Autodesk New Policy - spate of India

PRSS, do you work in imperial or metric? If you always run metric there is another, pretty powerful open-source cad program out there, which has a great continioncy of followers who work on the code of this program very aggresivlly. I think it is called FreeCAD.

I dont know if anyone has mentioned it but,(from their web-site)..FreeCAD is a general purpose feature-based, parametric 3D modeler for CAD, MCAD, CAx, CAE and PLM, aimed directly at mechanical engineering and product design but also fits a wider range of uses in engineering, such as architecture or other engineering specialties. It is 100% Open Source and extremely modular, allowing for very advanced extension and customization.

FreeCAD is based on OpenCasCade, a powerful geometry kernel, features an Open Inventor-compliant 3D scene representation model provided by the Coin 3D library, and a broad Python API. The interface is built with Qt. FreeCAD runs exactly the same way on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux platforms.

Maybe you could check it out

Taylor

Thank you ReMark - I shall check if my Kaspersky is giving some problems - I have this in all my computers. But there has not been any problem with AutoCAD. And thanks BDesign for giving me the FreeCAD link.

With best regards

PRSS

this is a gripe in addition to yours:

Autocad is cheap. only max $5000USD. Try using Tekla. That costs $30,000 per license. And try competing against people who use pirate versions. You train up staff and you find that they get poached. well you know the story. in the end you get brutally beaten for doing the right thing. it's like competing with slavery based goods and services: slave goods undercut legitimate operators. you can't survive without a superior service. and you can't give a superior service when you keep losing your best staff. and you can't pay to retain them because your clients are knocking your prices to the lowest levels (to that of the pirates thick profit margins). competitors will offer your staff 50 paisa more to switch and they run.

Autodesk doesn't give the damn, they're not gonna shut down pirate operators. there is no law and order in Chennai. you could kill a man for just 50 paisa. and let's be real. even if autodesk drops the price to 1 INR then still 95% of Indians are going to pirate it. Autodesk knows this so they will simply target big businesses. China is different from the rest of the world, because there, piracy is a religion. it's a national way of life. even if autodesk offers products for free, 99.5% of Chinese Autodesk users would insist on pirating. I"m not being racist. that's just how it is.

Hello every body

 

I do not know if this is the correct place for this post. I do not find any sub forum for qestions like this. I am just sharing my thoughts (rather worries) here.

 

Recently Autodesk has announced new pricing policy from the 1st of February 2013. From that date any upgrade - even from the previous version- would be 70 percent of the cost of the software. Autodesk is forcing to go for subscription. In India (where Autodesk products are unimaginably expensive - even at the special Indian price), I do not know how many like me - who runs a SOHO private practice with only 5 staff - and who is bent on using legal, licensed softwares only - would continuously be able to afford the recurring expenditure on subscriptions every year.

 

So many of us have made hue & cry regarding the prices of Autodesk products here in India - only in vain.

 

If the Autodesk products became affordable enough to Indian conditions, even though the money made by Autodesk would be smaller (than from other countries), but it will have a great many number of buyers, thereby enormously bringing down the unauthorised use of software. Or probably it would be making much more money in selling to great many numbers at a much lower cost than selling a few at high prices.

 

This "take it or leave it - we command our prices" policy makes us (in India) to think about aleternative CAD software. (Of course there are other lower priced alternatives like Vectorworks, etc.) The trouble is, it has to be a sort of a clone to AutoCAD. Otherwise it becomes impractical to get used to totally new software and it becomes literally impossible to train each new staff with a totally different CAD software. Of course there are a number of clones available which are quite affordable - but sadly none are as stable as AutoCAD - even for 2D drafting one has to take quite some effort with these clones to finish a project successfully. No AutoCAD clone can come even near to even AutoCAD LT. So the lowest riced CAD here has to be inevitably AutoCAD LT.

 

I sort of overheard that in China, Autodesk is selling its products at a very, very, low price. So why not in India also?

 

It is no secret that India has one of the highest unauthorized users of Autodesk products - it is said.

 

So why is not Autodesk encouraging small users (SOHO) like me who are bent in using Licensed Softwares by giving us their product at affordable prices which should be in context with Indian affordability.

 

For instance, 3ds Max is about 3500 USD . A professional visualizer in U.S. charges about 3000 USD to 7000 USD per project. So he is able plough back the investment in almost one project.

 

Here in India, this price means about Rupees 200000 (two hundred thousand rupees). A professional visualizer here charges about Rupees 6000 per project. So it takes about 33 projects for him get back the cost of software itself.

 

So in what way even the special pricing for some Autodesk products really help us Indians here? It is still unaffordable.

 

Will Autodesk really care for small people in India? If not is there an alternative? (It seems only huge Multi National companies here can afford this - or very huge AEC firms can afford this).

 

During a recent Autodesk Survey in which I participated, it is evident that Autodesk is on its way not to sell licenses perpetually and instead start renting the software. Actually, in India, this will have a chain reaction of expenses - like upgrading the OS every frequently and also replacing computers frequently (because one will be forced to use the latest version - which is not so in India. I still use AutoCAD LT 2009 4 copies plus one copy LT 2013 Plus one BDS Premium 2013. I gave up upgrading 4 copies of LT 2009 because I could not afford it)

 

So with these kind of situation, I wonder what would be the status of Indian Autodesk users.

 

Again, even the existing situation has lead to this here. Even though Autodesk products are very expensive and affordable only by the MNCs and the like or Giant AEC companies here who reap in dollars, however, usage of the products by most of the others is not uncommon - it is said they simply use unauthorized software. Now here comes the bitter part of it in that for such of those small people who do pay for the licensed software, they stand to lose lot of money because his /her competitor uses unauthorized software and the amount not

spent is a huge profit (because of the very huge price of the product - and of course multiple copies have to be had to run an office - so savings from expensive software amounts to extra earnings). So these people could quote lower fees than us legitimate users. And we really stand to lose. The clients themselves are not bothered whether somebody is using legitimate software or not. If they could get the services at a lower price they only go for it. They wouldn't pay higher just because somebody is paying for the software.

 

Whatever I have said here is not a sudden outbreak from something just happened. This has come out from years of my observations here in India. Some people seem to even think and claim that it is their birth right to use unauthorized software.

 

I do have some friends of mine who exactly have the same mindset and attitude that I have.

 

Always use legitimate software. But since recently we are pushed to a conclusion that we, the legitimate users would wither away to dust and the illegitimate users would be shining, thriving and would have high standards of life (instead of buying software, they simply buy more hardware and increase staff and increase their turnover - and whereas we legitimate people get forced to stick to older hardware and spend the money on software upgrading, and then not have enough money to add computers & staff with additional licenses for software.

 

Unless Autodesk takes a lenient view on their prices in India, we, the legitimate users are going to disappear from their respective fields!!

 

If this is not the forum to discuss this, then let the moderators please transfer this to an appropriate sub-forum. My humble request is, make this known to others and to Autodesk.

 

With best regards

PRSS