Why is Bentley discontinuing support for select series

Hi Kirk,

Kirk said:

Why is Bentley discontinuing support for select series? Are you trying to force us to use The Connect addition?

Despite of it looks like the mentioned intention, in my opinion it's different. Bentley support policy (how long a particular version will be supported) has been defined for very long time. Even long time before CONNECT Edition was released. I am not sure whether I remember correctly the support table how it was defined in the past, but I guess nothing was changed and V8i is removed from support as was defined long time ago.

I have few more comments to this topic:

• As so often, Bentley choose the worst possible way how to communicate the fact V8i will move to next support phase. Despite of it was public for very long time, in my opinion (and my customers confirmed it) the e-mail sent to customer was written in not good style.
• It's subjective, but it seems to be funny when many people has reacted in the same way as you, but when you compare what does it mean Full Support and Expiring Support, not many things will change for next 2 years. Probably the only visible change is that V8i will be removed from download page, but other limitations are applied to V8i already (e.g. after V8i SS4 was released, it was told there will be no other version, which is closer to Expiring support phase).
• What is unfortunate is that Bentley do not extend V8i support in situation, when CONNECT Edition is not replacement of V8i, because it's not possible to do the same things (because of bugs) in same speed (because of performance).

Kirk said:

I HATE HATE HATE THE RIBBON

Please respect and follow communities best practices: One question / topic per one post. Your opinion about ribbon does not related and does not depend on whether V8i is support fully or is in Expired Support phase, so it should be discussed independently.

With regards,

  Jan

Jan Šlegr said:

the e-mail sent to customer was written in not good style.

I don't recall what e-mail this was, but I got this little gem this yesterday titled "Bentley View: Your free CAD viewer just got better!"

The e-mail continued saying "On June 30, 2019, all V8i and previous Bentley View licenses will expire, and you will need to download and install the free Bentley View CONNECT Edition to ensure uninterrupted access. "

Oh, and only after that it started listing the things that got better.

"Improved user interface", which I belief Kirk is going to love.
"Easy to access / download", which is not an improvement, rather V8i is no longer available for download.

Don't like the user interface? Wait til you actually start using Connect. It's very buggy. Been at it for roughly a year, adjusted the way I do several things, still lots of problems. Started using this thing when the Bentley brothers still worked for Intergraph, so user interface changes are nothing (plus they're customizable). Worked with users who refused to give up paper tablet menu, wouldn't turn on accudraw, that sort of thing. Much of the style of the recent changes are designed to attract Autocad users, to the detriment of Microstation.

Honestly Connect is very bad, I can only say I am able to get my work done somehow. Although last week I did have to fire up v8i to make some prints. Filed a service ticket on th issue, Bentley helped not one bit. I should contact Carl M directly.

Hi Bob,

Bob Rayner said:

Honestly Connect is very bad

MicroStation is "only" bad, because it mostly works, even it's afwully slow. Products like ORD or BM (not sure about AECOsim BD) are much much worse. Maybe Bentley realized they are not able to meet even basic quality standard, so they tried to rename them to "be Open", but ... surprisingly ... it has not helped ;-)

Bob Rayner said:

Filed a service ticket on th issue, Bentley helped not one bit.

I think it's not surprise, Bentley behaves like Intergraph or IBM in 90th. But we have 21st century when close cooperation with community is treated as important part fo software development. How to build community and establish efficient bidirectional communication and to utilize this power to make software better is discussed on many software conferences, but Bentley are more like "one direction swamp" ... you can throw a stone to the swamp and it swallows it forever:

• Send ticket: No response, maybe weeks or mohts later...
• Ask for development strategy and priorities for upcomming versions (which is crucial for any testing and migration): Silence, very general promises at maximum...
• Post idea: Zero response, maybe months or evens years later the idea tags is changed, but no answer from anybody from Bentley how they process it...

Bob Rayner said:

I should contact Carl M directly.

Often the direct contant and information provided by particular person is the only working and trustworthy solution.

<iron begins>

Example: Tags have been discussed as deprecated and obsolete from very first CE version and users have been motivated to migrate to Item Types. It's mentioned on several places in MicroStation help.

Recently in this discussion Samir wrote, that tags are not treated as deprecated from ... Update 5 ... 2 years ago!.

Where other compenies treats user communities as partner and use community managers, for Bentley it's not important even to write a blog (20 minutes effort?) to explain internal decisions and context. So it's not surprise CAD admins start to evalue migration from this platform where no clear plans shared information exist.

<irony ends>

Regards,

  Jan

Jan Šlegr said:

I think it's not surprise, Bentley behaves like Intergraph or IBM in 90th. But we have 21st century when close cooperation with community is treated as important part fo software development.

One of examples(see the link) how totally unneeded changes were implemented which no one asked for but telling that it was asked by users. At the same time some real bugs were not fixed.

https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/i/printing_and_plotting/print-dialog-revert-back-to-not-print-when-hitting-enter-key

https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/microstation_printing/f/printing-and-plotting-forum/113627/ce---print-dialog/371553#371553

Jan Šlegr said:

I think it's not surprise, Bentley behaves like Intergraph or IBM in 90th. But we have 21st century when close cooperation with community is treated as important part fo software development.

One of examples(see the link) how totally unneeded changes were implemented which no one asked for but telling that it was asked by users. At the same time some real bugs were not fixed.

https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/i/printing_and_plotting/print-dialog-revert-back-to-not-print-when-hitting-enter-key

https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/microstation_printing/f/printing-and-plotting-forum/113627/ce---print-dialog/371553#371553

Hi Oto,

Oto said:

One of examples(see the link) how totally unneeded changes were implemented

It's always negotiable whether a new feature is good or bad and with what priority is should be solved.

But the link to idea demonstrates how Bentley ignores users and are not willing to communicate with them: Your idea was archived (ok, such thing can happen and the classification is fully in Bentley responsibility), but there is no single notice or explanation how the idea was evaluated and why it was classified as archive.

It's the reason why I decided to do not post any new ideas, because why to invest time to formulate them when your effort is constantly ignored and there is zero feedback? I prefer (and I do it) to contribute to more friendly and opened projects where often the result is "your idea/change/request is not accepted", but I know why and I learned from related discussion.

With regards,

  Jan