steve's blog

CET 2.5 Is now officially released!

We have had a great last couple of weeks and according to our counter there are now 892 people running CET2.5, it is really great to see how fast people have updated to the latest version.

During the wind up to CET2.5 we had a couple of power users helping us with testing, Paul Riches said this about 2.5 before we released :   

Holy crap dude – this is the most stable release I’ve seen so far....I’m doing a really intensive layout right now with a ton of accessories, and lots of Google Sketch-Up items and even with the real-time lights on it’s responding perfectly. No stalls or hang-ups at all.

I’m amazed, seriously. This is freakin’ awesome. The acid test will be my background and the additional lighting I’m going to throw in, but so far it’s exceeded my expectations. 

Hey Peter - just heading off to bed but I wanted to let you know - I worked in the new 2.5 RC1 for about three hours this evening, and it's flawless. Couldn't find a damn thing wrong with it. I'm going to use it again tomorrow afternoon to finish off this one drawing, but so far it's a winner. 

Now of course its time to move on again, we cannot afford to stand still! We have lots of things to do and its time to start working on CET2.6.

In the meantime we have invited everyone that came to our Conference in Las Vegas to be part of a closed Beta testing of CET Editables and CET Reconfigurations. Editables is currently being tested and Reconfigurations will be available at the end of next week. We are working hard on getting the Reconfigurations extension ready. We are also pushing the use of our new community MyConfigura during the testing.

Its has been a very productive year for us this year and next year is going to be even better! We have a number of interesting things in the pipeline like new rendering capabilities and connection to MyConfigura.

As our MD Johan Lyreborn would say, Stay Sharp!

We are nearly there now! In the final stages of preparing for CET2.5.

A few weeks ago we halted development and have been working only on minor changes if we have to and our Beta extensions that were announced at the User Conference (Editables and Reconfigurations)

There has been a lot of testing the last few weeks and a few of our power users have had a chance to play in CET2.5 with good result.

In two weeks time we will be releasing CET2.5 and everyone will get a chance to see the improvements from CET2.4!

Today after a great time being part of our Annual User Conference, I woke up in Sweden to frost and Autumn weather, it was a real contrast to over 100 degrees F in Vegas, but I really do love the Autumn colours.

The User Conference was a great success and it was made so by our great staff and amazing customers! Every session we had gave more information and insight into how people use our program and use it much better than we do ourselves, plus giving us great feedback for the future.

I especially would like to thank Tracy Lanning for doing a wonderful job of organizing the conference and our power users for standing up there and presenting their stories. I truly hope that we will attract even more people next year!

 We now have just over a month left until we release CET2.5, so its full speed ahead. We got a lot of interest for Reconfigurations and Editable 3D which was great!

Thanks everyone!

Greetings!

Yesterday morning we released CET 2.4.1, for a complete list of all changes please check out our release notes.

So far there are just over 300 people that have updated to 2.4.1!

Last week we were present at NeoCon in Chicago. I missed it this year because of schedules for the release. I would like to thank everyone involved in our booth this year. I heard and saw that it was a really great effort and that it was fun to Celebrate 20 years of Configura! I really wish I had been there, I love being at NeoCon and meeting the people that use or wish to use our program!

I also celebrated my own anniversary with Configura this year. 10 years ago, June 17th I flew over from England to Sweden, met Johan Lyreborn outside of our old office and got the keys ready to start work on Monday June 18th. They say that time flies when you are having fun!

Today we released CET Designer 2.4!

With CET Designer 2.4 we focused on stability and memory usage to be able to use larger and more complex drawings, and only a minor number of features.

We were very conservative the whole way through and kept the release very tight, with a much longer testing period.

From all our testing we all feel that the release feels solid and we have adressed the larger issues with memory and rendering, even our external test help have been very positive to 2.4 so we feel that we have a very good base to work on.

I hope now that it gets a good reception!

Next stop Neocon!

After what seems like 10 minutes since we released 2.3, we are well on our way to the 2.4 release.

For 2.4 the main and only focus has been on stability. This means we wont really have any new great features in 2.4 but that we have spent a lot of time going back over the work we have already done and making it even better.

