37 things that confuse me about 3DEXPERIENCE
3DEXPERIENCE confuses the hell out of me.
I don’t know where to start, I don’t know where to click, I don’t know where to buy.
And I know I’m not the only one. I’ve talked with users, experts, partners, resellers and (ex-)Dassault employees. So I’m writing this blog post to share my findings.
Maybe it helps someone, maybe it convinces Dassault to make a few changes 🤞 Because the site really needs to change to make it usable.
About me
Hi, I’m Peter and I’m the founder of CAD Booster. I’ve been using SOLIDWORKS for over 17 years.
I work on intuition, and my intuition is failing me whenever I use 3DEXPERIENCE. I get lost every day, basically every minute. Every click is a guess, and that’s bad.
My bar for quality is high, my ultimate goal is to make intuitive software. If a product is intuitive, it uses familiar patterns and people find it easy to use, even if they can’t explain why. It just feels good.
3DExperience is the opposite of intuitive.
About this blog post
This is my personal opinion. This post is not about hard facts, I will share my experience and my ideas for improvements. I am not alone in noticing these problems, I’m just stubborn enough to spend 10 hours writing a blog post.
Please forgive me for not writing 3DEXPERIENCE, SOLIDWORKS and other product names in all capital letters, with 3D in bold all the time. It’s undoable and annoying. I’ll try sticking to 3DX and SolidWorks.
How 3DEXPERIENCE came to be
1997: Dassault buys SOLIDWORKS
Dassault Systèmes is a French company that started in 1981. They develop and sell Catia, among many other products.
SolidWorks was founded in 1993 by John Hirschtick and 4 others. Hirschtick used 1 million dollars he made on the MIT Blackjack Team to fund the company. That incredible story was even turned into books and movies like 21.
After adoption of SolidWorks grew rapidly, Dassault bought SolidWorks in 1997 for about $310 million in stock. SolidWorks only had $25 million in revenue at the time, so that 12x multiplier tells us they knew SolidWorks was going to be big.
2010: SOLIDWORKS v6
Back in 2012, we heard stories about “SolidWorks V6”, a rewrite of SolidWorks with a new kernel. SolidWorks uses the Parasolid kernel, which is owned by major competitor Siemens, creators of NX. That fact has always annoyed Dassault. Besides having to pay a competitor, they also own their own CGM kernel, the foundation of Catia since Catia v5.
“Can’t we just replace Parasolid with CGM?”, someone must have asked. Since kernels cannot even agree on the definition of a circle (one uses a full circle, another one uses two semi-circles), replacing a kernel is no simple task.
Not the SolidWorks V6 I was looking for
But they tried anyway, and they even started telling the public they were doing so. The public then got confused, angry and uncertain because SolidWorks V6 wasn’t actually SolidWorks, a point Engineering.com correctly makes in the article linked above. It was a first step into the land of confusing branding and a new kernel.
But then Siemens found out, and they were pissed. They started an aggressive, worldwide campaign to convert SolidWorks uses to their side, which really hurt SolidWorks and Dassault.
2012: Dassault starts making demands
In the first decade after buying SolidWorks, Dassault didn’t interfere much with how the company was run. SolidWorks was making boatloads of money for them and everybody was fine with that.
But around 2012, Dassault finalized integrating SolidWorks into its company structure. They started talking about replacing the kernel, as mentioned above, and they started thinking about ways to make more money. According to my chats with resellers and former employees, many left the company during those rowdy years, including founder John Hirschtick.
They started talking about charging for API access and, as we know now, demanding a part of the revenue from their partners.
2019: Betting the farm
We started seeing the results of the new, all-encompassing cloud strategy in 2019. They introduced 3DEXPERIENCE, which contains a bunch of small apps. It’s a new website, built from the ground up, that they like to call ‘the platform’. It’s all based on the CGM/Catia kernel and PDM/PLM tech from ENOVIA. The Dassault site even said “The 3DEXPERIENCE company” for a while (it no longer does) and the product becomes front and center in every menu. So it is clear that they are betting the entire Dassault company on this cloud strategy.
But a bunch of strange things started happening:
- Resellers were forced to push these products and we could feel it. Nobody understood these products, and even the resellers could not explain to users what those products were or did.
- Products like 3DEXPERIENCE.WORKS, a suite of random tools that mimic SolidWorks features like sheet metal, were released.
- I hope they don’t expect us to replace a complete CAD solution like SolidWorks with a bunch of separate tools like xShape.
