Tag Archives: Autodesk products

Used Car Dealer Autodesk Says “Trust Me”

Posted on March 9, 2017 | Leave a comment

I was thinking today about all the words coming from the poor Autodesk employees who are paid to defend the actions of upper management. These poor souls have families to feed and bills to pay and what an untennable spot to be in. So I see the defense of the promise made by Autodesk to honor perpetual seats forever still stands and they swear it is true.

Here’s the thing though. I fully believe the screw you love letter I received as truthful about their intent and here is how I am going to prove they want to kill off perpetual seats.

We all see the accelerated maintenance cost through 2019. What we don’t see are the costs afterwards. What I believe is that just picking a number, well lets say perhaps five or six thousand and skip the cents, could very well be the real number by that time. They never promised to outlaw perpetual but they did promise in their screw U letter “now we could see the way Autodesk was going.”

So you have these lawyers and they say OK you can’t end perpetual seats legally but you can end them through cost attrition. Autodesk has never made a commitment to cost contain increases to perpetual because they intend to outlaw them through the wallet.

Now Dave you have such a dirty suspicious mean little mind! Gee I wonder why?

Autodesk could quite easily come out with a firm commitment to perpetual. It would go like this. Yes we know the cost of perpetual has risen. But to you dear and valued perpetual seat customers we guarantee to you that perpetual will never rise above X % of the cost of subscription. So there you go Autodesk. A very simple and easy way to prove that you do honor perpetual and customers that have been with you in many cases for decades. I mean you did speak the words that said you value us did you not?

The proof is in the pudding. An honest man even if he is doing things he knows you do not like will tell you the maximum damage you are going to incur. You people however have no honor because you have malign intent. Real simple to prove me wrong by clarifying this. Put into finite numbers what is in store for say the next ten years. You do have the ability to do this since perpetual has been around for far longer. I do not expect there will be an answer though since once a thief is caught red handed at the scene with the jewels in his hands what defense is there?

Hey you guys over at Solid Edge. Have you started your leave Inventor promo yet? Might be a good time to do so.

Update.
Steve Johnson author of http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/ has a post regarding future costs today I have just become aware of. http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/2017/03/09/autodesk-license-costs-options-3-4-5-bait-and-switch/ will take you to it.

One of the comments to Steve’s posts from Ralph Grabowski is of great interest to.

According to http://seekingalpha.com/article/4051716-autodesks-adsk-q4-2017-results-earnings-call-transcript , the post 3-year price increase will be 60% for maintenance customers , and then prices will just keep going up to generate ever greater revenues. Here’s the money quote:

Amarpreet Hanspal: So there’s a different price for each year, when that three-year lock in expires that customer immediately goes up to the terminal loyalty price a little over – roughly 60% more in their maintenance price, and then they’re kind of subject to ongoing price increases that will affect with our long-term pricing strategy.

Leave a comment

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , ,

Autodesk’s Patronizing Screw You Love Letter

Posted on March 7, 2017 | 5 comments

So today it was my turn to get the notice from Autodesk of their new and improved upcoming subscription only paradigm. I really wonder what goes on in the minds of corporate and marketing officers as they struggle to arrive at verbiage that will supposedly make us all happy. I find it infuriating that what they say implies we are so grossly stupid as to believe a word of their garbage. They cater to a market segment of people of above average intelligence and then spew utter nonsense like we are complete idiots

Read this duplicitous garbage I was sent today.

Autodesk’s Screw U Love Letter

Words have meanings. Intent has meaning to. These words say to me here is the lipstick on the pig now don’t you feel better? Please ignore that squishy goopy brown stuff you are laying in with the glamorous pig. Here let us spray a little “Eau De Verbiage” parfummy and the idiots will think what stinks really does not.

Let me extend an offer to you Autodesk in plain speaking words. I too have a profit picture and outgo equals less profit for me. I am not in business to make you succeed at my expense. I am in business to make MY profits grow and you were hired to assist in this because you offered good value for the money at the time. What is happening now is the acceleration of the slowdown of new features and the increase of problems with unfinished new features and legacy problems that apparently are not going to be fixed. EVER. I am also not willing to become a data hostage to people who clearly do not care about my profit margins or security agreements I have to sign with my customers.

