Why is Bentley discontinuing support for select series? Are you trying to force us to use The Connect addition?
I'm not thrilled with the interface with Connect. And from what I have been reading I am not alone.
I HATE HATE HATE THE RIBBON, I hate all ribbons but I think this one is the worse. There are too many clicks to get to the task you want to go to.
Back in the old days, Bentley was proud that they required fewer mouse clicks \ keystrokes to perform a task compared to Autocad. That workflow went out the window. Using JUST the ribbon just count how many clicks you have to make. LESS IS MORE!
Our recent update to the Bentley Support Policy are designed to assist users and organizations to manage the support and use of older versions of software like Microstation V8i etc. There is a clearly defined date when certain versions have Expiring or Discontinued Support. We have been developing the CONNECT versions for many years and would like to encourage all users to experience the new tools and capabilities.
https://communities.bentley.com/communities/everything_else_community/bentley-support-policy/w/bentley-support-policy
To assist in your migration to the CONNECT version of MicroStation we have provided a number of Wiki articles and training material.
https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/microstation__wiki/39386/upgrading-to-microstation-connect-edition
If you have questions on the Bentley Support Policy, please reach out to our Support Team.
If you have questions or need help in planning your upgrade to the CONNECT Edition, please reach out to our Upgrade Team.
I hope this information is of assistance.
RegardsAndrew BellTechnical SupportBentley Systems
Andrew Bell said:We have been developing the CONNECT versions for many years
That's the worry really. It's still really buggy and slow compared to V8i. There is a lot to like too, but getting people to switch will continue to be an up hill struggle until you can get get at least even with V8i.
Hi Duncan,
Duncan Macdonald said:That's the worry really.
I agree with you, in my opinion it's even worse: CONNECT Edition is the biggest fail in Bentley history. It's not about new features, new GUI etc. but software quality: While Bentley Software was considered as author of sometimes not friendly software, but stable and capable to work with qite big datasets, how CE is developed degraded Bentley software development to basic level, worse than many open source projects, with pretty low quality. Some discovered bugs and issues are so obvious, that can be used as a proof there is no test strategy nobody takes care to test code wtih "real size" data.
Duncan Macdonald said:will continue to be an up hill struggle
And we discuss "only" MicroStation. Discipline specific products, especially OpenRoads Designer, are much worse and they are one big disaster.
Whereas I was able to help some my customers to start MicroStation CE evaluation and the situation is "ok, Bentley don't want to tell us any strategy, priority, how bugs are solved, what ideas are accpeted, but we will continue with testing for one or two versions and we will see", few companies after ORD testing (it crashes every hour, what takes 1 sec in MStn stops ORD for several seconds, no possibility to generate output accordingly to local law and regulations) decided to start evaluation of migration to competitive platforms, because if ORD has been developed for several years already and eight versions were released so far and the quality is still zero, probably no chance it will be solved in acceptable near future, so it's probably cheaper to stop paying maintenance and to invest the same money to migration outside Bentley platform, where often much better support with knowledge of local conditions exist (not the case for Bentley because they actively fight agains partners and cancel many of them in the past).
Bentley Map is similar, the only customers evaluating it are "simple drafting" users, but no GIS, because CE still does not support substantial part of V8i functionality and I was not able to migrate any V8i project to CE from different reasons.
But the migration has to be done "all together", so when Bentley force (it's not motivation, but force) user to migrate MicroStation CE and other products cannot be use in production environment at all, it makes these users even more angry and open to seek alterantives.
Regards,
Jan
Bentley Accredited Developer: iTwin Platform - AssociateLabyrinth Technology | dev.notes() | cad.point
Tried to get one of our staff to use CE the other day. In the end they gave up and went back to SS4, as the files they were working on were just plain slow in CE!! Bentley, you need to sharpen anythings up and get CE to match SS4 in terms of speed and usability!!
It's a bit weird in context of this discussion that no information about MicroStation V8i (SELECTseries 10) has been released and now is avaialble for download. News about the release available here, dated to May 1st when this discussion was quite active.
Hi Jan,
Agreed. Unfortunately, Bentley already has stated the SS4 will be the last release of V8i and filing bug reports for SS4 is useless. (So I have not attempted to report SS4 issues to be corrected in SS10?) It's also interesting that they are only giving 6-7 months of "full support". It sounds like a band-aid that they will give to those who are contacting support with issues.
--Robert