- I get the idea of building a few small tools to get familiar with the technology. I just think that releasing those products adds more confusion than it adds value.
- The good old SolidWorks forum moved to 3DX, where it was locked behind a login, unable to be indexed or read from the web.
- They had to change the forum because the software it was built on was no longer available, so I get it. But the result is just so bad.
- I’ve helped many people on the forum, I even used to be in the worldwide top 100 regarding the number of posts. Now I don’t even bother going there anymore, and I’m not the only one. The forum seems pretty dead.
My many confusions
I built my entire company around SolidWorks, CAD Booster does not work with other CAD software. So I’m completely engrained in the ecosystem and I have to use 3DX regularly.
But when I do, I get so confused, so annoyed, so angry. I consider it unusable. And because Dassault is betting the company on this thing, I want it to be better. So I will go through everything I find confusing, explain why it doesn’t make sense to me and what they could do to fix it.
Because I am not alone. Resellers are confused, my customers are confused and many SolidWorks users don’t understand what the future will look like. All they know is that they are being forced to use half-baked products more and more. “The next service pack will fix everything” became a running joke.
This results in posts like Please explain 3dexperience, or really anything DSS is selling for that matter [A rant] on Reddit.
There is no login
The internet doesn’t agree on much, but it agrees on this. There needs to be a login/try/buy button at the top right. If you have no idea where to begin, you click that button to get started. It’s called discoverability and I consider it a major part of intuitive software.
But where should I start when I want to try this product, or maybe even buy it? There is no way in. How can you design a house without a front door?
3dexperience.com > forwards to 3ds.com. Why? 3DX is the product, 3DS is the company website for Dassault. You should not mix a site for investors with a product website.
3ds.com > There is a login button, but it just shows you a useless profile.
solidworks.com > shows the same useless profile
3dxperience.com > a misspelling one could easily make, doesn’t work.
dassault.com > also doesn’t work
dassaultsystemes.com > forwards to 3ds.com
I bet Onshape does it
I was complaining about the missing Login button, put my finger on the top-right of my screen and told a friend “I bet Onshape has a Get Started button here”. So I visited their website and voilá, a big green button that lets you try their platform and give them money:
The fix: Dassault, please make a website that we can visit, like 3dexperience.com, and add a Sign Up / Sign in button in the top-right. We need a solid starting point.
Edit: I found one! There is a login button on the SolidWorks site, inside the Products menu. The 3DS site has a similar menu, but no login button.
But then they screw the pooch and make you choose a platform. This made me click away the first time because I thought this was another marketing page. But one of these actually worked for me!
One link worked, one link showed me a login page and one link showed me an Access Denied message. Pretty confusing.
There is no Home page
But where should such a Log In button lead to? This is my next confusion, there is no home page. There is not a website you can go to, log in and see everything you have access to.
Every cloud product has this, why does 3DX have to do things differently? I think it’s because they don’t understand the web.
Instead, you have to receive a magic link, bookmark it in your browser and click the bookmark to go the 3DX platform for that customer. You click another bookmark to view the Support portal, and another bookmark to view the forum.
The fix: create a home page and show it to me after I log in. Show me a list of things I have access to and let me discover important links. Maybe even entice me to try a new product and give you more money.
You have to use bookmarks
This is insane to me. Every official email from Dassault or SolidWorks tells me to bookmark the link to their latest product or process. Because there’s no way in hell you are going to find this page again next week.
Telling users to use browser bookmarks is confessing that you have failed. You are telling me that your website does not have a way to find what I need.
The fix: make that home page from the previous section. Or if that doesn’t work, let me create bookmarks/favorites inside your app. Stop making resellers tell users to use bookmarks.
There is no single ‘platform’
With all the talk about ‘the platform’, you would think there is a single cloud thing that you log into, right?
Wrong.
There are multiple platforms. Ehm, what?
I learned this from a reseller last week. There is a ‘partner platform’, which hosts customer support and partner-only forums, and there is a ‘commercial platform’ that holds all customer data. And there can be more.
This finally explains why my profile looks different in the 3DSupport app and in the forum. “It’s like these are two different accounts”, I thought. And now I know that is correct, I have an account for both platforms with the same login details. Very confusing, and seemingly useless.
I get that enterprises want to host their own cloud, sure. But the public cloud should be a single thing, not this fragmented mess.
The fix: merge the platforms, or make them invisible to the user. You should not make your infrastructure our problem.