So my offer to you is for you to go get screwed. I am not at all interested in sending money to thieves and liars which you guys clearly are. So much for the promise of perpetual seats going forward and thanks for the complete education in corporate treachery this little notice of yours brings.

You people who consider Autodesk for anything in their little subscription world have to be crazy. I can’t wait for these ethical geniuses to demonstrate cost creep to all those silly enough to become captives.

To all the people who work with HSM. Please understand I am not unhappy with you. While some things are slow to be fixed or improved HSM is a proven money maker in this shop. I wish most fervently neither you or I were in this situation but we are. I came here strictly for HSM and intend to continue using it well after your mercenary lying money grubbing corporate overlord execs run it all into the ground. Good luck guys and start building a way out if things turn ugly. You may never have to use it but at this rate I would not count on that hope.

5 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , ,

Weekly Autodesk CAM Webinars Actually Exist!

Posted on September 30, 2016 | Leave a comment

Yes I know it is a bit of a snarky title but today I attended my first Autodesk CAM webinar. I had no idea these even existed until I received an invite from Tim Paul who knew I had a keen interest in HSM Probing. Which of course happened to be today’s topic.

It is a mystery to me how good information like this is created but the fact it exists and where and when seem to be arcane lore. To be honest it is the first time I had heard of this. https://cam.autodesk.com/weekly-webinar/ will take you to the web site.

This falls into the category of better documentation as far as I am concerned. Which also leads to how do you make users aware these things exist? On the splash page for Solid Edge is a link to user forums. It is an excellent way to put this information in front of people without flooding them with emails they may not want. How many people use that link is unknown to me but it is a method.

Perhaps with each annual install of Inventor etal there could be a page during install where a user could register for a list of resources one of which could be the webinars or at least indicate interest which Autodesk could follow up on. You know what? If a customer expresses interest it’s not spam is it? If Autodesk is like Solid Edge was they may be too hesitant to contact users for fear of offending them with too many emails. And that is a problem, one that I have had before and resented.

I never had as an end goal in avoiding spam to also cut myself off from useful information though. Today’s webinar was quite useful and I hope the promise that a recording of it will indeed be made available for download. As a matter of policy I would hope all of these would be available.

A sticky link on the well attended CAM forums promoting these resources would also be good. Just some thoughts here and the creation of great resources for users is pretty useless if they don’t know about them. And if Autodesk does not get this information in front of us we will in general only find out by accident.

Leave a comment

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , ,

Choose Your Inventor Pro HSM or HSMWorks VAR Carefully

Posted on May 10, 2016 | 2 comments

This will be a brief post today but right to the point. I am sitting here fuming over a conversation I have had with a Hagerman rep 5-6-16. Call up for support on a simple parameter setting question on Lathe threading. After first being told I would get a call right back to let me know when someone would contact me or indeed the CAM support guy would be calling I wait. Some time goes by and I call again since time is money and I am waiting as I was instructed by the phone.

Now I had switched my maintenance from NexGen to Hagerman this year based on the idea of having a company nearby for support and because they also supposedly were into a user community in my immediate area. Sad to say some things are not as they seem. I have pretty well given up on the local user group as I never get any response on this nor any notification about meetings. Sales seminars yes and some online stuff but no dice on the local user groups. I can handle that but what happened today is worthy of being talked about.

I don’t pester people for a lot of answers and so the few times I do reach out for an answer I expect to get a worthwhile reply. Hagerman got a check from me last December and this is the very first time I have called for support. Simple question and it wont take much time to answer. Threading on a lathe I need to know if there is a setting for changing the initial feed depth on the reduced infeed parameters. Yes or no here it is or isn’t. Send in an email and wait or pay extra for immediate phone support is what I am told. $1,500.00 per year with Hagerman apparently does not cover ANY immediate personal support beyond helping with install and licensing. It certainly did not cover the only question I have ever asked them in five months. I have no idea how quickly they would respond to emails as I have never asked for email help before. I don’t intend to bother them again either since what I was met with is not the corporate attitude a small machine shop business owner generally will appreciate.

