Hi all, when I first bought ViaCAD, I couldn't stretch myself to buy Shark (nearly $2000) so invested in ViaCAD v10 and bought the add-on (power pack pro). I keep looking out for sales and things to upgrade to Shark, mainly for the added features.
So this morning I'm checking round again, and come across this link.

http://www.masterviacad.com/store/page2/index.html

So if I was a new customer I get some special price, not bad at all, brings it under £1000 for me in the UK. But if I try and upgrade on the link below, adding in my serial numbers I get some what of a small discount off the retail price?

http://www.punchcad.com/...7-Punch-SharkCAD-Pro-v10

What I'm seeing here is there's no benefit from being an existing customer? The Punchcad link doesn't include power pack either, that would be more on top. I really want to upgrade to Shark, but if I've already pumped in the cash for ViaCAD V10 Pro, how come I now need to pump in twice as much again to get the shark upgrade?

I could just come back as a new customer and buy the cheaper version?

Hi NeuTech!

That's fine and I've had similar thoughts, it would be great, as I've previously mentioned to be able to 'create your own' with purchased add ons to suit whoever uses it. I mentioned this when talking about defaults the other day in another post, personalise them to suit needs.

It's like the power pack, I bought to work with converting mesh to nurbs, I've since found a stand alone program which does the same thing, and works really well, no spinning wheels unless you ask it to do something daft!

I don't use wood work, I don't use the building element, but I would like gd & t in drafting. The ability to customise would be great!

You can work around some of the power pack tools, which I found before I bought it, like line normal to surface, you can achieve the same with a point and a work plane.

I must admit I wasn't best pleased when I saw the difference in price on the links. How is one far far cheaper than the other? Who has been unfortunate enough to purchase the more expensive version?

Existing customers are the ones on here, ironing out issues. There are more and more bugs popping up each week, another one has been posted about the area fill, the video made my morning it was so funny, but then in ViaCAD it's fine? Stability!
It's great that things are being fixed, and I replied to Tim saying a similar thing, but should there be this many problems?

My app is called Shark Pro

On the whole it works really well - but it lets me down sometimes

Further, it's beneficial for everyone to point out where it falls over

I second UGMENTALCASE's statement. "CAD for professionals" implies a robust core set of utilities that are above novice or "everyday" use. It's not that we are expecting VC/Shark to be like anything else specifically. We may describe functionality that is contained in the codes we use each day at our full time jobs as a way of simply siting a known example. But I do not see anyone actually expecting Shark to "be" Creo, Catia or NX. If anything, I guess I am the one that has stated most specifically comparisons to Creo, Catia and SolidWorks as I use those now. If that is the message I have perpetuated and/or created, it was not my intention. I accept that responsibility.

What I believe I read mostly are the frustration rants regarding buggy and/or long standing issues with VC/Shark. The minimum functionality CAD bar height has risen to a very content rich level over thirty years that most users somewhat "expect" to be there. So, when one reads "New and improved Draw Views and BOM Creation" and sees a meshed vehicle form on the site, it implies a level of functionality and usability to the "World Brain" of today. But mostly, we expect what is there to be robust and not subject to buggy behavior for years. We that have used CAD for decades know full well that each code has its likes, dislikes and quirks. And we know there are always workarounds to these issues. But when the workarounds fall down, then it makes for a long and frustrating day.

I fully concede I am a Noob on Shark and try to steal away as much time as I can after work to get better at its way of doing business. I know next to nothing on the code as I have been at it for a little over a month. I need to create a thousand models before my opinion holds any weight. But in just the short time I have been using it, I see some cracks that others have seconded. I try to read as many old posts on the forum as I can as well from the long time users. I have noticed a older posts siting issues that seem to remain today. I am really pulling for Shark to be robust. Users on the front lines can do that by sighting issues and sharing them. I hope the Dev Team listens and can effect change.