There is no buy button
I was going to write another rant here about how it’s impossible to visit the 3DS or SolidWorks site, give them money and start using the product. But things are happening! There is now a BUY button on both of these websites. I love it!
Having a massive network of resellers is great, but I think it really held back progress. Because you are now directly competing with these resellers when you sell a license through your website.
Next step: an app store. Please? I will gladly give you a percentage of my sales when you sell a license for one of my products.
But don’t expect me to give you a percentage without you giving anything in return. I will not do that without a fight. I thought we had a nice partnership going.
There are too many capital letters (and resellers agree)
The official spelling used to be SolidWorks, which is fine, recognizable and trademarkable.
But now, we’re forced to write SOLIDWORKS, 3DEXPERIENCE® SOLIDWORKS (mind the bold 3D and the registered trademark), NETVIBES and DELMIA. It’s fine to use capital letters in a logo or website, but please don’t make us WRITE LIKE WE’RE SCREAMING ALL THE DAMN TIME!
My customers are tired of it and every reseller starts unloading their complaints as soon as I ask. It’s not a discussion, nobody likes it.
Is it because I’m French?
All-caps names may have something to do with Dassault being a French company, and French people write their last name in all caps. They do that because many of their last names could be first names too, see Why Are French Last Names In All Caps? But please don’t do that for product names.
Products have multiple names
Now that we’re on the topic of names. Names can make things clear or they can make things confusing. And Dassault has chosen to make things confusing.
- SolidWorks V6 scared companies, thinking it was going to replace SolidWorks without a migration path. With a hard distinction like Catia v4 vs Catia v5.
- 3DExperience SolidWorks is the same as SolidWorks Connected. So why does it have two names? Pick one and kill the other.
- SolidWorks Connected is the perfect name for this product because it’s 90% SolidWorks and 10% connected.
- SolidWorks Connected and SolidWorks Connector are not the same thing.
- Connected is a product, a desktop application, basically SolidWorks, that you install and start from 3DX.
- The Connector is an add-in for SolidWorks that adds cloud saving to the desktop application.
- 3DExperience Works is another offering that could be confused with all the products above. But it seems to be a bundle of products that includes SolidWorks. I have no idea what it excludes, from what I can understand it’s the same as 3DExperience altogether.
We haven’t even opened 3DExperience yet!
2000 words and I haven’t even logged in yet. Wonderful. So let’s get started.
The compass is plain bad
Please replace the compass in the top left. With anything, please. It’s not a logo, your company logo is on the left of it, so what is it? Why does this thing have five buttons that we cannot click? Why does it have to signify i to the power of i, aka Information Intelligence, a man with a wifi hat and a play button with no music?
A logo should be simple, self-explanatory, beautiful. It doesn’t need to include every section of your company, and only designers who were overruled by management let something like this escape the concept phase.
But now we have a compass that leads Engineering.com to write a whole article explaining the thing.
The fix: just replace it with your company logo and let us click on it to go to that home page we talked about earlier.
If everything is 3D, nothing is
Check out the title here, why is everything 3D?
I think this is happening at the Dassault headquarters:
Me, company, world. What is this?
Ok, I’m logged in now, into a section of the partner portal. CAD Booster has two partner products, Drew (drawing automation) and Lightning (fastener automation), so we get access to a few extra forums.
But then there’s this Me, Company, World thing at the top. What is it? What does it do? Why do I need it?
Because from what I can see, the Company and World tab are completely useless.
And there are two more tabs here: As a System of Operations and As a Business Model. What does any of this even mean? Is it a knowledge base, are these marketing pages? Why is this mixed with my apps and my company roles?
Why do half of the links open in the same page and does the other half open a new tab? Pick a lane.
And why is there a settings button with only two settings and a search button that only lets you search the contents of the active tab?
There are five search bars
I wish I were joking, but there are five ways to search in this screenshot I just took. That’s four too many.
The fix: keep the search bar at the top, remove the rest. We’ll find it.
Apps have fancy names
Facebook had a problem once. The company was growing quickly, but in personnel and in the number of internal products and services. Everything got so big and confusing that they had to create a dictionary explaining what the service Colossus did, or what server Onyx hosted. People could not keep up with the fancy names.
So they made a decision: services need boring names. So they brought back Invoice-Creator and DNS-manager, which allowed them to ditch the dictionary and everybody could go back to work.
When I see this list of apps, I don’t want to click on any of them because I don’t understand what any of them do.
- 3DDashboard: is that my home page?