So this leads to some investigation and here are my findings and conclusions. NexGenCam which is where I started and would have stayed had I known this was Hagermans policy is the largest HSM reseller in the US. This is where I am heading and it is where do CAM customers rate in the world any particular VAR lives in. Hagerman is one of the largest Autodesk VAR’s out there. They sell a ton of Autodesk products and I would imagine that HSM of all flavors represents such a tiny percentage of their gross that if HSM was to die tomorrow they would never even notice. And the Big Company attitude that goes with it. Does that make Hagerman a bad VAR in general? No but it does mean if you are a machine shop owner and your primary source of income is direct manufacturing with machine tools you better look elsewhere. They do not have an appreciation for the urgency a shop owner has when a machine or machines are sitting idle. It is not their business model and today I don’t condemn them for this but I do understand it.

So what is the prudent alternative for a shop owner? Find a VAR who derives a significant portion of their income from the sales for the product you use. My advice for people considering HSM is to do this. Now understand if you want CAD and CAM support this might not be wise. In my case though I still use Solid Edge for my modeling and only use Inventor to bring in parts and do simple edits just so I can get to the HSM gold. The same holds true for all the SW users to I bet and we are all here simply because HSM is so good.

I mention NexGenCam but there is another HSM VAR I have been told about. Since it has become clear to me having a VAR with a physical presence nearby may not bring any benefit at all I no longer count this as a key ingredient for selection especially if there is no active local user network. Which as far as I can tell seems to be the case with Hagerman and Nashville, Tn. So across the country with webexes works and today my prime criteria is becoming what does the VAR have in common with me. http://www.selwaytool.com/applications is who I am looking at for support in the future and they have come highly recommended to me from someone I trust. As far as I can see Selway will be my next and final HSM VAR. Here we have a lot in common as they are an actual Haas and others machine tool sales outfit. They sell and support CAM and not only do they do so they do so with a machinist and machine selling viewpoint. They understand chip making and what cuts the chips and I suspect have a pretty good idea of what we machine owners need and want far above and beyond mega VAR’s like Hagerman.

I like the idea that Selway is a Haas dealer (among others of course) since my machines are all Haas and I expect they have support insight other VAR’s only dream of. Really how can an office full of shirt and tie guys who have never run a mill or lathe but can say we work for Mr Great Big Autodesk VAR guy compare to hands on? I mean hands on all aspects of what I have to personally deal with where the rubber meets the road. The whole Autodesk experience is less than two years in duration for me now and I am still finding things out I did not know ahead of time. One of the things I have found out is that with HSM as my primary reason for being here I darned sure do not want to get support from someone who could care less. If you are a machine shop type I believe it would behoove you to move from Mega Autodesk VAR to a primarily HSM VAR or at the very least explore this idea.

I don’t intend to switch more than one more time. Over the next half-year until my maintenance with Mega VAR Hagerman is over I will be checking out Selway in far greater detail and will report here what I find. At this time sadder and far wiser about what to look for though I don’t expect any unpleasant Selway surprises. I have no idea if Selway is the only US HSM VAR with this business model and I am not going to check much to find out. I trust the recommendation I received. Look around though and perhaps there is a similar one close by to you and if so let me know. It would be nice to have a list of HSM friendly VAR’s to share with my peers and one guy can’t check them all out. So send me your machinist recommended VAR and let us see if we can get a list going.

2 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , ,

Is There Hope? Solid Edge User Community Update

Posted on April 25, 2016 | Leave a comment

This has been a bit of a pleasant surprise lately for this author to see the many year running poorly designed web site and user group activity surrounding SE take a turn for the better. I don’t know what is going on over there and I hope someone with over-riding authority has recognized the value Solid Edge could have to them if they would just treat it right. Someone who can see past the UGS hate SE team of saboteurs and see the remarkable value SE brings to the table for mid range MCAD. Especially with Autodesk now shooting themselves in the foot with subscription only for Inventor I think SE has been given yet another chance to pick up market share. They failed to capitalize on Dassaults inept handling of SW. Will they do so with Inventors upcoming subscription rebellion remains to be seen. Opportunities to acquire customers from the competition are hard to come by and opportunities where your competitor shoots their own feet are even rarer.

