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!
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.
Connect r17 10.17.2.61 self-employed-Unpaid Beta tester for Bentley
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
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:
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>