- 3DDrive: file management?
- 3DSwym: that’s the forum
- Potion labs: wut? It’s an automation builder
The fix: please give products and services boring names. We are overloaded with information every day, we don’t need a guessing game to figure out which 3D product name is the forum.
Most apps are useless
From what I’ve seen so far, we can at least ditch these apps without losing any functionality.
- Calculator: why is this here? Was this a project from an intern?
- Three 3DSwym apps?
- Three 3DPlay apps?
- Globe Viewer: why is there a poor man’s Google Earth clone here?
- Two links apps?
- Two user group apps?
- Web Page Reader: a browser inside a browser that can’t figure out URLs?
And these are just the apps that belong to the 3DSwymer role. There are so many other apps once you get access to a few more roles.
Many apps, like the Welcome app and Dashboard app, seem to be system apps. They are technically apps, but most users would not consider them as such. So it’s better to hide them from these lists. More is not better.
The fix: hide system apps, ditch the trivial and the useless apps. Have some guts.
I keep having to log in
I’ve been working on this post for an hour today, and I already had to log in at least five times. Why?
The list of platforms keeps changing
When I’m logged into the 3DSupport app, I seem to have access to a single platform. I log into customer platform #1, I seem to have access to two instances. But when I’m at the forum, I see three? I don’t get it:
Roles are backwards
Every company and every platform has the concept of roles. Every role gives you access to a set of files or functionality, and most people have multiple roles.
If you are a user in Windows, you can run programs and create files. But if you are an admin, you can also install and remove programs.
But on 3DX, the concept of roles has been inversed and I find it very confusing. Instead of having access to all features you were granted access to, you first have to pick a role, then perform that action. Then pick another role, then perform that action. I saw a customer check out a bunch of files, modify them, then checking them back in. And he had to switch roles every time.
This concept is completely bonkers to me. It’s like you don’t allow a Windows admin to create files, because that’s something a user would do. As an admin, you can only install and remove programs!
The fix: stop trying to reinvent Roles and flip them around. If I am an engineer and an admin, I should be able to perform all actions an engineer or an admin are allowed to do. I should not have to switch between roles.
There are settings everywhere, most of them useless
Why are there so many tiny settings menus with only two options? Pick a great-looking view and stick to it. Why can I choose a CSV separator? Not everything needs to be a setting.
This menu doesn’t even work:
The fix: fix the broken menu,s remove the useless settings, combine what’s left.
Fullscreen is not fullscreen
A worldwide problem with the web is that every website invents its own UI, and 3DExperience is no exception. This ‘full screen’ implementation bothers me more than it should. Sorry for that.
Maybe because it’s not really full-screen? Maybe because they need to explain how to exit it again?
Maybe it’s because my exit button currently doesn’t work? I don’t know.
The back button doesn’t take you one level up
When you open your profile via the top-right and view a couple of the tabs, this Back button shows up. You’d expect it to take you one level up, right?
Wrong. It actually takes you to the previous page you visited, it’s exactly the same as the back button in your browser. Why? This is not a thing. Remove it.
The fix: remove this back button
Features have internal names
Why did tags need a new name? Why are they 6WTags now? I know it stands for “Who, when, what”, etc, but those are just properties of a piece of content. They don’t need to be branded, we already get overloaded with new concepts on a daily basis.
The SolidWorks Partner forum is now the “SOLIDWORKS ALLIANCES COMMUNITY-3DS | IFWE Engage”, quite a mouthful. I asked them what the IFWE stood for, and if we could possibly name it something I could search for and find. They just told me “that’s the type of community” and that was it. Yay, thanks.
6WTags, really?
Have you always wanted to filter a forum to only show posts with 15 comments? Now you can!
And how do I get out of this Multi tags refine? Help, I’m stuck!
There are too many acronyms
Can we have fewer acronyms, please? Elon is rightfully allergic to them. Why can’t we call a bug a bug, why does it turn into an SPR? You are only creating barriers to real communication.
If you want to use them internally, that’s fine. But please don’t use them in your press releases.
The forum is dead
The old SolidWorks forum was amazing. It was an active community, you could see what was new in each subforum and you would often find a solution to your problem via a Google search. The underlying Siebel tech was pretty meh, but it worked.
