SmartPlant Review 5 Update

I had an interesting experience with the program recently which I believe is due to poor UI design/programming/lack of useability testing.

In order to enable smooth movement while panning, moving, rotating, etc. a fairly obscure command has to be invoked (resulting in an error warning dialog box and then requiring two more clicks to enable a major software feature). This should be set to "on" by default, with an option to disable smooth realtime motion for slower machines. But the smooth motion function works well even on a W2K Pro computer with 256MB system RAM and a 64MB video card, so I cannot see why the default seems to be set for an IBM AT. In addition, anyone using this software (pricing from a 2003 Cadalyst review of the product indicates that it costs US$12K with all modules installed) is almost certain to have a correct hardware setup.

Anyway, on to the other, more important issue...

In my frustration to get the smooth motion feature enabled I asked an IT tech to take a look at my machine, thinking that there might be a driver issue or maybe that the particular video card in my brand-new, 64-bit computer was not on the "approved" list. Lots of vendors recommend that you use specific 3D cards, versions of cards or particular driver versions for that card. These recommendations are probably a holdover from the old days as most 3D cards now have the latest openGL working - the "approved card" thing seems to be more about enough VRAM for textures, lighting effects, speed of rendering, etc. - not the ability to display something.

It was only the next day after the problem got solved purely by happenstance that I realized what had occurred. The IT tech had accidentally closed the only open SmartPlant Review window while trying to close a dialog box (I distinctly remember him saying, "Oops, what did I just close?"). This turned off the only open model view window and when SPR was reopened, it forgot that its main purpose is to show models.

Trying to open a model in SPR after re-booting, there was no model on the screen even though the computer was churning away and CPU utilzation was high. The 3D model was opening but not displaying because it is apparenty possible to open a model and have nothing display. Why on earth should this happen without some kind of system warning dialog box like, "Please open at least one view window to see the model"?

Now, I realize that my relative inexperience with the software is partially to blame here but this is just silly and it wasted hours and caused great confusion for at least 5 involved people. Some people have to use more than one fairly complex program and can't spend a lot of time learning the intricacies of each of them, especially when the PRIMARY PURPOSE of a program can be so easily disabled accidentally.

I have to wonder if other users have experienced this type of problem or if I'm just extra inept. Not to mention if users go out and buy new video cards, computers, etc. and then later discover that they've wasted money for no reason.

Paul Received on Sat Feb 12 03:07:00 2005