Edited by user Thursday, February 8, 2018 6:08:36 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I haven't seen any evidence of this. What makes Solidworks expensive is part and database management and how the product scales at enterprise level.
I think some improvements that SharkCAD and SharkCAD pro need may well require more expensive licensing terms and do make it harder to develop for both Windows and Mac platforms. But this does not require enterprise pricing.

Personally, I would pay extra for SharkCAD to recognise, work with and export instanced parts. I would like to see the introduction of std parts configurators. I would like to see the Concept Explorer updated to something more up to date and relevant. It was ok in the late-1990's but we are not running on MacOs 7 or Windows 96 anymore. I would like to have the constraints tools from older versions restored.

I think a lot of energy (and licensing resources) have gone to facet modelling in recent years. (I have tried to make things in facets - but again the polish is missing, making the tools really hard to make progress with). These tools are very clever, but who is using them ?

This I believe is what happened with constraints some years ago and perhaps with other toolsets too

The danger of such excursions ... probably in the name of marketing to new users ? ... results in a lack of focus on core competencies ??

It must be difficult - but I think the developers need to decide what is core and place a majority of resources on progressing those frameworks, rather than hanging new tools off this same said framework.

Are 2D constraints (Dcubed / CDS?) more important than general core development ?

What is core ?

I see yes, I suppose it's what they see fit to expand on etc. As for constraints, I've started using N sided polygon for my shapes now, at least it's all joined, and I can edit the end points, easy ish....
Even that is frustrating though. I did a pin had a number of end points, as you'd imagine. The list of points I could edit shows up, but you can't expand the box down so you can see the whole list at once? So you're up and down the list like a ping pong ball trying to find things, I mean this is the ability to edit the size of a window letting the tool down? Someone mentioned a while ago, who is thoroughly testing the tools out before release?

I've tracked down Version 7, but it's in the states, and I'm not! I would love to see what it was like to use the constraints in that version. May even use it full time, and anything fancy I need use in version 10, and export out. As it's a large ish package and quite some weight to it, I don't fancy paying the import fees, so still looking for this!

I've got version 8, which I loaded up to test out the igs issue I reported, and I quickly created a shape and a drawing, and even the drawing was cleaner, crisper to look at. This is totally stock setting in version 8 on my laptop. Started a drawing in 10, and the lines seem thicker and clunky.

It's like the more new things get added the basics go out the window.

I do get it, it's hard to satisfy everyone, but for me the basics, that probably once worked very well, are being left behind. And the more new things that get added, the old things break. Like the BOM issues, igs files not bringing in points. Even down to when you go to import an 'iges' file it says 'iges', but only lets you pick 'igs' ( no this isn't a spelling mistake by me). Daft things like this people pick up on, or at least I do, and again this is 'professional CAD'.

Like NeuTech said about the car on the website (not sure which post it was in), the more you look at it, the more you realise that hasn't been done in Shark or VC has it? If it has why isn't that file available as a key selling point, and to help it's users develop their skills. Look what you can do in Shark!!!! Or is it look what you can import?

The preferences, I chose 'Aerospace' naturally that's what I work in. What does this even do? There's me thinking it may tailor some option for me or something? Literally no idea what it does. How on earth do I find out? I don't know, like a lot of things, bit of a guessing game!
As for the original question, still not heard anything......

:-)

The Aerospace option in the Preferences - should be termed 'Vehicle' IMHO

Not just planes and spaceship ... but also cars, buses, trucks, boats and ships all use Z up and X is along the vehicle

Product design typically switches the X and Y

As I remember, SW sets Y as up by default

This needs fleshing out properly !

3 buttons with 3 little sketches would fix this !

>>I wouldn't have thought so, but you get it whether you like it or not when you buy the software.

One approach would be to divide into 'personas'. I have excellent Adobe replacement software - yahoo !!! (thanks Serif) that does just this - and it works well

eg: You don't model something and render it at the same time, so switching personas makes some sense ... perhaps even allowing you to buy the personas that suit your needs ?

Lots of ideas - but what's still really critical is core functionality working reliably - I'd love to see a release focus solely on this !

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ok, I repeat this for 10 years ...

repair, throw, rewrite?
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