The new SolidWorks User Forum is mostly dead now. I just checked, there are less than 10 posts in the past week. So I’m not the only power user who stopped answering people’s questions there. Deepak, Alin, Amen, Rob, I don’t see those guys over there anymore. That leads to sad situations like this, where questions don’t get answered:
I think this happened for a couple of reasons:
- Subforums were replaced with tags. I do like tags, I just don’t think they replace subforums. Most people only follow a few subforums, but that’s not possible now since it’s all just a flat list of topics.
- Replies are hidden by default. Nested replies are great, having to click each one is not so great.
- The post types are not useful, I have never wanted to filter my posts:
- You can only find the opening post via Google. The rest of the topic is never indexed, so never found by others with the same problem or the solution.
Two new forums have emerged since the SW Forum moved: CADOverflow and CADforum.net. Go check them out.
Let’s start up SolidWorks Connected
A customer of ours was having problems with their SolidWorks Connected installation, our product Drew would not start up.
To be able to debug the issue properly, they gave me access to their 3DExperience account and granted me a license for SolidWorks Connected. So let’s see how that works.
There is no SolidWorks
Why is there no SolidWorks in my list of apps? I know I have access to it.
Oh yes, it’s because I’m logged into the wrong 3DExperience cloud. I need to select the other account from the dropdown, log in again (with the same credentials!) and now there is a SolidWorks Connected in my, now even longer, list of apps.
I have to launch a desktop app from the cloud
SolidWorks Connected is a desktop app that you install and run from the cloud. Why? Now I have to log in to a website and click the app icon to start a desktop app. That’s backwards. The fact that you had to build the 3DExperience Launcher should tell you that you are doing things the wrong way,
If we could log in from our desktop apps, we also wouldn’t need that 3DExperience Launcher running in the background. But now we have both, we need to log in to get to the installer and we need to log in when we start up SolidWorks.
The fix: let us start our desktop apps from the desktop and let us log in from there if we need access to files in the cloud.
You cannot have SolidWorks and SolidWorks Connected on the same machine
Why can’t we install SolidWorks and SolidWorks Connected on the same computer? They are 99% the same product, so what is making this impossible?
Or is it a licensing thing? Should we not have access to both of these programs at the same time? Because I do right now, and I need two computers or a virtual machine to test them. That should not be necessary.
The fix: remove this strange limitation.
The shortcut is not for the main program
Yes, you can start up SolidWorks Connected R2025 from your desktop. But for that to work, you need a special program and a special shortcut.
That shortcut only contains the unique ID of your tenant and a few other settings, nothing special.
“C:\Program Files\Dassault Systemes\SOLIDWORKS 3DEXPERIENCE\win_b64\code\bin\CATSTART.exe” -run “SWXDesktopLauncher.exe” -object “–AppName=\”SWXCSWK_AP\” -tenant=R123456789 -monoapp -3DRegistryURL=https://eu1-registry.3dexperience.3ds.com” -nowindow
But that shortcut is not the shortcut to the main program. You can pin it to your Start menu, but that will always launch another app into your Start menu. And pinning the SW Connected app doesn’t let us run it.
Also, why does a command line window pop up when we launch SW Connected? It looks fishy and it should not be necessary.
The fix: create a single shortcut that lets us launch SolidWorks Connected. No three helper programs, no command lines, just a good product.
I get a popup on every launch when an update is available
Everybody loves getting updates but everybody hates installing them. So why does SW Connected show an update popup every time I launch the app? Not once per day, not once per week, but every damn time.
Yes, I will install your update. But at a time that suits me, not when I’m in a rush or when I need to properly finish a project.
And sure, I can disable that update. But then you will force me to install it at a later time. Which is why my customer was having problems running our add-in after you forced them to install SW Connected 2025.
The fix: show the update popup less often. Plus, tell the customer how long they have before they are forced to install an update.
The update instructions go away when I click Get Update
This one is fun. When you get that annoying update popup, it tells you how to access that update. You have to log in to 3DX, bla bla. Why are you making this my problem? Why can’t you just update my desktop app?
But the great thing is that all these instructions go away as soon as you agree to install the update. So you either have to guess, or be like me and start up SolidWorks again, just so that I can read and screenshot the instructions.
This is just terrible UX. I should not have to log in to a website to update my desktop app. And I should not have to memorize the steps to install an update.
The fix: make the desktop download its own updates. Don’t force the user to remember a bunch of steps to install that update. If you want us to install the update, you should make it butter smooth.
Getting a license fails 33% of the time
My internet connection works perfectly fine, so why can’t I get a license on one third of my attempts at starting SW Connected? How do you make things work this poorly?
