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Re: Frustration with NXT-G 1.1
by gil11
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Doug,
I share your frustration very much. as a child and a teenager i was a Lego Technic freak. In the last year i wanted to go back to my "roots" of enjoyment, and decided to buy the mindstorms NXT kit as a starter, because it seemed to me a cool robotics kit and the idea of GUI flowchart programing appealed to me (i'm kind of a visual-graphical guy who prefer symbols over text. in my work as a CAD modeller i work with SolidWorks which uses heavily graphic symbols, GUI and etc..) and because i was certain that a well known and established firm like Lego would not supply a buggy and messy software with it.
- boy was i mistaken!!!
NXT-G 1.1 is one of the most buggiest software i've stumbled upon in the recent years: moving a block which has data wires connected to it, wont move the data wire ends with it. sometimes putting a legitimate block in a legitimate sequance beam position will create an unjustified error. somtimes moving or changing one block in a loop will cause the loop to partialy close on it, and hiding important and functional blocks, which will render from now on to uneditable.
it's GUI is also not so super by design: no zoom in/out on the program, dragging a block out of viewport but inside the program is very slow and quircky, to switch from pan to select it is necessery to select a button above viewport instead of using the wo mouse keys..............i can continue on and on with the quircks and disadvantages.
Those bugs are in the software for a long time, and have been reported to Lego, but Lego didn't release any updates or hotfixes to those people who are stucked with the 1.1 version. from my opinion this not how a well known and respected firm should act!! something in their buissness code is very wrong.
I wish there was a way to submit a petition to Lego by all its frustrated customers.
thanks,
Gil ALsberg
P.O. Box 40029
Mevasseret Zion 90805
Israel
I share your frustration very much. as a child and a teenager i was a Lego Technic freak. In the last year i wanted to go back to my "roots" of enjoyment, and decided to buy the mindstorms NXT kit as a starter, because it seemed to me a cool robotics kit and the idea of GUI flowchart programing appealed to me (i'm kind of a visual-graphical guy who prefer symbols over text. in my work as a CAD modeller i work with SolidWorks which uses heavily graphic symbols, GUI and etc..) and because i was certain that a well known and established firm like Lego would not supply a buggy and messy software with it.
- boy was i mistaken!!!
NXT-G 1.1 is one of the most buggiest software i've stumbled upon in the recent years: moving a block which has data wires connected to it, wont move the data wire ends with it. sometimes putting a legitimate block in a legitimate sequance beam position will create an unjustified error. somtimes moving or changing one block in a loop will cause the loop to partialy close on it, and hiding important and functional blocks, which will render from now on to uneditable.
it's GUI is also not so super by design: no zoom in/out on the program, dragging a block out of viewport but inside the program is very slow and quircky, to switch from pan to select it is necessery to select a button above viewport instead of using the wo mouse keys..............i can continue on and on with the quircks and disadvantages.
Those bugs are in the software for a long time, and have been reported to Lego, but Lego didn't release any updates or hotfixes to those people who are stucked with the 1.1 version. from my opinion this not how a well known and respected firm should act!! something in their buissness code is very wrong.
I wish there was a way to submit a petition to Lego by all its frustrated customers.
thanks,
Gil ALsberg
P.O. Box 40029
Mevasseret Zion 90805
Israel
Doug Wilcox wrote:It's been a LONG time since I've posted.
I was thrilled when my wife presented me with an NXT for our anniversary, and have really enjoyed its capabilities. We migrated our MindStorms@Work group to use the NXT, and dug into NXT-G (since we already knew NQC).
At first glance, it appeared that the NXT-G was wonderful ... much more flexible and useful than the original Lego GUI, while still being relatively easy to use. My primary interest was in determining whether it would be easier to teach my kids NXT-G or NXC.
However, after repeatedly wrestling with "quirks" in NXT-G, I am ready to throw in the towel. For example, see this image http://www.wilcoxfamily.net/csort0511bd.jpg and the following description:
The gumball-sorter program on which my co-worker and I are working uses a switch statement with five possibilities. The switch statement is within a loop, which should exit if a counter monitoring "empty" attempts hits 5. Regardless of what I do, I can never get the extreme right side of the switch block to display, and can never get the data wire between the counter evaluator block and the loop condition to connect in a way that seems to do the right thing.
Add to this nuisances like "dead" wires being left onscreen, very weird things happened when cutting and pasting, problems with selection highlighting, etc., and you can see why I begin to wonder whether the software is _really_ that bad or if I am going crazy.
What experiences have you all had?
(RCX version of of the candy sorter is BLOGged here: http://mindstormsatwork.blogspot.com/ , while pictures of both RCX and NXT versions - very different designs - are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/MindStormsAtWork .)
Thanks.
--Doug Wilcox
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