V9 Sooner or Later?
- Thread starter leeave96
- Start date
A while back the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was asked a question during a press conference: "Do you know for certain if Osama Bin Laden is alive or dead?"
Rumsfeld's response: "Yes. We know for a fact that Bin Laden is either alive or is dead. Next question."
In that spirit I submit this answer to the question at hand:
Ailbre v9 will definitely be released sometime in January... or later. :lol:
Robert
bscott.arc-tech.com
Member
I vote for Jan 32nd. Or Febuary 30th. Whichever comes first. ;-)
Seriously, I don't know when it will come out, and I won't speculate. I do hope that Alibre Inc doesn't feel presured to get it out too soon, and takes the time to test things more. (Nobody ever tests software enough, but we can hope for more.)
"Software is like dinner. You can take it out of the oven whenever you want, but you'll be happiest if you wait until it's actually done." -- Bobby D. Bryant
bscott.arc-tech.com
Member
I suspect you're being facetious, but I want to emphasize that I am serious about waiting. I've used enough buggy software in my career to know that I would **FAR** rather wait. When your business depends on something -- be it a machine or a computer program -- the cost of defects is huge. Maybe you would rather have something less reliable sooner. We would rather have something more reliable later.
The attitude of “get it out the door first, fix it later” is quite common in the IT world. I also consider it quite harmful.
Re:
Then - the next point is - would there be - or could there be - a 'Crash List" - of things to purposely try to do to make the Software Crash, Hang, Bog, etc. and see how it responds? If each tester had such a list - of all the things that tend to make it fail - they could start there - and then add their own experimenting to that! Robert
I know there must be some V9 Beta Testers out there (There was even some hint - of 'Alpha' testers!) - but - I wonder if they (the Beta Testers) would be allowed to say - when it is ready, stable, and firm; as well as delicious (has some yummy new features), with no aftertaste (doesn't leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth - because it backs up when you do something new or strange!)! :lol:bscott.arc-tech.com said:
Then - the next point is - would there be - or could there be - a 'Crash List" - of things to purposely try to do to make the Software Crash, Hang, Bog, etc. and see how it responds? If each tester had such a list - of all the things that tend to make it fail - they could start there - and then add their own experimenting to that! Robert
swertel
Alibre Super User
Re:
That's the point of beta testing. There isn't really a list, but rather each beta tester does his normal routine and then experiments to push the software a little further. If it makes it past our daily grinds, then it is stable enough. Problem with beta testing is the same as QA testing at Alibre, we can't possibly conceive of every possible way that every user is going to use the software. But, with enough beta testers there are enough hardware differences and enough technique differences to give a statistical confidence level of how stable the software is.
But sadly, the beta testers will state, even with our NDA, we aren't told when the actual release is going to be.
--Scott
rbrian said:
That's the point of beta testing. There isn't really a list, but rather each beta tester does his normal routine and then experiments to push the software a little further. If it makes it past our daily grinds, then it is stable enough. Problem with beta testing is the same as QA testing at Alibre, we can't possibly conceive of every possible way that every user is going to use the software. But, with enough beta testers there are enough hardware differences and enough technique differences to give a statistical confidence level of how stable the software is.
But sadly, the beta testers will state, even with our NDA, we aren't told when the actual release is going to be.
--Scott
I know at my company we DO build what we call a Test Plan that describes all of the boundary conditions that need to be tested plus every possible combination of commands - logical or not - that we can come up with. That plan is then used on a variety of different HW platforms, OS configs, 3rd party apps running/installed, etc to ensure that the product will work as intended - even when users do unintended/illogical things. I suspect Alibre does a similar test effort in house even before it goes out to alpha and beta test.
As for the release date of 9.0, when Alibre was in Albuquerque, NM for a user seminar a month ago, the Alibre reps specifically stated that 9.0 would be released in Jan and would include improvements to sheet metal and 2D drafting capabilities.
Robert
bscott.arc-tech.com
Member
Re:
LOL!! No, it wasn't me, I swear! ;-)
Seriously, I'm eager for improvements, too. And our CAD engineers are much more eager then I am. I've just been burned so many times by software that was rushed through testing that I tend to be rather grouchy when it comes to the thought. But I never did anything other then post in this forum.
So far, overall, I think we've been happy with Alibre, both the company, and the product we bought.
Dealing with the company has been very good, for both sales and customer service (Hi Mike! ), and for tech support. I've always gotten quick responses. The tech people are always willing to help, even for somewhat advanced questions about installation and deployment. That's something you don't see much these days, in this industry.
And while I don't use the product myself, the feedback I get from our engineers is overall positive. As one, they call seem to comment that, while AD is not as slick or as powerful as, say, SolidWorks, it is quite servicable, and the price/value ratio is clearly worlds better then SW.
And we've seen a steady improvement in stability and compatability from 8.0 SP0 to 8.2 SP2, which makes everybody happy.
I just want to keep moving forward, is all.
Gaspar said:ntar827 said:
Hey Ben! You haven't been talking to Alibre? Have you?
LOL!! No, it wasn't me, I swear! ;-)
Seriously, I'm eager for improvements, too. And our CAD engineers are much more eager then I am. I've just been burned so many times by software that was rushed through testing that I tend to be rather grouchy when it comes to the thought. But I never did anything other then post in this forum.
So far, overall, I think we've been happy with Alibre, both the company, and the product we bought.
Dealing with the company has been very good, for both sales and customer service (Hi Mike!
), and for tech support. I've always gotten quick responses. The tech people are always willing to help, even for somewhat advanced questions about installation and deployment. That's something you don't see much these days, in this industry.And while I don't use the product myself, the feedback I get from our engineers is overall positive. As one, they call seem to comment that, while AD is not as slick or as powerful as, say, SolidWorks, it is quite servicable, and the price/value ratio is clearly worlds better then SW.
And we've seen a steady improvement in stability and compatability from 8.0 SP0 to 8.2 SP2, which makes everybody happy.
I just want to keep moving forward, is all.
Re:
In searching for Beta Testers - a screening test question(s) might be - do you tend to run numerous programs while running Alibre Design? Do you often have a lot (more that 12) IE windows open? Do you have Programs X, Y, & Z - that are usually open on your system? What is your hardware configuration: (fill in a form)?
I think the idea I had on this was that each time we send in an issue or incident - they keep a file on it. So - If a crash happened when say - I was in Helix feature doing an edit with a zillion IE windows open and programs X, Y, and Z running, on a 512MB P4 2.8 machine - then I would set that up as a testing parameter to be checked for sure.siggy said:
In searching for Beta Testers - a screening test question(s) might be - do you tend to run numerous programs while running Alibre Design? Do you often have a lot (more that 12) IE windows open? Do you have Programs X, Y, & Z - that are usually open on your system? What is your hardware configuration: (fill in a form)?
Sheet metal - by the way - If I remember right - was first included with AD V6.0 (Just before I bought in!), and is still at V1.0 itself - so improvements to it are well due. I also heard some time ago that big improvments are coming to SM - due to a new Corporate Affiliation and connection that was built (I understood - with a Strong Specialized Sheet Metal Software Company. Sources = Reliable)! Robertsiggy said:
I would like to remind too that version 8.2 changes were originally intended to be in version 9.0 but Alibre was rushed to add certain features and fixes. This was mainly due to the overwhelming Xpress users. Alibre's decision to simply add 8.2 was in itself a big boost in how I felt about the company. The other features to come out in version 9.0 were not ready and that is why they just did a version update. This tells me they were going through quite a lot of testing on the version 9 features.