And why is there no retry button? Instead, I have to start SW Connected again, wait 20 seconds again and hope it works the second time. It usually does, which means your license server is just buggy.
I start and stop the application many times per day. So I have seen the “No license found” message a bunch of times in a single day by now.
The fix: make your license server more robust. If you can’t do that, let us hit a retry button so we don’t have to start the whole program again.
SW toolbar has a random geometry button
The 3DX toolbar in SolidWorks Connected contains mostly version control buttons. But what is that thing in the middle?
Why is there a single random geometry-building icon in this toolbar? Please find a better place for this button.
The fix: show only relevant buttons in the toolbar. Move that one button.
The add-in has a cookie popup
I understand that the 3DExperience add-in for SolidWorks is basically a website. I can even agree with you saying cookie popups made the web worse. But do we really need to have a cookie popup in a desktop application? Can you please not run privacy-invading tracking and analytics on my own computer, please?
The fix: don’t use third-party services so you don’t need consent for placing cookies.
Partner add-ins don’t run in the latest SW version
SolidWorks has started doing something sneaky. They require all partner add-ins to identify themselves on startup using a special key since SW2021. Nothing was going to change, they said, they were just showing partners in a special new list, separate from other add-ins.
But things have changed. SolidWorks Connected does not run partner add-ins that don’t have a key for the latest SolidWorks version. This caused our product Drew to not start up on that customer’s computer. They were forced to update to SW Connected R2025 while I didn’t even know this version was out already. It’s not like SolidWorks sends their partners a reminder each year that we need to request a new key, that would be too easy.
I see no reason for them to block add-ins. They work just fine on the normal version of SolidWorks, so why can’t we run them on SW Connected? The only reason seems to be to have more control over their partners and their products.
The fix: stop blocking add-ins in SW Connected. You are bothering your users and you are bullying your partners. It’s not a good look.
Every filename must be unique
Every SolidWorks user knows that every model needs a unique name. You cannot have two parts called Plate in your assembly, even when the files are in different folders. This feels like a limitation from another era, but alas. Excel also can’t do it.
But now that files are stored in the cloud, I assume in a database somewhere, the filenames still have to be unique. Why? I certainly hope you are not using the filename as a primary key in your database.
Is it just to prevent problems with SolidWorks later on? If so, wouldn’t it be better if we could fix that limitation, once and for all?
The fix: remove the unique filename limitation from SolidWorks.
I can’t find my files
I have now uploaded my first SolidWorks model to the cloud. Now what? Where is it? The only way to find it was to search for the exact filename. Is there no list of my files anywhere or I am too dumb to find the correct app?
Another thing I don’t understand: when I start dragging a file in my search results, the whole screen changes. What am I to do here?
The Save API doesn’t work
I am a mechanical engineer by trade but I now develop software for a living. Along with the CAD Booster products, I maintain the open-source software SolidDNA, a wrapper around the SolidWorks API that makes it easier to use by removing idiosyncrasies and replacing old logic.
After checking out SolidWorks Connected from the sidelines for a few years, I decided to add support for SW Connected to SolidDNA last week. The main features to add were opening and saving files from 3DExperience.
But the SaveTo3DExperience method doesn’t even work correctly. According to that documentation page, it can do one of three things:
- Save a new file for the first time
- Save an existing file
- Save an existing file under a new name
A method that does three things is already problematic. But the third item doesn’t even work. Has no developer ever even used this API? Am I the first one, after five years?
And those error codes, warnings and return value? They do nothing. The method always returns true even when it fails, and the warnings and errors are always zero, even when the file didn’t save. But that doesn’t matter, since the documentation doesn’t mention what the error codes mean anyway. This is bad, man.
If you ask the API to save a new file and it already exists, it makes up a new name for you
I had to do a double-take after noticing this issue. When I ask the API to save my file as “Plate3” and that name already exists on the platform, it just changes my filename and saves it as “Plate4”. Don’t do that.
Give me an error, a warning, anything. Don’t willy-nilly change my filename, assuming it means nothing. What if that number is the project number, a date, a revision? What if that number is important to me?
To summarize: please improve it
If you are going to bet the company on this platform, please make sure it’s a good product. My main advice: hire a few expensive User Experience (UX) engineers, pay them well and do what they say. The current website does not follow any conventions, is completely inconsistent and impossible to navigate.
I need to get back to work
I’ll stop writing now. I need to get back to a positive headspace, instead of looking for flaws in everything. Thanks for making it this far 🙏