My apologies to those of you who may think this is a personal grudge,
but 3D Systems' lack of response compels me to inform the RP community
of the problems I've had with 3D regarding software support for HP
users.
I have been using 3D Systems products since 1984 and have seen a lot
of the good things that the company is capable of doing, which is why
I am baffled by their lack of support for Maestro on the HP platform.
I am still using version 1.7 software, despite version 1.9 having been
released 5 months ago for the SGI platform. This is because there is
no version 1.9 for HP, nor was there a version 1.8.
Worse, version 1.7 has a bug in it (reported soon after receipt of the
software) that has yet to be fixed with even a patch. This bug
requires that about 80 percent of the .prm files be edited, otherwise
the part is built on just 2 dimensions. I've been working around
their problem for over two years now.
Even though 3D has not fixed this bug and has not updated the software
in well over two years, they continue to charge over $2,000 annually
for software maintenance.
I have been on the phone with 3D countless times without success. The
usual response is that a new release for HP "will be shipped in a few
weeks" -- and I have been hearing this since last October.
I'm told that there are only about 3 other HP users of Maestro, but 3D
never warned me that their support would depend upon the number of
units sold.
As a last resort to get 3D to act, I'm posting this message with the
knowledge that 3D's people subscribe to the list -- as well as over a
thousand RP users and managers, many of whom make purchasing
decisions.
Rick Lott
Hughes Space and Communications
Los Angeles, Calif.
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 22:45:43 EEST