In the late summer of 2007 I was pretty happy with Pc-Dmis version 3.7MR3. Sure, the 3.5s and first 3 tries at 3.7 had been rough around the edges and 3.6 a disaster of historical proportion, but 3.7MR3 was stable and mostly trouble free.
It was then that I had my big opportunity to tell my employers what I wanted in a new CMM. The finer indexing capabilities of Zeiss were appealing. I like to learn, so taking on a new software also had enough appeal to outweigh the downside.
A couple of things tipped my decision to stay with the Hexagoon product line. The biggest was the hundreds of existing Pc-Dmis programs on my company's server. And we were keeping the CMM we had, so having both use the same software made sense. While smaller, a still significant part of my decision was this forum and the community of regulars. I "knew" and respected many here, so if I had a problem, I knew I could post here and get answers from a source I trusted.
Since 3.7MR3 I have been underwhelmed with the new versions. I took the Xactmeasure GD&T course and have tried to leave legacy dimensions behind. But after several months I still find it cumbersome, confusing, and often just not ready for real world use. Frankly it is barely up to the point I think a betatest release would be proper as of v2009 about 2 years after you released it!
If I could go back to 2007 and make that decision again, Pc-Dmis would not even get it's hat in the ring.
In fact I am going to be looking into switching to CMM Manager or some other 3rd party software, since replacing both of my CMMs is not an option.
Dear Hexagon, as the cranky old guy used to say, "If that's the best you can do. . . it ain't good enough!" Banning or deleting your critics won't make it better.
Stop releasing junk. Stop thinking you have to have a major release every year. Take 5 years if you need but make your next release the next 3.2063 or 3.7MR3. Make every release after that just as solid and reliable. A number of the best programmers out here in the real world using your software every day feel the same way and are saying the same things. We are tired of getting junk in exchange for our SMA$. One by one we are telling our employers, don't pay the SMA, let's look into other CMM software/hardware options.
You can ban me now, but it won't make what I have said untrue.
-Wes Cisco
