For those that have not heard, in the near future, Autodesk will no longer be selling what is called a "perpetual license" for plain AutoCAD. A perpetual license is what we have called a "seat" of AutoCAD in the past. A perpetual license does not ever expire.
Plain AutoCAD will only be offered as a "Desktop Subscription". A Desktop Subscription is basically a rental agreement. When the rental agreement expires, you no longer have access to the software. It should be noted that the Desktop Subscription is significantly more expensive than the traditional perpetual license on maintenance subscription ($518/year vs. $1680/year).
For those of you owning a perpetual license on subscription, for the time being, you will be allowed to continue to pay the lower maintenance subscription cost. However, if you allow that maintenance subscription to lapse, your only way to ever upgrade will be to begin renting the software via. Desktop Subscription.
Here is how Autodesk is spinning the numbers to make their new licensing scheme look attractive....Below is a screen shot from their website, which is now apparently down (good thing we are moving to cloud computing). It is glaringly apparent that they are having a difficult time selling this since the only way they could make it look cost effective was to compare a single seat on desktop subscription to purchasing an additional full price perpetual license of AutoCAD every other year! The "pay as you go" is Desktop Subscription.
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Here is a spreadsheet I put together showing the actual cost increase.
We are looking at dropping several seats from subscription as well as downgrading to plain AutoCAD. Price to downgrade = $1600 per seat!!
Fundamental Economics 101. When you increase the price of something the consumption decreases. Developers of IntelliCAD and BricsCAD based products are thanking their lucky stars for Autodesk's greed.
The math of the first example (new copy every third year) only works because Autodesk eliminated the upgrade credit option some time back.
> The math of the first example (new copy every third year) only works because Autodesk eliminated the upgrade credit option some time back.
Who in their right mind would choose to buy an additional full price seat every other year when maintenance subscription is only $518/year? It's an obviously flawed comparison and could be construed as purposefully misleading.
I wonder if this will have any financial effect on survey software developers utilizing the AutoCAD engine. :'(
Does that mean as long as they Allow you to pay the $518 you'll be ok, as long as you don't let it lapse?
I'm still using a really old version of Autocad and LDD.. it still works.
> Who in their right mind would choose to buy an additional full price seat every other year when maintenance subscription is only $518/year? It's an obviously flawed comparison and could be construed as purposefully misleading.
It would be absurd to have bought, say, C3d 2013 and then pay full price to upgrade to C3d 2015. There simply isn't much of a difference between those releases at all. No one would do that.
I'm using AutoCAD 2005. It works fine for me.
> > Who in their right mind would choose to buy an additional full price seat every other year when maintenance subscription is only $518/year? It's an obviously flawed comparison and could be construed as purposefully misleading.
> It would be absurd to have bought, say, C3d 2013 and then pay full price to upgrade to C3d 2015. There simply isn't much of a difference between those releases at all. No one would do that.
My point is that you would end up with 2 seats since you are paying full price, it isn't an upgrade. An upgrade would void the previous license.
> Does that mean as long as they Allow you to pay the $518 you'll be ok, as long as you don't let it lapse?
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> I'm still using a really old version of Autocad and LDD.. it still works.
If your most current version is really old, then to obtain up-to-date software, you would have to purchase a new perpetual license at full price. You would have to do this before they stop selling perpetual licenses.
If you want to upgrade at some point in the future beyond that, and avoid having to rent the software, you will have to purchase the annual maintenance subscription ($518/year). You will also have to be careful about letting it lapse.
After sometime next year, the only option will be to rent the software if you want to upgrade.
The other option is to purchase an upgraded perpetual license now, knowing that you will be retired before you will ever want to upgrade again.
Strong arm tactics.
If you want to upgrade you must do it before Dec. 2015. After the cutoff date you will only be able to rent month to month or yearly.
With rental you have a very small up front cost but after 4 years of rental it will cost $1500 more per year for the rental than the perpetual. This is assuming you keep up with yearly updates, if you just purchase and forget it only takes 2 years.
C3D purchase with 1st year subscription $6825
Yearly subscriptions cost $1025
4 year cost $9,900.00
C3D Rental (annually) $2520
4 year cost $10,080.00
Year 5 to Year 9
purchase with sub. $5125.00
Year 5 to 9
Rental $12,600.00
Does anyone know of an open source cad that does basic 2d stuff?
> Does anyone know of an open source cad that does basic 2d stuff?
Draftsight, by Dassault Systemes (makers of Solidworks 3D modeling software).
There's a free 2D version.
The Professional Version is $299 to start, then $99/year subscription.
Have no idea whether it would work with various surveying tools. It's just CAD.
Just to clarify, the $518/year is for plain AutoCAD only.
We have paid roughly $1400 per year for many years, before that it was free. For that we have access to any of their software for development purposes only. We can't use it to produce drawings like regular users.
A big negative for us is a recent change in that starting with the 2015 release our license expires after three years. Needless to say that will make it very hard to support users of previous releases when we can't get it to run roughly 20 months from now. Perhaps that's another part of the master plan.
I don't agree with their plans but it is after all, their barn to burn. They have often followed Microsoft and now that MS is committing economic suicide I suppose they want to try it as well.
Autodesk will continue to screw you guys for as long as you allow then to enjoy it.
Intellicad does all that you really need.
Stand alone AutoCADs days are numbered. Design software is less than half of Autodesk's business (the rest being industrial manufacturing and special effects/gaming software) anyway. They're developing a stranglehold on the architectural, MEP, and constructions markets with Revit, Navisworks, and Infraworks - most major cities (and government agencies like USACOE and NAVFAC) perfer building plans to be submitted for review as a Revit model. Any engineering/surveying firm that interacts with other design firms on mid size or larger buildings has to have interoperability with Revit to do business.
Autodesk's business model on the design side is to give clients who have 50+ users what they want and any smaller user sales are just icing on the cake. And the users in the markets they are targeting perfer annual subscription over license regardless of price for the same reason they are moving toward off site server and storage on subscription - to shift their IT costs from capital to operational expenses for tax purposes.
It's not just Autodesk. Check out the latest versions of Adobe and MS Office. Looks like many companies are going to the "monthly rentals" concept.
Those companies that do not fo9llow this trend are going to make out like bandits!! At the last Carlson User's Conference I got the feeling that the Carlson folks see this as a major rip off of the customer. I don't see the OLEM version of Carlson being offered much longer if those exorbitant monthly fees apply to the AutoCAD kernel that Carlson uses.
Sketchup
Is it too late to lead a Luddite revolt and go back to paper and pencil??
unfortunately, your assessment seems spot on to me.
