How bad are solidworks parameters?

[lemiant]

I must be missing something, because solidworks seems to be sorely lacking in the parameters department.
I was really getting into some work in solidworks, and was going to create a full parametrized robot (any dimension can be changed from a simple text file, and the model will adapt), but very quickly I started to run into walls. For example: you cannot put equations in when you create features, you have to finish the feature and go back to do it; you cannot use parameters in design tables, you have to use them in equations and then suppress and unsuppress the equations from the design table.

And worst, there is no way to reorder the the rules that are imported from a text file. This means that if I have this in the text file:

"base_length" = 20
"side_extension_length" = (some_long_calculation_for_the_side_length) +4

and I try to add an intermediate calculation like so:

"base_length" = 20
"side_length" = some_long_calculation_for_the_side_length
"side_extension_length" = "side_length" + 4

The steps that already existed (1&3), stay at the top, with the new calculation below, not only is this disorderly (which I would happily live with), but it makes the third calculation fail, because a dependancy (step 2), is after it.

What am I missing?

- Alex