In any case http://community.plm.automation.siemens.com/t5/Solid-Edge-Blog/Cleveland-Getting-an-EdgeGroup-on-June-8/ba-p/343841 will take you to an article referencing a brand new SE user group in Cleveland Ohio on June 8th. I highly recommend any SE user in the area consider attending. You do not understand the value of face to face interaction until that first time you get bailed out of a jam with experienced user help or get that new bit of work that comes from in person interactive networking. Read about it and if you are in the area DO something about it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the decision had been made somewhere in the Siemens mega bureaucratic behemoth to actually throw a bit of love and attention SE’s way?

Leave a comment

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , ,

Sachem Head, Bloody Knives And Plundering For Autodesk?

Posted on March 26, 2016 | 4 comments

What is in a name? My company for instance is called Fieldweld. I chose this years ago as my very first for pay job as an independent contractor was welding a bush hog in a field. I intended at that time to do mostly welding in the field so Fieldweld suited me just fine. You inquire as to the name of most companies and there is a story behind it that makes sense when you find it out.

SO what about Sachem Head one of the hostile investor firms attacking Autodesk? http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/21/travel/havens-weekender-sachem-s-head-conn.html and http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sachem

The search is easy just type in “Sachem Head historical meaning” and off you go. From the first page the two references above were garnered. The NY Times one has as its first paragraph lead in sentence “SACHEM’S HEAD takes its name from a violent part of its history. A 1637 skirmish between the Mohegan Indians, allied with the English, and the Pequots on what is now Bloody Cove Beach led to the beheading of a Pequot sachem, or chief.” It then goes on and talks about an exclusive residential area that has no jobs and where people must travel to earn a living. Kind of like a great place for a hostile investor firm head to live in or aspire to I guess.

The second one from freedictionary is
sachem
Also found in: Thesaurus, Wikipedia.
sa·chem (sā′chəm)
n.
1.
a. A chief of a Native American tribe or confederation, especially an Algonquian chief.
b. A member of the ruling council of the Iroquois confederacy.
2. A high official of the Tammany Society, a political organization in New York City.

So take your pick. Chop off the head of the Indian Chief or be a member of the most corrupt NYC administration group ever in a city that has thrived on corruption since the early 1800’s as a way of life. Which sterling attribute does the chief honcho of Sachem Head aspire to?

What this says to me is someone who intends to eliminate existing leadership and or it’s policies whether right or wrong because we have this short term goal of stealing wealth from the company and the stock market buyers of Autodesk. It also says to me that there is a mercenary me first mindset irregardless of the affects upon the victim mentality which intends to make lots of money not by earning it but by fraud and theft. This is what I call it when the long term investors and customers who bought into a stable and productive forward looking outfit are now going to be cast aside by a hostile 5.7 percent holder of Autodesk shares. Thank Bill Clinton for this as the rules that allow this all started under him and have continued under Bush and now Obama who has allowed it to become an even bigger monster with his corrupt Dept of Justice.

Chop off the head and steal the loot and leave before the corpse starts to get peuwee! So what is in a name anyway? Wouldn’t you like to know just why this Sachem Head name was picked? After September 30 the kid gloves come off and the true face of this nice group will be revealed. Pay attention to this because I don’t think this bodes well for the victims.

4 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , ,

Institutional Fund Piranhas Force Themselves Onto Autodesk Board

Posted on March 22, 2016 | 4 comments

I really don’t want to even think about this. The destruction these types of self centered idiots bring in their wake has to be seen to be believed. No longer can a company make long term plans because now some group who takes over part of the company gets to dictate to long term investors and CUSTOMERS. UGS was saddled with two groups of people like this and they made decisions based on what made their short term goals look good to their investors at the expense of future growth to realize short term gains. Kind of like an engineer starts a company and understands what it’s value is to customers and what has to be done to make customers first and foremost happy since they fund the business. He dies and the banker idiots take over and all they see is profit potential by eliminating “waste”. So the creativity the engineer brought to the table as well as the understanding of what things were important to do even if they did not result in immediate profits is replaced by people of myopic vision who can count but they can’t create.

