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Our Design team has been pushing IronCAD to our outside resources for a few years now. We've got a couple of them to at least buy a seat to try. This is some of the more recent feedback we've recieved. It doesn't give one a real warm fuzzy feeling, but it shows what we're up against at least in this neck of the woods: Company A We were considering IronCad along with several other 3D packages. Once upon a time (in a former life), I was involved with the CAD selection process (around 1986-87). We selected what we thought were the best CAD packages available (and they were), However, the two CAD systems we selected both fell victim to AutoCads mighty marketing engine. As AutoCad began to dominate the engineering world, more and more of our customers were specifying AutoCad. In addition to our customers driving which Cad package they wanted us to use, I also found that many of the engineers searching for new employment opportunities would not consider working for a company that was not using AutoCad. It was either get on the bandwagon or get left behind. To make a long story short, The decision process was no longer as simple as selecting the best tool for the job. The selection process is as much about selecting the tool that has the best chance of becoming the next dominating force as AutoCad was during the 80s & 90s. Some of our considerations other than is it the best tool were as follows: · Customer acceptance (which software would be accepted by the largest number of customers) · Acceptance of the Cad system by potential engineering candidates · Support from 3rd party component suppliers providing (on line drawings) · Ability of the Cad system to be integrated into our ERP, project management, & accounting systems. · Hardware required to effectively run the software. · How long will the Cad company be around - (probably carries more weight than any other variable). · The cost of the software is minimal when compared to the cost to integrate the Cad software, the time spent learning & training, the database of drawings (you dont want to keep starting over) Company B Company B has settled on SolidWorks for probably the same reasons you have pointed out. When I started here I was told that SolidWorks had been shoved down their throats by corporate and they have learned to live with it. They used Inventor for a year and Mechanical Desktop for a year. Their files are a mess. So, I had the choice to learn and use SW. But I went through the SolidWorks tutorils and I found it to be difficult to DESIGN with, like Pro/E and Mechanical Desktop had been. Too much do it exactly this way or else. The other people in the department use SW but Im not too impressed with what I see, design quality and productivity. I told the boss about IronCad and he bought me a seat. Currently I design in IronCad and if I need to I convert it into SW so that I can do a simulation or stress analysis. Ive been here nine months and have yet felt the need to simulate anything or run a stress analysis. While I was with Company C I convinced the boss to get me a seat of IronCad. I had the whole thing tricked out and ready for other seats to be purchased but that never happened. Mostly Mr. X had me making pretty looking proposal models. Their head designer is an Autocad guy who is stuck in 2d and on one layer. Yes, you heard right. They draw everything on one layer... I can understand your reasoning for choosing SW. For me though, a free thinking designer, I need the freedom IronCad delivers. IronCad is up to version 6.2 now and I would still be happy using a version 3 yrs old. They could go out of business tomorrow and I would make sure I had PCs enough to run the software for the rest of my life if the only other alternative was Parametric based design. This doesn't paint the most rosey of pictures, but it's does show that IronCAD has some faithful followers who refuse to use something just because it's what everyone else is using. Feedback is feedback even though it's not always

1. Was aware of this feature, but don't really use it that much. I make alot of part prints, but after putting the initial views in with the Standard View option, I use the General view option to place additional part views. I use the general view based off the scene mostly on assembly drawings to show hidden areas of the station or head. 2. I'm all for multiple views on a sheet.

Thanks for the update Chris!

I did a search, but nothing came up, so I thought I'd ask. I'm guessing 7.0 will be out fairly soon? I'm wondering if there is a full or partial list of items that have been added or changed on the upcoming version that we could see? Thanks!

