Rate PiWeb

[[Je...]]

.

Please rate your opinion of PiWeb as a reporting software. Feel free to add any additional feedback, positive or negative, in the comments.

.

[[Da...]]

Not intuitive at all. Far too complicated. The results are great if you can find your way. 🙄

[[Th...]]

If I never had to plot anything I wouldn't have much of an opinion either way. Unfortunately our whole reporting strategy for line profiles, etc. requires me to use the graphics elements instead of Piweb plots because I can customize visible segments within them as a characteristic and selectively display the element characteristics. Piweb doesn't see any of that.

[[Ri...]]

If anyone says anything other than 10 you will be banned to the shadow realms.

PiWeb is the best piece of SPC software for Zeiss software.

I will die on this hill.

[[Ro...]]

Where's the "we still use Default" option?

[[No...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

Because we do.

[[Da...]]

Below average seems to have a slight lead...

[[Ri...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

Custom Report Stans.

[[Je...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

.

Acknowledged that an undetermined portion of customers still use the Custom report. This poll is for those who use PiWeb.

.

[[No...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

[[Je...]]

.
Results as of 10-10-2022:

Mean: 5.814814815
Median: 5

Not quite above average 😱

.

[[SH...]]

Option one is really a ridiculous....

[[Ke...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

Purposefully, I am sure... just like 10. A fair balance 🤣

[[Je...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

.

I agree, Shabu. But option 10 will mostly only be voted for by Zeiss employees / authorized distributors. As Keith said, it's a fair balance.

.

[[Ri...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

Hey, man. 🙁 I've been using PiWeb since 2012 when I was still just a customer. I've always been a huge PiWeb Stan.

PiWeb is like the Report Software version of Calypso - it can be extremely simple if you want, or it can handle some extremely complex scenarios if you want, it is all up to you.

A lot of the potential of PiWeb is in the SBS/Enterprise versions where there are multiple machine feeding into a central database. When I first started using PiWeb we had 3 Zeiss CMMs feeding into the software. When I left my previous employer, we had over 20 Zeiss CMMs, 10 auto-gauges, 3 contour tracers, a couple Jenoptik Shaft Measuring machines, and multiple hand measurement tools to complete reports from inspections done on the line that had their own dedicated shop-floor CMMs. We multiple machining stations setup to view live data from the CMM to track their quality. We had daily reports being automatically generated and emailed to management to track quality of critical parts/processes. I even used it to generate custom first sample reports for customers using their own report.

Could PiWeb do everything? Absolutely not - it still couldn't replace MiniTab when it came to complex data analyzing, but it did make the data collection and data exportation process extremely simple.

I see a lot of unwarranted PiWeb hate around here, and I'm flabbergasted because people are advocating for the "Custom Report" which was anything other than "custom". Is it completely different, and have a new learning curve? Absolutely. For me though the two most powerful options for PiWeb for standalone PCs is 1) the ability to easily store inspection data, and have it segregated based on header attribute information, and 2) the ability to show that data to anyone and everyone quickly with either custom reports, or the prebuilt reports (the process protocol and table reports are great prebuilt reports).

I will end by saying that Zeiss is heavily invested into PiWeb and expanding/improving it. I would strongly suggest everyone that has an idea or complaint to share them with Zeiss using the MyVoice.

https://portal.zeiss.com/my-voice/softw ... 0f934e25f9

[[Je...]]

.
Wow, thanks Richard!

I appreciate sharing your experience of seeing PiWeb used in a variety of situations, including large scale manufacturing. Those must have been exciting challenges. I would LOVE to see over twenty Zeiss CMMs stacked in one building.

I have not used SBS or Enterprise editions. Most of the praise I have heard for PiWeb is directed at the those versions. My current assessment, although I am open to taking in new information, is that Zeiss tailored PiWeb for "deep pockets," especially large scale, multi-machine operations like Tier-One automotive. This is not wrong in itself. It's a strategy decision that Zeiss is free to make. However, it's helpful to understand this dynamic when reviewing PiWeb.

Complex things are possible in PiWeb as are basic things. They're just not easy or intuitive. It's as though they had the back-end developers write the user-interface, which is a recipe for frustration.

PiWeb:

"Want to change the appearance of such and such? Sure... you can do that. But first you need to do step A, which has a parent-child relationship to this variable, which is a derivative of this floating, dynamic value that needs to call function 452 and then reroute to a subfolder which must be titled with a specific nomenclature."

Me: "Ok. Well, instead do you think you could just put a paint can icon on the top of the screen?"

I am an early adopter of new technology, and I quickly ditched the custom report. I do think a lot of the negative feedback from users is justified and relates to the need for a more intuitive, user-friendly Pi-Web.

Once again, I appreciate the insight into how scalable this software is. I hope I get to use the SBS or Enterprise versions some day.

.

[[Fa...]]

very slow data loading (even with a new computer), if used with a pallet many times it gets blocked between one piece and another. Otherwise very comfortable, complete and visually satisfying

[[La...]]

Thank God someone said it. When I was a customer, I used PiWeb Reporting to replace a lot of trivial functions I did in Minitab. Does it replace Minitab entirely? No. But it's not advertising itself as doing such.

The people that I've worked with to implement PiWeb are not software engineers, and neither am I, my background is Mechanical Engineering, and everyone I've worked with has been able to create outstanding and powerful templates that solve whatever problem drove them to buy SBS or Enterprise.

