Will Autodesk Negotiate?

Posted by: @bstrand

Has anyone here tried to negotiate with Autodesk on the price of Civil 3D??ÿ If so, did it work?

With Autodesk? No.

With its dealers? Sure, a couple of firms I worked for in the past worked deals with them. It all depended on the dealers and what they were willing to do.

Although they're pretty much like the top dogs of geospatial software & equipment, they can afford to not negotiate...

NO.

but, the single month subscription has benefits if you're not slamming work through it 7 days a week, and if you are it the cost of doing business.

TBC is way more expensive especially if you're using it for lidar and other things.

I'm not even sure you can purchase it through Autodesk. I thought everything went through resellers? I'm pretty sure I've dealt with nothing but resellers for at least thirty years. I don't know if they negotiate the price. With the advent of IT departments I don't get in to that any more, but when I did I just asked for a quote and presented that to management.?ÿ

Hmm, maybe I'm going about it the wrong way then.?ÿ I simply went to the autodesk website and downloaded the software there.?ÿ And when my free trial ran out a pop-up link directs me straight back to their website, and to a purchase window, etc.

Maybe if you are going to buy a thousand copies the salesperson might kick back some of his/her commission. But one? Forget it.?ÿ

I think that's like negotiating the price of your milk at the grocery store, it's not happening.?ÿ

Hah

I guess we'll see.?ÿ I don't know what time zone their office is in but they were closed when I called yesterday.?ÿ I see there is a local retailer that sells it as well so I might try them first; maybe they'll be more willing to cut me a deal.

Carlson is such a better deal but ugh, I don't want to have to re-do my templates and figure out all the small differences...

I know a guy who was approached by autodesk for having an unauthorized number of users accessing his 1 available seat simultaneously, autodesk demanded him to buy a 5 license package of 3 years to cover "damages" he was able to negotiate with them to settle on a 3 license for 3 years package.?ÿ what I find noteworthy about this, is that at the time a Civil 3D license had only two varieties single-user license(1 user) or multi-user(5 users). so in essence the negotiation led to a private business agreement for purchase of a publicly unlisted license type.?ÿ?ÿ

I might be able to get a deal with a large regional reseller - but that's because the CEO and I went to grade school and high school together.?ÿ

Well, Autodesk more or less told me to pound sand. ???? The local reseller had a slightly better offer, but by less than a hundred bucks.

Man, I'd like to use Carlson just to punch the 800-pound gorilla, but it would be such a nuisance to switch.?ÿ Oh well.

@bstrand Have you contacted Carlson about a trial of Carlson Civil Suite to try it out and see how much trouble it actually would be to switch?

A friend of mine found it reasonably easy to switch back and forth as needed.?ÿ I'm not sure if I could easily go from Carlson to something else because I'm a creature of habit.?ÿ Might depend more closely on what type of work your doing.

@jon-payne

Yep, I got a 30-day code from them last night.?ÿ I had planned to use it to see if I could get a template setup in Carlson when I had a bit of free time.?ÿ I'm not particularly savvy when it comes to setting up templates so I was dreading having to do it all over again and in a new software.

@wrl Company I once worked for continued to use a copy of Civil 3D that was licensed to me after I left the Company. The Company negotiated a several thousand dollar settlement with Autocad for using a nonlicensed?ÿ copy. They are not a force to challenge.

@bstrand?ÿ

Not sure I'm right as I'm just barely able to accomplish a task in CADD, but I thought the templates were just dwg files in particular directories and named dwt.?ÿ Hopefully one of the CADD gurus will jump in and explain the exact process of how you could find them on your ACAD machine and where to put them in the Carlson directories so you wouldn't have to recreate anything.

@jon-payne

Oh, the templates are really just drawing files except with some custom settings.?ÿ Which confused me for longer than I'd like to admit, but that part is at least clear to me now.?ÿ What I meant by not being savvy is mostly just being slow creating blocks, title blocks, finding and adjusting settings that matter, etc.?ÿ You can spend weeks, maybe months, customizing a template.?ÿ Anyway, I assumed Carlson and Autocad wouldn't play nice together and I'd have to do almost everything from scratch.?ÿ You think it's possible Carlson will use an Autocad template though?

@bstrand Just to re-iterate Hopefully a CADD guru will jump in because I'm far from knowledgeable abut this.?ÿ But I think the template should generally work in either (I'm assuming your talking using the IntelliCAD version of Carlson as your wanting to drop AutoDesk).?ÿ If you message me a template you have developed and want to check, I'll be glad to try using it in Carlson (IntelliCAD).

It would be sometime tomorrow before I tried.?ÿ Heading out of the office now.

You can use a template interchangeably, but the process of field to finish is completely different so you can't mix those. You can't take your C3D description keys, point styles, point labels, survey figures, etc. and make those work in Carlson. So yes, you would have to create the Carlson specific files from (mostly) scratch.?ÿ

@jon-payne

Oh, no worries.?ÿ I will probably use Civil 3D this year since I'm more familiar with that than Carlson, and would like to get going on projects pretty quickly here.?ÿ Experimenting with the templates will be a good winter time project when things are slow.

Posted by: @blitzkriegbob

You can't take your C3D description keys, point styles, point labels, survey figures, etc. and make those work in Carlson.

I have found that data files collected and coded for C3d F2f will process nicely in Carlson F2f, once it is set up. So we have that going for us, at least.?ÿ

Setting up an F2f need not be overwhelming. Get going with 10-15 of your most common codes. Add a code or 2 to your setup with each project.?ÿ