My time was 48 seconds. Dell 420 Workstation Dual 933Mhz Processors 1 Gig. RAM 64 MB ATI Fire GL2 9.1 Gig SCSI HD - 10,000 RPM Windows NT

From Chris: "If you create a new catalog; it is not read-only by default; but if you're sharing catalogs and someone loads it before you do; whoever loads the catalog first will remain the only individual with the permission to write to it. " I'm guessing this is something new with the patch? Previously all of us in the engineering area could have a particular catalog open and add or withdraw items at will as long as we saved it right away. If someone else attempted to access this catalog before it was saved with the new part, you would get an error. It's my understanding that as of this patch the first person to open IronCad in the morning will be the only one to add to this catalog all day unless this person closes their IronCad? Who would be the next person to be able to drop an object into a catalog? Would the software be able to track who the second person was to open up IronCad? If so it would be great to see who this was and be able to track who has what open. We have people in different plants around the city using the same catalogs. Imagine trying to open a catalog and not being able to use it or find out who might have it open and left for the day. No way to track the user. The same idea would be great for regular IronCad scenes and drawings. If someone has an assembly open and I attempt to open a part that is linked to that assembly I either have to find the person who has the file open, or save a copy of this same part off to another spot risking duplication and other users not knowing which part is the current part. Needless to say we do not use the copy option and are forced to get on the phone and/or start walking around to the different users in order to get them to close up the file. Lots of time wasted. If there was some way to see who the user is, that would be totally AWESOME!! I just want make sure I'm understanding this. Thanks! I'll add this to the enhancement portion of the forum as well.

I sent the file to support. I rebooted the computer and now it works. I'm not sure what happened, but it had been going on all morning. I'm also not sure why it crashed. It created a 2 meg error file when it crunched. Kind of jumped the gun on this one, but the fact that it crashed after fighting with it this morning got me a little riled. So far so good this afternoon though. Thanks!!

I just noticed that I am unable to use the linear smartdimension to measure distances from a surface to a surface in a scene. I attempted to use this tool about 4 times. During the 4th attempt the system locked up and I lost about an hour and half worth of work. Attached is the error file. Ok.. tried uploading file, and was told file not allowed. I can e-mail it to ya?

I realize money is tight for a company of IronCad's size, but I was at the Chicago Trade Show yesterday and this is what I found. AutoDesk and Solidworks had some good sized displays for their products. They also had hourly demonstrations of their latest softwares. I walked by these two areas 3 times throughout the day. Each time around all 30 to 40 seats were full and there were people standing behind and on the sides as well. Each company had about a dozen partners who build add on packages included in the display area. I approached a few of them and asked them if they could directly import Ironcad files. Two of them said "Ironwhat" They were pretty proud of the list of other software programs they could directly import from, but Ironcad was nowhere to be seen. I realize that because they had a full house at the demos does not mean they are going to sell software to every one of these people. This type of exposure sure can't hurt though. These booths were probably two of the busiest booths in the whole show. Even if IronCad did a show every two or three years, it seems if nothing else it would let people know that it's still around and hasn't disappeared completely. Like a quote I saw earlier in the forum. "Out of site, out of mind"

I believe it Chris. They wouldn't want to invite anyone to whoop up on em!!! To bad they couldn't invite everyone, and have a consumer reports type of setup. Have 20 tasks, with each system graded on time and ease for each event. He He He.... They probably wouldn't stand a chance.... Things are heating up over the article though...!! http://www.tenlinks.com/NEWS/ARTICLES/tl/081102_sw_nofair.htm http://www.cadserver.co.uk/common/viewer/archive/2002/Aug/13/news1.phtm http://www.cadenceweb.com/2002/0602/watch0602.html A letter sent into Ten Links Daily: A point to consider is that SolidWorks was given the opportunity to send one of their AE's to the competition. That they elected not to may be for valid reasons -- it was an Autodesk users' group. Be that as it may, SolidWorks passed on an opportunity to really crack the Inventor nut. John Burrill Didn't I read that SolidWorks was asked to provide an expert to use their product for the shoot-out but didn't? Danny K. Christian Let's do it again with a small group say, four from each side using identical equipment, so we can average in their total elapsed times. This first match was not taken too seriously but it did generate a lot of interest on two world leading products. Let's have a few judges also and do this rematch right. Let's also advertise the event and set it up so users around the world can tune in or at least be aware of it. Two champions slugging it out. Let's really try and use people that are equal in their user qualifications. It could be all beginners or all experts or even mixed up just as long as both sides are as equal as humanly possible. Richard Williams

I saw this little article and thought you all might get a kick out of it. It seems like they lean in favor of Inventor, but I'd like to see IronCad thrown in the mix. The exploded view and animation would be tough for IronCad, but the rest... I think IronCad would do rather well. http://www.caddigest.com/subjects/adsk_inventor/select/moss_shootout.htm

Thanks Chris!

