Today SolidWorks released an update to service pack 4.0 in it’s Customer Portal. SolidWorks 2009 SP4.1 is now available for all subscription customers to download through the Downloads and Updates page.
The list of fixed SPR’s is not available yet so it is hard to say what has been updated in this service pack. I would imagine that the hotfix (S-039735) that was issued for the Windows Vista 64bit and Microsoft Office 2007 has been incorporated into the release.
One quick thing to remember, if you have downloaded the aforementioned hotfix you will need to uninstall it via the Control Panel before you can upgrade to this service pack. However, if I were you I would wait to make sure that the hotfix has been included in SP4.1 before updating and make sure that there are features important enough for you to upgrade. To hear more about this check out Rob Jensen’s blog post titled “If it isn’t broke, don’t try to fix it. Installing Service Packs”.
Please feel free to share your experiences with SolidWorks 2009 SP4.1 here in the comment section as well.
2007 was a good, stable and with good speed CAD. That version made SolidWorks great. My opinion is version 2008 is nothing more then a pile of “garbage”. Make matter worse, you guys are arrogant and do not listen the end users. None of my SolidWorks issues was solved, and I have sent them to you and with version 2009 those issues have remained plus more issues like converting part to ACIC etc. occurred. The version 2009 crawls our fairly new computers. I am very unhappy. I would like to go back to 2007 until you guys pull together yourself. I heard version 2010 will support Vista, and because we are not going to upgrade to Vista perhaps version 2011 will be our next bet. But now I am tuck with 2009 which is a terrible software. If you would be smart enough find a way to go back to version 2007.
the 2011 version is not compatible to older versions. This is ridiculous. Now I have to redraw everything in 2009.
Compatibility is a long requested enhancement request from users that has not been implemented yet. Hopefully this functionality will come soon!