RAM SS 17 Release status

Early October has come and gone, and still no release.  I'm about to be building a new deployment for all of our department's machines, and would rather not put a version of RAM SS on and then ask them to update immediately.  What is the status of this release?

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  • Current plan is to release on October 25 but it is probable that we will miss that date. We are in the final stages of testing and correcting defects in a new feature; when that is completed we will release v17.00.

  • Thanks for the update. 

    Please consider what follows to be constructive criticism: I appreciate that you guys don't want to put out buggy software, but it seems to happen with your products more than other vendors we use that the release of software is pushed back weeks, if not months, if not scrapped completely (i.e. Staad(x) as a replacement for RAM Elements).  While I love being informed and getting previews of what's coming in future versions of software, it's disheartening that if frequently takes so long to come to fruition, or appear at all at times.

    I don't know if you're in a position to comment, but is this challenge related to the fact that you're improving and updating software that has essentially been on the market for decades, rather than building products from the ground up that can meet modern code demands and hardware capabilities?

  • Since the release of V15.00 in September of 2015 we have released 12 new versions of the RAM Structural System (not counting defect patch versions). That is a release every four months. In the past two years we have been releasing new versions at the rate of one every 12 weeks. None have been more than two weeks late, most have been on or within days of their scheduled release dates. I am not aware of anyone in the industry that releases with that regularity and frequency. The lone exception to that schedule is this upcoming version, v17.00. This has a major new feature, Tilt-up Building analysis and design, that has involved considerable work affecting nearly every module in the program. It has been an 18 month project. When it is finally released it will be about two months behind schedule (it was scheduled to be released at the end of August). The reason that we missed the schedule is because I guessed poorly on how much effort was involved and how long it would take; it was a big task that had larger technical requirements than I guessed. We are using the latest software development tools, and the program is written in modern development languages, so I wouldn't attribute the delay to that (of course there are challenges when we are making changes to a program as massive and comprehensive as RAM Structural System, the program is affected in a lot of places with these new features). Had I guessed better, we would have released a version without Tilt-up in July, and then scheduled this V17.00 release for early November; instead, we skipped the July release so that we could focus our efforts on getting this version completed.

    I apologize that we missed the schedule on this one. I am disappointed too, because it has some great new features that I want to get out into the hands of our users.

Reply
  • Since the release of V15.00 in September of 2015 we have released 12 new versions of the RAM Structural System (not counting defect patch versions). That is a release every four months. In the past two years we have been releasing new versions at the rate of one every 12 weeks. None have been more than two weeks late, most have been on or within days of their scheduled release dates. I am not aware of anyone in the industry that releases with that regularity and frequency. The lone exception to that schedule is this upcoming version, v17.00. This has a major new feature, Tilt-up Building analysis and design, that has involved considerable work affecting nearly every module in the program. It has been an 18 month project. When it is finally released it will be about two months behind schedule (it was scheduled to be released at the end of August). The reason that we missed the schedule is because I guessed poorly on how much effort was involved and how long it would take; it was a big task that had larger technical requirements than I guessed. We are using the latest software development tools, and the program is written in modern development languages, so I wouldn't attribute the delay to that (of course there are challenges when we are making changes to a program as massive and comprehensive as RAM Structural System, the program is affected in a lot of places with these new features). Had I guessed better, we would have released a version without Tilt-up in July, and then scheduled this V17.00 release for early November; instead, we skipped the July release so that we could focus our efforts on getting this version completed.

    I apologize that we missed the schedule on this one. I am disappointed too, because it has some great new features that I want to get out into the hands of our users.

Children
  • Allen, I appreciate the scope of work involved in v17 and can understand that there might be unexpected delays. And from my little bit of amateur programming, I get that changing stuff sometimes opens a can of worms that takes longer than expected to put the lid back on. And I would definitely rather see a delay to do some more testing and get bugs fixed than see an on-time buggy release. 

    But it's not just the official version release dates that drives the sense of Bentley missing deadlines. It's when we're told a needed feature or bug fix will be in the "next version" over and over again. The several year period where I was told each year that HSS beam connections would be incorporated in the next major release of RAM Connection, only to be disappointed each time, comes to mind first and foremost. I finally gave up asking and bought FEA-based connection design software. It can be slower because it's a more open-ended software where you "build" the joint from basic components, but that is better than waiting years for a new addition to a fairly stagnant set of joint templates. Also, when Bentley bought out Limcon, we were told that the two connection design packages would be combined in surprisingly short order and that some of the gaps in RAM Connection's coverage that we had complained about for a while would soon be filled by Limcon. I was pretty skeptical that 2 programs written by totally different developers could be combined so easily, and that seems to have been the case.

    Maybe ya'll are just more open about what's coming down the road than other vendors, and we just don't know about the delays they're experiencing because they never announced a timeline until it was much firmer. I don't know. But even if you hit every version release deadline on the nose, what sticks in my mind as a user is the "missed deadline" of a promised feature/bug fix not showing up in those new releases.