Bye Bye Autodesk, Renewing Solid Edge Today

I had until the end of March to participate in an SE promo and have decided to do so. The Autodesk policy of using price gouging attrition to eliminate perpetual seats over time for the subscription model had already soundly irritated me. I believe in perpetual seats and I am willing to pay the up front costs to do so. I don’t care about subscriptions just as long as it is the choice of the customer as to what they buy. I do however assign paramount importance to that choice being there.

I went to Autodesk to get HSM. It is the only reason and attached to it was this Albatross Inventor. Inventor 2018 is now out and I went to see the new features and one of the first videos I ran across was this. https://youtu.be/MV0iMjkTb3s One of my pet peeves with Inventor besides the fact that while Inventor brings in other companies work they are still just dumb solids with none of the intelligence that SE would assign imports with Synchronous Tech. But yes there it was you can now assign dimensions to 3D parts and I did not try to find out if it was for imports to. It just kind of summed up for me how far behind and clunky Inventor was to SE. Don’t even talk to me about how dumb their method of finding dimensions is either since I am tired of even thinking about the people who came up with such assinine logic. Two and a half years in with Autodesk and my attempts to use Inventor were so painful I just quit. Far easier to model in SE then revise in SE and import the revision back into my parts locator known as Inventor for HSM use.

One of the reasons I had left current maintenance with SE was a perceived lack of new features that benefited me and was worth the $1,500.00 per year since I rarely call for support. It took a few years with Autodesk to begin to appreciate that things can be far worse. With Autodesk Inventor it is shocking how far behind SE they are in many areas and with HSM how slow improvements are forthcoming. I still believe in HSM and would never consider going back to CAMWorks. But I was told late last year that you buy into HSM for what is there and never buy into it for the promises of future enhancements. I have found this to be true. Sadly HSM is a product resting on it’s laurels while others are making big strides forward and adding significant new features. HSM is mired in trying to do things with Inventor, SW and Fusion360 with insufficient programmer support. Truth to be known I suspect instructions have been given to devote far more time to all things Fusion over the rest. Fusion requires you to work on the cloud for saves and edits so it was a non starter for me. Only a fool takes his intellectual property and exposes it to such risk.

The other key thing to me is stability and perpetual seats. Autodesk is in a state of serious flux right now and the emphasis is not on what can we provide to customers to make them want to buy our products but rather how can we force an unwilling group of customers to pay more while we take away their major investments in the perpetual seat model. They want to have chattel and not customers. This had dictated to me that 2018 was the last year with Autodesk for me and this is only because I had renewed last December. Some three months before they sent out that dear customer we love you screw you letter. Had I received that letter before hand I never would have sent the check.

Oddly enough I find more and more value being assigned to Mastercam. I have heard all the complaints over the years about them. I have personally watched people use it and it seemed to be page page click click page page. But they could do anything. They now have a high speed machining tool path that is better than Volumill and probably equals from what I see HSM Adaptive. Their new version is well received in a nearby busy job shop and has cut down on the page page click click stuff I am told. I have known them for years and I trust their opinion. I don’t expect that they will ever be as intuitive and simple to learn and use as HSM. HSM however has significant lacks and apparently no burning desire to fix them since years have passed with no solution in hand for deficiencies. I can deal with a lack of ease and speed in programming if the trade off is far more capabilities and a corporate commitment to permanent seats. As far as I can tell Mastercam has this and the private owners are in no hurry to sell out or change their ways. Their model has procured for them the largest single market share for an individual CAM product and with Autodesk going full on stupid I imagine there will be many Delcam and HSM users pondering their situation.

To me Mastercam appears to be the logical next step if I take one. For sure what I choose now will be what I use for the rest of my career so I will go with something that has a history I can trust as well as capabilities I need. The addition of a huge trained CAM user base is attractive too since I will not have to train anyone. Other than myself of course if I go there.

There are few opportunities to acquire CAD or CAM customers from your competition. The hassle of migrating to a new product from the work to move files to training new users and getting them up to speed is a powerful barrier to overcome in the search for new customers. Customers that primarily will come from another program to yours. But I think right now Solid Edge and Mastercam have a golden opportunity to acquire Autodesk refugees and they might be a little crazy if they don’t get in there and offer incentives.

Update 3-23 4:39 PM

Holy cow that was fast! Placed the order this morning and have new license file in hand with media scheduled for Fed Ex delivery next Tuesday. Yes Solid Edge still sends out physical media unlike some who make it a special request. Bye bye Autodesk!