Read it and weep. http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/ March 21 2016

Carl Bass understands completely the peril this represents to Autodesk but his hands are tied. Autodesk will now in part be told what to do and how to do it by people who only understand running up stock prices so they can sell out before the results of the policies they force into being harm or destroy the company they do this to. I have no idea where this will end up nor who will get canned in the inevitable upcoming house cleaning as dead wood according to people who know nothing about Autodesk wield the axe. That will also be manifested in software that is not immediately profitable too I suppose. I would also imagine that development will slow down because some of that after all is future oriented with results that may not be seen for years. Autodesk is now going to be beholden to quarterly must make more money at any cost idiots. We users of Autodesk products who must plan in terms of years will be shackled to 90 day time frame destroyers of companies.

I have to wonder how much of this onerous anti-customer profitability subscription stuff is because these guys have forced it. I still believe in Bass but just like I watched with Karsten Newbury and Don Cooper the very best forward looking talent can and will be countermanded if the wrong people get to be in charge. Carl talks about the philosophy of long term investors and institutional make a quick buck investors like these hostile new people are in the World Cad article. Now the word hostile is not what he used it is what I use. I think it is accurate since they do not care about our future other than we will send them more money.

It is depressing to think such a fine thing as HSM, which is the reason I am here after all will be subject to these people who make no chips, write no software and have no clue what we customers value will determine in part or over time in whole what we get. There will be indications as we go forward as to what will be the result. Sadly though for the first time I have to question if permanent seats will be forever as promised to current holders. I HOPE Carl Bass can convince these people to be prudent about what is done. I think subscriptions only were done against his advice though and expect he will be ignored in other ways to.

4 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , ,

Amazon AWS Peril For All Associated CAD CAM Program Customers

Posted on February 11, 2016 | 2 comments

Today I talk about a topic of growing interest as more and more software companies attempt to coerce customers into the online subscription model or online products like Fusion 360 which rely on web server farms to work. What started this was reading a most excellent article by Ralph Grabowski. http://www.upfrontezine.com/2016/02/byol-bring-your-own-license-frame.html is the link and you need to go there and read it before going further.

On 2/7/2016 10:02 PM, Ralph Grabowski wrote:
> As for being worried about the security of storing your firm’s proprietary IP [intellectual property] on remote servers that you do not control, well don’t, says Mr Brown. “Concerns about security and performance are starting to dissolve. Amazon AWS focuses on data center security, and has hundreds of people concerned about security. Contrast that to the efforts in most private data center, and the contrast is dramatic.”

I get so tired of the continual misrepresentation regarding this cloud security. https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ will take you to the current legalese regarding how confident Amazon is regarding complete and total security for customers. Of particular interest.

Section 8.1 gives Amazon the right to turn your stuff over to any regulatory or governmental agency. It reads in part “We may disclose Your Content to provide the Service Offerings to you or any End Users or to comply with any request of a governmental or regulatory body (including subpoenas or court orders).” I assume it also means without subpoenas and court orders is how I read it since any does mean any. So the ChiComs want a look at your intellectual property they can have it. Or a corrupt individual from say the Obama Whitehouse or Justice Department or the Clinton Foundation.
As corrupt as this current version of the federal government is do you honestly think your hard work would never be for sale for a “campaign contribution”?

Section 10 Disclaimers is fun to. We are not responsible for anything of note or worth. You went here to bad so sad.

Section 11 Is exceptionally delicious. The evasion from any repercussions from use of their products and statement of their complete confidence in what they offer in this section is particularly heart warming.

I think Amazon is the largest online server entity of the three mentioned and without going to the other two I bet it is safe to say they do the same T&C thing as Amazon. I don’t know about any of you but section 8.1 is particularly troubling and means anything you have with Amazon can be had for the mere demand of a faceless and unaccountable to you bureaucrat who can then profit one way or another from your property. Do you see any other way to interpret the very words Amazon put there? It means to me any foreign government where Amazon can be legally bound by their edicts has to surrender upon demand your stuff.

It takes big brass balls to stand there and say how safe Amazon AWS is and then hope like crazy that no one reads the fine print. You go there you deserve what happens to you and I can’t think of a bigger wake up call than this cavalier treatment of customers by Amazon AWS T&C. Any CAD or CAM software that demands you use this paradigm to work with deserves to lose you as a customer. Their contempt for everything you have worked hard for except the money they demand from you is staggering.

