I recently asked whether Bentley could implement a long term support version for their desktop applications. The response I got was a link to their web page about their current lifecycle policy which shows that desktop applications (MicroStation, Open - anything) are only supported for ~3yrs before being retired (Bentley Lifecycle Policy | Bentley Systems | Infrastructure Engineering Software Company).
With my recent experiences on testing and rolling out new versions, it feels like there are no stable versions of the products because of the relentless drive to add features (Configuration Manager as an example).
Both of the points above are concerning for me, because my company works on major projects that last 6yrs or more and any kind of upgrade to a workspace during a project is very risky.
I've added an idea to the MicroStation ideas board (Long Term Support builds for desktop | MicroStation Ideas Portal (aha.io)), but am I the only one that feels that a longer term support version, that is focused on stability and bug fixes, would give us as the user base, more confidence in the software?
Hi Mick,
So far with Microstation CE, there is no version that would qualify for long term support. They have been too busy with changes to fix the things that never worked in Microstation CE version 1.
I would like Bentley to make Microstation CE at least as good (stable / lack of bugs) as Microstation V8i (SS3), before continuing on. One of the problems is that Bentley does not even do a beta testing program these days. Each version comes out with more bugs and any bug reported can take two years to get looked at!
--Robert
Completely agree with that suggestion Robert. I think that if they were to add a build channel for this type of release, it could potentially be the only release channel that Bentley would need to do a Beta test for, and would be a way for users to fine tune any recently (last 3 years) released features.
I'm also anticipating that it would be very active because users would know that the Beta testing was relevant for a few years, not just the next 6 months.
That's a hard ask for Bentley. They could be honest with you and Just Say No, but that's not good marketing.
Connect r17 10.17.2.61 self-employed-Unpaid Beta tester for Bentley