I work extensively with PiWeb all the time. As a former quality engineer, I harnessed PiWeb at the time to replace tedious functions that I'd be previously copying/pasting into Excel or Minitab.

Now as an apps engineer, I get to make amazing stuff for our customers using PiWeb SBS or Enterprise.

• Tool change management that associates a change or offset to a characteristic so we can predict tool life

• Dashboards showing quality of parts coming off machining centers

• Semi automated AS9102, nuclear, or automotive documentation

• Incredible manual measurement interfaces that shows the user how to do the inspection items

• Non conformance reporting / label printing for fully completed (fully inspected) parts

• Monthly quality reports based on inspection data

• Visual/graphical representation of hole positions with appropriate G codes for offsets depending on the machining center it came off of

PiWeb is an awesome engineering tool. I am a huge advocate. Mostly because I reaped the benefits when I was doing menial tasks in other softwares in the past, so current-me really wishes that past-me knew what I knew now.

Disclaimer: I don't work for ZEISS. I work for a distributor. And I am only speaking to my own experience and success using it with customers in different industries..

Please sign in to view this quote.

[[No...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

Let me say that I don't want to be branded as a PiWeb hater 🤣
My only problem with PiWeb reporting (!) was its incompatibility to the full Calypso functionality, namely that it doesn't support "absolute" tolerance mode (or whatever it's called - you know what I mean) and the way Zeiss refused for years to fix things like missing text elements, fobbing people off with unhelpful workarounds, like group comments.

All of this may look like a minor nuisance compared to the vast amout of new possibilities PiWeb introduced. But for our company the tolerance thing alone would have had the potential to cause massive costs from wrong changes made to injection moulds, because engineers reading the reports may have interpreted the deviations wrong. It's easy to say, well, why not learn something new, where's the problem? For me personally that would have been easy. But these reports go to dozens of engineers, many of which are working at other plants and change frequently. I simply don't have the time to teach all these people and to verify they really got it right.
So I tried hard to modify the PiWeb templates to something resembling the old custom report, but to no avail. That's why in the end I resorted to the old custom report and never bothered about PiWeb again. Because over the years, our process changed in a way that most of the time we no longer need any CMM reports at all. So now it's too late to invest any more time into PiWeb.

My opinion is, that when a company decides to introduce such a big change to their software product, they either have to make sure it's fully compatible or have to provide workarounds that really work. They way this has been handled is unacceptable from my point of view.

[[Ro...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

To expand on this...
My issue with Piweb isn't what it's capable of or the lack of features. It's the opposite. They've made what should be a super simple process, if that's what you want, and made it complicated. I don't think the Custom Report is any better. Selecting little text items on an 1980's archaic grid layout, linking them to variables, etc. to make a simple report that has all the information I need in the correct place is both frustrating and really time consuming.

After spending all that time getting the Custom reports the way we need them, setting the file naming conventions, formatting, etc I have less desire to get involved with Piweb because other than some SPC/Plotting stuff, it really doesn't provide us with anything that we don't already have or need. And the documentation is less than desirable. I shouldn't have to come on this forum and have Laura help me with a simple task like having a simple plot show up on a report.

[[Ch...]]

Options today: Get real work done, or write long tangent on P$Web.

I'm one of the 2 people who gave P$Web a score of 9. Given my past comments on here, that may come as a surprise to most people. P$Web really is the best CMM reporting software out there. But, we haven't been phrasing this correctly; best is too subjective. It should be that P$Web is the most advanced reporting software(still subjective but you guys see my point).

P$Web is great. No other software can do what P$Web does with Zeiss CMM data. That, and the reports looks awesome. If your parts suck, then you can still dazzle the customer with bright colors and awesome looking graphics.

My only issue with P$Web(and why it is not the 'best' for a lot of people) is that it is extraordinarily out of touch with smaller and lower tech facilities. Less than a $300 million/ year company, then forget about using P$Web; Only one programmer, then forget about using P$Web; No one is your facility has any computer programing experience, then forget about using P$Web.

Nothing says 'keep those skanky poor people away from me' more than P$Web.

Luckily for me, none of issues I listed above apply to my situation and I'm free to enjoy.

[[Je...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

.
Bingo.

I am a Zeiss evangelist all day long. I want to love PiWeb. It can do incredible things. It eats statistic process control for breakfast. It's just not intuitive or user friendly. It needs a major redesign led by consultants who know user interface and ease-of-functionality.
.

[[Je...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

.
Whoh... well said, Chad. Thank you for choosing option 2 today.
.

[[Da...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

This hits the nail on the head for me! I'm not a computer programmer, I'm an end user. It's great that you can make it do whatever you want. But I want it to be simple, easy, and above all FAST! Almost all my data stays in house, it's not for customers, it's for the guys in the shop and they need it now. Going from a one button click to " make a template, to make a plot then turn it off once you have that one time print out" just doesn't do it for my situation. I'm sure I'm not in the minority of users.

[[Ow...]]

Kind of like Norbert Bendl said, a lot of the dislike was during the implementation phase when they either ignored or wasn't aware of how many users were using text-elements in their program reports to yield product manufacturing notes or next operation directives, etc.

It's almost like they were trying to force the public to use a newer means of transportation that they know the current grid can't handle because it's more efficient, less noisy and less apt to kill you if left running in a garage, i.e. electric vehicles 🤣

Regardless,
Piweb has some nice capabilities for just basic users that none of the others had, like putting plot illustrations within the same characteristic, etc, and a lot option$ that you'd have to go thru other software's to get.
.