This should probably be in the enhancement forum, but it fits this situataion. A nice addition to IronCad would be a sizing option without having to right click and choose a size. Once all views are selected that you want to scale simply click on an arrow to make the views larger or smaller. Have two sets of these little sizing arrows. One for large scale changes like 1:1 - 1:2 and one set for small scale changes. 1:1.1 - 1:1.2 etc. As of now we have to right click, put the cursor where you wish to change the scale, type in a number and hit enter. It's 4 clicks every time you want to scale a drawing view. It could be just 1 click. How many trips into that box will it take to get the view just the way you want? It takes me 2 - 4 trips to get the views to the largest possible size and still fit inside the paper limits. The ideal method would be to click and watch the views scale up or down right in front of you.

I agree with you 100% Carlo. Within the last year our group had discussions with the people of IronCad over the Alventive debacle. We were paying thousands of dollars for the Armor Advantage program, and receiving very minor updates while programmers spent time on other software add-ons that were of no use to us. When IronCad broke from Alventive we were told this would not happen again. The feeling of deja vu is falling upon us. I'm sure that Innovation Suite is needed by some, and is very useful, but this product is of no use to us. We are paying armor advantage money for IronCad enhancements and upgrades. If one were to peruse this forum and decide where the most work is needed, it would probably be IronCad. 90% of the posts reflect enhancement requests or problems with IronCad. In these times of shrinking budgets our company, and I'm sure many others, will be looking close at the thousands spent on AA programs in the search for a reasonable return on investment.

I have a final update on this situation. We were allowed to download SP6 and our group is in the process of loading up IronCad 5.2. Everything seems to be working fine on the 3 machines we have setup so far. The rest of our licenses should go just as smooth. Thanks!

I have an update on my situation in case anyone esle should run into this type of scenario. After speaking with the other CAD station user, I found out that he had installed SP6 on his computer a month or so ago, because another application had specified SP6 as well. This worked fine until the next time he rebooted his computer. Upon startup IS has a check to make sure SP5 is current on each computer. It attempted to load SP5 overtop of SP6. This errored out, and eventually he was forced to uninstall SP6, and let the IS setup load the current SP5 package. I'm guessing that the installer 2.0 was not uninstalled from his computer and that left him the capability to load IronCad 5.2. Unfortunately for compatibility issues among the other users in our area, he had to uninstall IronCad 5.2 and reinstall the previous IronCad version. Our IS people are supposed to call me this afternoon to let me know what the situation is on SP6. Hopefully our department will be allowed SP6 and we'll be upgraded to 5.2 by the end of the week.

The installation ran the same, but it didn't create the text file. I attempted to download that installer as you suggested, but it errored out as the wrong OS or wrong OS version. I called our IS people, but haven't heard back from them yet.

One of the Engineers in my department loaded up 5.2 this morning and everything has been working fine for him. I attempted to load 5.2 early this afternoon and I had an installshield window pop up. It tells me that there is an incompatible operating system installed on the computer. It is looking for Windows 95 or newer, or Windows NT 4.0 SP6. Our company in this location is currently running NT 4.0 SP5. (1500+ employees) For some reason the Engineer on the other side of the room running the same system with SP5 was able to install and run 5.2 and I am not. Does anyone have an explanation for this? I have yet to contact our I.S. area on the SP6 issue, but since this division of the company is upgraded all at one time, getting SP6 might take an act of God.