I will be preparing to travel to our US office in May ready for the release and will be there as we make the change. Its always great to be there and be part of it!

After a long month of working to get everything ready for the release, we are finally here!

A couple of hours ago, we released CET2.3.

We still have a lot of ideas and things to achieve but it really does feel like we are getting further and further forward every release!

Now we have to keep our focus and continue with the projects we have, There are lots of challenges ahead!

Its still the middle of the night over there in Las Vegas, here its morning and full speed ahead at the Swedish office. The anticipation is building and everyone is very interested in what is happening over there. It feels very much like Christmas eve.

It still feels very hard not to have been able to come to the User Conference this year as I am just a few weeks away from being a father for the second time, but I know there will be more chances and that we have a really competent group of people there!

I really hope everyone enjoys the conference, the team that has been preparing for the conference have worked extremely hard and even behind the scenes, its hard to imagine how much effort goes into something like this. So, with that said. GOOD LUCK! and as Johan Lyreborn would say - Stay sharp!

The next few weeks are very very busy for me. Today I am travelling to Oslo in Norway to visit a prospective client and perform a pre-study. Exciting! Next week we have a new release for Marbodal and then I am travelling to the Grand Rapids office for a week. After that it feels like I am booked up for as long as I can scroll down in my outlook calender.

Its scary and at the same time a lot of fun to know that you are in demand and a lot of things need to be done!

Unfortunately we have come to the decision that I wont be attending the User Conference this year. I am due to become a father within a few weeks of the UC and it wouldnt feel right to be away so close in case anything happens. Tobias Wester will be there to represent me on the day. It is such a shame as I was so looking forward to being there!

Take the challenges head on!

Now the summer is over and everyone is rested and looking forward to CET2.3 release and the User Conference! Neocon was really great this year, thankyou to everyone that stopped by to see us and for all the great work by everyone involved. This was the best year so far despite the economy!

In typical Configura tradition, we dont allow ourselves to slow down too much. Our main focus for this year has been to improve stability and rewrite parts of the program to enhance and speed up every day use. We have come a long way already but we still have a long way to go. Everyone involved knows this and we are a great team working hard to reach our goals.

Then we have our second annual user conference in Las Vegas. This is a great chance to get to meet us and be a part of the development and shaping CET's future. We are not mind readers and we really love to get feedback so dont be afraid. They say that no news is good news, but I dont agree at all, keep us on our toes and make sure we know what you want!

There has been a lot to do since the release of CET2.2 with new customers and products and preparing for Neocon. Its always exciting this time of year.

Next week I will be flying over to our office in Grand Rapids to make some final preparations for theshow, I feel that we have some really interesting things to show this year and that makes it even more interesting!

So I hope to see many of you there this year despite the economic climate, its a good chance to meet us and talk to us in person.

See you soon!

We did it!

Thanks to a great effort from our team and our customers 2.2 is now release and ready for action.

The new graphics engine was one of the biggest changes we have done on the CET platform. This is very exciting as it gives us much more control over our graphics and paves the way for a lot of exciting features and enhancements in the future!

So to everyone involved; Well done and thanks for a great job on 2.2!

Now we have to keep focused and stay on track for the next release. We still have a lot to do and many wonderful ideas in the pipeline!

Good morning!

We now enter another new week with energy from the weekend. Saturday here in Sweden we had some really great weather which helped charge the batteries again.

We are close to the release of CET2.2 now, so its full speed here in the Core team, with planning and testing. Today I will build a beta version for internal testing which should be very close to the final version.

We just have to remain focused and keep track of our goals now to make sure we succeed again!

Have a great week folks!

Today I took the plunge into the blogging world. We have a number of internal tools here at Configura to help our daily work, Forums and Wikis are used to inform each other of "how to and how not to" do certain things, this is a step forward for us to inform our customers and interested parties what we are doing and how we are thinking.

I have just got back from a "Core board" meeting which is an internal meeting within CET where we decide release dates and features for coming releases aswell as talking about the current release. We are close to the CET2.2 release now so its very exciting to hear what the customization teams are doing and how the testing is going.

Full speed ahead!