Question for you Amazon guys. How many of the hundreds of people you have working on security are actually lawyers figuring out how to not make you liable for the ecosystem you have created?

2 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yes It IS True, The Subscription Model is Failure For You

Posted on January 22, 2016 | 7 comments

I had promised not to talk about this again and find myself regretting those words and posting again on this. Todays events in my shop reminded me in ways that could not be ignored of the value of continuing to talk about the terrible future awaiting anyone who is foolish enough to be subscription only for their business CAD and CAM life blood.

Sitting here today waiting for the latest developmental download to Inventor pro HSM. While I am waiting though I want you who are thinking of buying into subscription only CAD or CAM to get a little taste of what is headed your way. Remember the Marketing babblespeak of easy self updating IT free bliss promised by these shills for greater fees from you to them and loss of all control over your data. Of course this is not my problem because I have a permanent seat and can uninstall a version when I wish as well as install. Thank you very much marketing goof balls but I think I am adult enough and responsible enough to determine what works best for me. I sure don’t need you to charge me extra over time and be subjected to the reality of the pain your greedy desires will inflict upon all who enter. Fusion 360 looks like a genuine value but the expenses for Inventor subs anything are ludicrous over time. Fusions future bargain status is in question though as the ancillary charges will soon be forthcoming while you “rent” server farm stuff from you know who.

Today while using developmental build 115 from 1-12-16 I can’t finish a drill path. Nope, not gonna happen. Get to calculate, hit OK and the program does the magic disappearing act. After six times of variations I conclude it is well broken. So I go and post this problem at the CAM forum and less than 15 minutes later I get a response. It seems that this quickly became a known problem and 0n 1-15-16 build 117 was released to fix this. Now remembering the extraordinarily painful days of CAMWorks for Solid Edge I can only say that the fix was quick. Generally I have been told developmental builds are pretty robust and over this past year my experience has borne this out. Autodesk does warn you though that only official builds are for production.

Current version

But the last current recommended for production version is from 4-13-15 and there have been 14 developmental builds since then and only one has given me a problem. So what has happened here? If I was a subscriber I would have to wait and wait and wait for a new current build? Been a lot of months now. Or would I have a forced update that was buggy and have to wait for the patch to be issued for the problem. Now remember the problem might be unique to my setup and not a developmental or current release problem as much as a conflict with the way I have things set up on my end. Now what? Who is going to make my stuff work now? Wellllll you know with a permanent seat I just stay with what works and beta test on my own to verify quality outside of my workaday income earning area with my take home laptop version that comes with my permanent seat. I DO NOT have to ever suffer from this with a permanent seat. Auto updates with 115 would have caused significant problems until 117 was released. I love HSM and with my permanent seat expect to be well satisfied for years to come. But I want it my way which is to choose how I interact with my software vendor and I choose permanent seat over subscription chattel.

Can we talk about how robust your internet connection is here too since this is relevant to this whole kooky cloud only thing these people want us to devolve into over time?
ScreenHunter_200 Jan. 22 11.13

I am like a TON of you around the world that will never have internet speeds that will make the cloud work faster than I can do it myself. With the exception I suppose of FEA or rendering if you care to put your critical intellectual property out on the unsecure web. I am lucky to get 80KBS and even luckier if the connection is not often broken.

I am going to build my next workstation. Intel 5930 CPU, server quality board with overclocking to probably 4.2 or 3GHZ. 32 gig of 3200 ram, water-cooled with at least a Quadro K2200 with a PCIE SSD main drive and multi terabyte secondary backup drive for under $2,000.00. You can build this all day long and cut your cost in half from the manufacturers. Just how many simultaneous internet connections would I have to have to equal this astounding computing power on my desktop? 6GPS buss speed on this upcoming workstation would require 6 GB divided by 80KBS would be 75,000 concurrent internet connections. Do the math. Dare I say in-house also equals secure and constant backups if needed are cheapo to? Priced any 5 terabyte hard drives and soon to be 10 lately?

Please explain again to me dear corporate CPA MBA Barracudas just how wonderful subscription only and the cloud is going to be for me. Just be aware that after years of subjection to Democrat PC correct insanity and Rino Republican elect me lies I look behind the curtain before I buy. Subscription only stinks just as bad as the lies and deceptions emanating from Washington and has the same ruling class elitist mentality. Maybe it is a symptom of getting older but I find my patience with people who lie to me with insider jargon word combinations they think are fooling me into believing their deceptions does not exist anymore.

