Development Build Download location?

[scottmoyse]

Hey guys, 

How do we get to the development builds for HSMWorks and Inventor HSM now?

http://cam.autodesk.com/download/HSMWorks is still live if I type in that URL, but I don't see a way to navigate there anymore.

http://cam.autodesk.com/download/Inventor-HSM-PRO is broken. and so is http://cam.autodesk.com/download/inventor-hsm/ 

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

The website guys decided to just remove it.
I already send an e-mail to Al about it. But nobody seems to know what, where and why.

[scottmoyse]

Tail wagging the dog and all that.

[ArjanDijk]

this one still works:

http://cam.autodesk.com/inventor-hsm-experimental/

[scottmoyse]

And that was actually the correct one anyway.. Cheers Arjan... Still there's no access to either via navigation of the site. I suppose that wouldn't matter if they were linked to from a sticky post in the beta forum.

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

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@scottmoyse wrote:
And that was actually the correct one anyway.. Cheers Arjan... Still there's no access to either via navigation of the site. I suppose that wouldn't matter if they were linked to from a sticky post in the beta forum.

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You would still need another file for the other version.

Inventor HSM Premium and Ultimate need a different installation file.

[jeff.pek]

Apologies for the churn here recently. Some of it is due to some adjustments in terminology re the switch to Autodesk HSM. Some is an adjustment to start to move people over to the account portal to get official (non-dev) builds, and finally an anticipation of retiring the back-end site we're using, toward an official Autodesk site (internal detail that you all shouldn't care about).

I'm trying to find out whether and when we'll plan to expose the dev builds. For HSMWorks, the dev builds are still posted to hsmworks.com -- at least for now.

Jeff

[scottmoyse]

Considering non-dev builds of Inventor HSM are rare as rocking horse ****. I hope that either the Inventor HSM release schedule starts matching HSMWorks, or development builds continue to be exposed. 90% of our HSM and HSMWorks customers just use the Dev builds.

Dev builds are a big attraction for a lot of users, it's one of the things that make HSM awesome, along with beta mode. Please don't get rid of it.

[jeff.pek]

Of course! It's not a matter of whether, but just of where, and (as you say) when.

I acknowledge that we haven't done a great job of keeping these up-to-date. We will try to improve on this. I hope that a more regular official release schedule -- every quarter -- will also help.

Thanks for the encouragement! 🙂 Going back to sit on my rocking horse now...

Jeff

[scottmoyse]

Does yours poop?

[al.whatmough]

We are narrowing down on two possible options for how we can Expose devlopment builds in a way that we, the development team, can maintain control of the process (or regain control, depending on how you look at it).

The two top options at present are leveraging the Autodesk Beta Portal and leveraging the Forum.

Both options give a way to communicate about builds.

I would expect we have a beta of the beta process shortly.  This should allow some on this thread to provide feedback on 🙂

More to follow.

[al.whatmough]

Oh and Scott, I have a "rocking horse" that poops.  Do you want to come clean the stall?

[scottmoyse]

Pre 8 year old Scott would have. Then he developed a hideous allergy to horses. Probably a blessing in disguise. Have you bedazzled one of your horses or something?

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

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@al.whatmough wrote:

We are narrowing down on two possible options for how we can Expose devlopment builds in a way that we, the development team, can maintain control of the process (or regain control, depending on how you look at it).

The two top options at present are leveraging the Autodesk Beta Portal and leveraging the Forum.

Both options give a way to communicate about builds.

I would expect we have a beta of the beta process shortly.  This should allow some on this thread to provide feedback on 🙂

More to follow.

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@al.whatmough what do you mean by communicating about builds? I mean if you have feedback on something send in feedback. That is what the button is for.

What we should be looking for is a way that fits within the Autodesk philosophy of only doing a couple releases a year for desktop products. What I mean by that is that we don't want to change it in 6 months time because this isn't "allowed".

On the one side I think the beta portal would be the place, but it would also mean keeping an eye on another location. Now users are already looking

Now users already have to keep track of the forum, their account portal, "The other CAM Forum"(Whether you are fusion or desktop user there always is the other forum) and then you would add the beta portal.

I used to have two tabs, the forum and the development build webpage. That also included the official releases. But if I understand @jeff.pek correctly he doesn't want those to show anywhere else than in the account anymore, so that means keeping an eye on there to see if there is a new official release.

So in the end the beta portal doesn't make it simpler for the user. If it makes it easier for René to push out a build when he wants to then we should just do it.

[scottmoyse]

Now everything is in the account. You shouldn't have to keep an eye on it, since updates should be served via the Autodesk Home application on your desktop.

The beta portal is the right place within the Autodesk system to host development releases. But we need to consistently see 4 production builds a year. RTM, then R2, R3 & hopefully R4. With the option to run development builds from the beta portal of you choose. The nice thing about the beta portal is anyone in there is under NDA.

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

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@scottmoyse wrote:
The nice thing about the beta portal is anyone in there is under NDA.

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You mean the bad thing?

René will never release anything he isn't a 100% sure of that it's 99% finished.

We tried with a Customer Advisory group to get more in depth NDA discussions going on but that just doesn't seem to work for the users and development team. (We tried this over and over)

The easy way of participating has always been the strong point of the development versions, and that would make it a lot more complicated.

What can be discussed, what can't? I found a bug can I not put this on the normal forum anymore?

So putting it behind a NDA wall will make less people use them and thus making the development version less useful.

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@scottmoyse wrote:
Now everything is in the account. You shouldn't have to keep an eye on it, since updates should be served via the Autodesk Home application on your desktop.

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Also for HSMWorks?

Apart from that, I've never seen that work properly.

Have 3 pc's with inventor and it keeps them all on a different version.

[scottmoyse]

Autodesk Home works fine for CAD applications. It didn't work for HSM when they tried it once

[scottmoyse]

@Laurens-3DTechDraw the Beta portal has an excellent bug submission tracker... You can search what has been submitted by other users etc and keep track of bugs you have submitted. It's a different list to the internal one Autodesk will use. But it's still very nice all the same. It also has a voting system as part of the bug report system.

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

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@scottmoyse wrote:

@Laurens-3DTechDraw the Beta portal has an excellent bug submission tracker... You can search what has been submitted by other users etc and keep track of bugs you have submitted. It's a different list to the internal one Autodesk will use. But it's still very nice all the same. It also has a voting system as part of the bug report system.

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It still is another place to keep track off, of course.

What if I want to report a bug that might also be in an official version?

If I want to warn others for it? I can't because I used a Development version and I'm under NDA and you can't expect the user to test all the previous builds to find out if it's new or old.

Also how would I know if there is a new official build? Any tracking of the home application will have to be turned off the moment I install a dev build. So if I want to go back I would still have to keep track of the account portal. Just as that now I could go back to not only the last but the official release before that is there is a problem. Putting just the latest version in the account will kill that possibility as well.

Just as that now I could go back to not only the last but the official release before that if there is a problem(I've had to do that on numerous occasions). Putting just the latest version in the account will kill that possibility as well.

I understand there are places where it all works splendidly but I think it would be a step back for us(HSM).

(The voting is fun and all but look at the current Idea station I really don't think another voting system will help anything forward.)

[jeff.pek]

Love the discussion, guys. Thanks for the thoughts.

You both raise great points that we are keeping in mind as we work out how to handle all of this.

More to come.

Jeff