Connect - will it ever get fixed?

Reggie,

No, I've run out of time...and obviously patience. How about we start by dealing with the 20 or so open defects I've already filed since product release (not to mention the ones in beta that still aren't fixed). It seems pretty pointless to keep spending all my time logging issues that may or may not get fixed at some unknown point in time.

I don't believe anybody could complete a real project with this product. At least not if they are trying to incorporate any new "features" like parmemetrics or items. I've try, given it my all and now I'm screwed because I can't deliver files that are stable and have no idea when or if they will be.

I don't want to take this out on support people because they've been dealt the same crappy hand as the customers. This was clearly a management decision to shove this out the door prematurely. Now you guys are on the front line trying to defend a really bad position because somebody in the rear pushed thru a bad plan and I'm telling my client "Sorry your building doesn't really need doors does it? Well maybe you can have them when someone at BSI gets their act together." Maybe they were right and I should have used AutoCAD like they wanted me to.

Hi,

although I think there are many things Bentley can and shoud do better, I disagree with you in some topics:

Unknown said:

It looks like Bentley doesn't really test its product before releasing it.

It made me laugh. Seriously, testing of any software product today is nearly never realized as ticking checkbox or whatevever else on GUI level. I am very sure Bentley developers implemented complex both code and user testing. Despite of plenty of bugs and "not bugs but not good enoug implemented features" have been discussed, MicroStation CONNECT Edition is pretty stable from its first beta.

As far as I know nobody in software industry today believe or expect it's possible to produce software without bugs, especially if it's complex as MicroStation and if rewritten from scratch. Yes, testing (and there are many types of testing used in software development) decreases number of bugs, but it doesn't solve everything. So important is (and it's one of a main idea behing agile development) how quickly are you able to implement the fixt and to release a new version. And it's what Bentley don't do well in my opininon: Waiting many months for new version if everybody had to know years ago that at least one year after CONNECT Edition well be released many bugs and backlogs will be discovered is bad.

Unknown said:

So, you do not test a product by ticking boxes whether you can open a file, draw a line, open reference dialog box, copy/paste etc. to mention a few.

Hmmm .... so why all operations you mentioned work fine? My feeling is the most of discovered bugs are associated with a different functionality between V8i and CE, often in complex scenarios (probably because the code was rewritten) or with new features like parametric modelling (which is completely new concept in MicroStation developed on new Parasolid library). I see no option how open a file, draw a line, open reference... can discover these bugs.

Unknown said:

It took Bentley 14 years to create a 64-bit application

Interesting. Woudl you be so kind and to explain how do you compute 14 years? Or is it just "a number" to express how bad Bentley are?

Unknown said:

Using the CONNECT Edition as platform for other products is going to be a nightmare!

Do you have a personal experience? As far as I know no product like PowerCivil, Bentley Map or AECOsim Building Designer has been released yet on CONNECT Edition platform? I guess the main reason of this fact (which is not good at all, because these products are often more imporant than MicroStation itself) is not (in)stability of MicroStation, but an effort required to migrate and rewrite applications code, adapt to a new GUI, new configuration structure etc. i hope Bentley will be able to release them this year.

With regards,

  Jan

Hi MJAN,

Unknown said:

uuuuhhh by August 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP being first x64 OS > you may do the math.

Frankly, how the release date of Windows XP is related how long Bentley developed 64bit MicroStation? Do you really think Bentley (and any other company) started migration to 64bit platform when Windows XP 64bit, one from the worst piece of the software released by MicroStation, become available? Until Windows 7 there were not even too many users of 64bit Windows at all.

Taking into account all technical conditions, which I can evaluate better then business ones, like stability of platform and API including drivers, availability of good compiler (both C++ and C#) with features required to link together all used modules and technologies (like Parasolid core, DirectX subsystem etc.), I guess it took few years, but not 14 for sure.

And many companies, even the big one with plenty of users, still have not released 64bit versions of their products (like ESRI with ArcGIS for Desktop). I guess simply because it's pretty costly and complicated path.

Regards,

  Jan

Unknown said:

In house testing can only go so far.

I don't deny that there are some complex issues that are bound to arise only in real world... but...  the default browser for Windows 10 is EDGE which Help doesn't work on.  (Defect 7000402018) and was reported during the EAP.   Seriously how hard can it be to see if Help works on a default install of a "certified" platform?

There were plenty of other known issues as well and the defects I've uncovered have surfaced doing first attempts at some very simple tasks.

Bentley has a lot of resources at their disposal.  This product is simply showing where their priorities are.

Unknown said:

Bentley has a lot of resources at their disposal.  This product is simply showing where their priorities are.

It's pretty clever note! In fact there are never enough resources (developers, testers, documentation writers etc.) in software development ;-), but there is always a chance to change resource allocation and I agree the results express company priorities. From this perspective I am not sure if MicroStation is really top priority, me feeling is more the priority is to develop or acquire many products but afterwards there is no capacity to keep steady active development matching competitors.

Regards,

  Jan