Permanent seats and TRUMP BABY!!!

7 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , ,

The Lie Of Savings In CAD CAM Subscriptions

Posted on January 7, 2016 | 6 comments

OK folks as the clock ticks down quickly towards serfdom for many I want to post this. It will be the last time I do so in this fashion because quite frankly if you are silly enough to go for subscription models you will deserve what you get. For those who may still be on the fence though I want to put some real numbers out there based upon Autodesks pricing for Inventor Pro HSM as of today. http://cam.autodesk.com/pricing/

Before we look at the numbers I want to make sure you readers understand that there will be prices and fees for other things to as time goes on. How many remember the unlimited data for smart phones when first offered? Get you in there and it looks cool and it is pretty cheap. May I ask you smart phone users where these cheapo plans are today? May I ask you if you don’t like it what alternative you have besides dump the data? Might as well go back to that flip phone you all despise so much if you don’t feed the data extra charges monster. The very first thing that comes to my mind is data storage and usage online to make all this cloud stuff work well. Of course it goes without saying things like data caps will be impacted for those of you who buy into iPad and Surface Pro do-dads because of course anything cellular will be an extra cost above and beyond the Autodesk subscription.

Something that can’t be predicted exactly is the ancillary costs associated with the problems of being forced to work the way Autodesk wants you to and not how you want to with updates and version preferences. You will take what they give you when they give it to you and marvel as their marketing and publicity people want you to over the loss of control over this part of your business life. Remember though the joy of painless auto updates as promised by those putting lipstick on this pig.

Now to the dollars and cents. I could not find the average length of time a company or seat holder stays with the same CAD or CAM software. I am going to use what I have observed around here as a metric though and once a shop gets going on a program that works they tend to stay. 15 years + is more common than you think. You guys just starting out and thinking 15 years is an eternity and does not apply to you are dead wrong. The 15 years go by fast and then so do the next 15. Unless there is a big shakeup I think we see the main players in CAD and probably for CAM also for an indefinite period of time. You start today and chances are good if you stay with the same company you will be using the same program for many years. Certainly the company will no matter who is there.

Initial year of Inventor Pro HSM full tilt retail is $11,500.00 with one years maintenance. As many of you experienced hands know prices are more negotiable than the sales shmuck would lead you to believe so for many the cost here is less. I highly doubt there will be much in the way of discounts or negotiation for subscriptions which for Inventor Pro will be $3,700.00 per year. That’s right one-third of the cost to buy it outright. Every year. Don’t pay don’t play.

So in ten years we have $11,500.00 + 10 x $1,500 per year maintenance for a total of $26.500.00
Subs cost is 10 x $3,700.00 or $37,000.00 + additional unknown and uncontrollable ancillary expenses and loss of control of your program to boot. In addition you have to continue with subs as long as you ever think you will need to use your data.

In 15 years permanent seats will have cost $34,000.00 with no ancillary costs of course and complete control over everything.
Subs cost will be $55,500.00 no control and ??? extra fees.

I want everyone to know I am a believer in the fact that permanent seat Inventor Pro HSM is the single best deal out there today for what it can do and the cost. I am not crazy about Inventor but as I have said before lots of great work is done with it and HSM is unbeatable as long as it’s feature set matches your needs. For the vast majority of shops it does. When it becomes subscription only though the value in my eyes has been seriously compromised.

I get tired of the mindless smiley faces Marketing and Publicity put on bad deals. Perhaps a disconnect from reality is required to get one of these degrees as M&P distortion of playing field reality is common to almost every company I have dealt with. It saddens me too that this whole subscription thing has been touted as guaranteeing Autodesk’s income stream to investors via the methodology of data hostage taking rather than customer loyalty created by superior products and voluntary cash transfers.

Just what exactly does that CPA MBA mindset say about regard for customers? Here, if you are wondering let me help you out. It means their money and success are important. It also means yours is not. Dump the subs only garbage Autodesk. I think you are making a big mistake that will come back to haunt you.

6 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , ,