glenn!

Where I work we often use the metaphor of a relay race. When you are running and handing off the baton to the next person, you DO NOT LET GO until you know the other person has a firm grip on it and knows what to do with it. In the case of the forum transition, not only did the next forum not have a firm grip on it and did not know what to do with it, they even went off the track!

We are like the spectators watching our goalie make a self-goal for the other team! We cannot believe what just happened! The angst!! (Wow! Two sports metaphors and I'm not even a big sports guy!)

Though I am in their user focus group meeting bi-weekly, I have to bite my tongue and hold back what I really want to say because they just shut down their listening. (For a while I even had my meeting name changed to "Dennis-Bad Cop".) Some things I recently told them they are perking up and going "Yeah, we should do that." or "Great idea!". But almost all of these things I told them over a year or two ago. They did not listen then when they had the chance to do something with them and avoid the mess they now have on their hands. And I was not the only one.

Many, many times I go to the trouble to write up my ideas in a separate Word doc so I can review it and edit it to make the idea clearer and better organized. I find these to be more complete and easier to review than just the dynamic comments and conversation in a GoToMeeting so I am offering that same thing to the other members of the group. I submit it to the group and only get an obligatory acknowledgement of receipt - there really has been no further discussion of these ideas.

About two or three months ago I put together a good collection of suggestions and links for addressing the Top Ten List debacle of the last couple of years. Two weeks ago that was finally the focus of one of these meetings and I unfortunately could not attend. I didn't even know until a few days before the meeting this was going to be on the agenda. Afterwards I watched the recording of the meeting and reviewed the notes and then provided a thoughtful response. That was a week ago. In our meeting yesterday it was not even mentioned. I have absolutely no idea what if anything is going to be done with the TTL this year. There has been no follow-up discussion. Really?! Yes, I was very critical of how the TTL has been conducted the last few years, but I was not alone. However, I also offered a lot of constructive suggestions for making the TTL great again.

Their official forum was clearly guided by upper management and marketing types and their "futurist" visionaries and evidently without a single person representing an actual forum and SWX user. I must be a glutton for punishment because I keep attending the meetings and keep trying to push for improvements. It seems like frustration has become my hobby.

I admire you for participating in those meetings and trying to help fix that, but I'm afraid you're pharting in the wind.

[mattpeneguy]

I admire you for participating in those meetings and trying to help fix that, but I'm afraid you're pharting in the wind.

I'm trying to decide if he's just really stubborn or very persistent...
Keep sayin' this but trying to turn a platform like that into a functional forum in the end may just be a fool's errand:

image.png (49.55 KiB) Viewed 8621 times

[zxys001]

I'm trying to decide if he's just really stubborn or very persistent...
Keep sayin' this but trying to turn a platform like that into a functional forum in the end may just be a fool's errand:
image.png

Clearly,.. the poor Screw is being directly Hammered instead of being Screwed.... and that my friends, is just not right!

[jcapriotti]

Clearly,.. the poor Screw is being directly Hammered instead of being Screwed.... and that my friends, is just not right!

Sometimes you have to get hammered before you can get screwed.

[zxys001]

Sometimes you have to get hammered before you can get screwed.

Consenting Hammered Screws,.. or is it,.. Hammered Consenting Screws?

[jcapriotti]

Consenting Hammered Screws,.. or is it,.. Hammered Consenting Screws?

Consenting screws while hammered?

[mattpeneguy]

Have you been to the swamp?...you can ask @DennisD about the consent part...he's on some team or something...

[zxys001]

Consenting screws while hammered?

Cheers!

[jcapriotti]

Have you been to the swamp?...you can ask @DennisD about the consent part...he's on some team or something...

Pretty sure he didn't know what he was consenting to.

[zxys001]

Pretty sure he didn't know what he was consenting to.