Tag Archives: Autodesk software

Bye Autodesk, See Ya Don’t Want To Be Ya

I try to treat my customers like I wish to be treated. Sometimes in a one man shop time gets away from you and you have a delivery that drags out. I always stand behind what I do though and any promises made are abided by.

So today is the last day for my life as a paying Autodesk customer. According to that complete idiot Anagnost as he said at the last Autodesk user convention I am not of value. http://www.thecadinsider.com/2017/11/what-are-webastards.html

This week was spent in part downloading everything and as I went to the accounts page I see some changes made in the last few weeks. It used to be that Inventor Pro HSM Ultimate had a big list of things you could access and were a part of the overall package. Three out of four of them are now gone. Not that I ever used any of them but I think it is quite indicative of the perpetual seat elimination process Autodesk is embarking on. No doubt all these things and more will be added to subscription only packages now as incentive for people who are masters of their destiny and financial independents known as perpetual seat holders are shown the error of their ways.

Subscribers beware as what is happening to us now will be your fate too. In time, not a very long time I figure, Autodesk will start nickle and dimming to death their subscribers. What was there with features and add ons to get most of you on board will change and become extras to be added for a nominal fee to your ever shrinking base package of apps. Autodesk has proven themselves to be duplicitous in deed and nature so nothing that is promised today will bind them tomorrow. Like our perpetual seats there forever! Until they phase the programs out and stick a new name on the subs only replacement and cut you off at the knees. A perfect example is Cimco Edit for HSM. Cimco will license their product to any software company for $100,000.00 and that covers unlimited use as far as I can find out. Apparently that was to much money for Autodesk to spend to keep this valuable, to customers that is, part of the equation. You can however spend extra to get this same thing again and funny how that works isn’t it? To expensive for them but apparently not for YOU. R&D is pretty expensive too and that is being cut back also. You really didn’t need those bugs fixed or new features anyway did you?

Celebrate with me as I say good-bye to a once great company that has been suborned by evil slave-owning mentality hucksters who will say anything and promise anything and under the new paradigm guarantee only one thing for real. Your complete financial enslavement to a system that will be set up to bleed you. You are now not a customer that Autodesk has to satisfy once you go subs you are chattel property where your opinion does not matter and pay up and shut up. Then pay more and shut up. Then pay us before anything else and shut up about it if you want to keep working. Ain’t life grand when you have such a wonderful mutually beneficial working relationship with your software authoring company?

As of midnight tonight my decision to remain free and in control means you Mr Baked Beans can go get screwed and do so with none of my money ever again.

For those of you looking for powerful CAD or MCAD software while fleeing the Autodesk plantation may I recommend Solid Edge to you? I don’t honestly know how good Cam Express is but Siemens is offering a deal right now where you get CAD and CAM bundled together. I can without reservation wholly recommend Solid Edge and even when I was an Inventor customer all my design work was done in SE and imported into Inventor. Once you learn and use SE Inventor is just to painful to contemplate ever using except as a parts placer for HSM. Oh and permanent seats too for those who don’t believe in slavery or drinking millennial subs never own anything but spend more kool-aide

Autodesk Inventor Ultimate 2018 CPA MBA Marketing Insanity

Before I begin the bashing I do have some good things to say today about the HSM side of Ultimate. It looks like the assigning of Jeff Peck over the HSM group is bearing fruit. The latest developmental downloads have seen the pace of improvement pick up and so finally HSM is moving forward again. Almost I could be persuaded to give Autodesk another years worth of $$$ but I draw the line at fiscal coercion which is their preferred future modus operandi IF they can get away with it. Going on ten quarters of declining profits now even though the stock market which has little bearing on true dividend earnings for shareholders any more seems to like them so far. I have met some really good people with HSM and it is the plantation overseers I object to. They are the whole problem and it is a big one for rational cost containing consumers.

Yep CPA’s and MBA’s will in time go down as the group of management responsible for the moving of industry to China, the complete lack of loyalty to anything other than manipulating stock values for their own personal benefits and the gross increase in upper level income and perks relative to historical norms. This is the mindset that will make lots of millionaires in the C suites while at the same time they are removing the ability of their customers to afford much of the offerings because their high paying jobs have been eliminated by offshoring. It is why cars and trucks are now up to huge costs and long notes.

“According to new data from Experian Automotive, the average new and used-car loan terms are now at record highs of 67 and 62 months, respectively. What’s more, roughly 30% of new car loans being written today are for loan terms of between 73 and 84 months — a 19% increase over the first quarter of last year and the highest percentage recorded since Experian began publishing this figure in 2006.” http://tinyurl.com/ycwbjbb7

Here is a comment on executive pay by historical norms from 2014. http://tinyurl.com/k8v9q3h
“From 1978 to 2013, CEO compensation, inflation-adjusted, increased 937 percent, a rise more than double stock market growth and substantially greater than the painfully slow 10.2 percent growth in a typical worker’s compensation over the same period.
The CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 20-to-1 in 1965 and 29.9-to-1 in 1978, grew to 122.6-to-1 in 1995, peaked at 383.4-to-1 in 2000, and was 295.9-to-1 in 2013, far higher than it was in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s.” When coincidently hourly wages bought far more and economic growth was as an average greater than the last fifteen CPA MBA run years. In 1967 I made $1.65 an hour at McDonalds. It bought FIVE gallons of gas though and all things being equal I would have to make $12.25 after taxes today to do the same. My first new car was a $2,700 1974 Hornet Hatchback and I paid that off in six months with my $9 something per hour Chrysler assembly line worker wage. I don’t think you could even get a three year long loan for vehicles back then.

This brings us full circle to the current thief now in charge of Autodesk. Another C suite dude who thinks a company’s sole reason for existence is stock manipulation for personal wealth creation. I would love to see what he thinks he is worth and the golden parachute in place so even if (when) he fails he gets to steal even on his way out. Gone is the forward-looking planning and today it is how can we lie today for gains today driven by increase in the value of stocks today. Never a word about shareholder income in dividends which made this country great and provided secure retirements for many. Today it is a house of cards here and if you can ride it up well and good. You stay there to long and you are toast. In the past, up until I figure about 2000, if stocks declined precipitously you were covered by the dividend income you bought the stock for. Capital gains was the icing on the cake and not the cake. Anyway.

I go to the Autodesk forum today. http://tinyurl.com/yakf6zs6 It is just to amusing for words but I will try anyway. Remember cost containment is for the anointed but not for the unwashed masses.

“Hi all –

We’ve been watching the feedback regarding the elimination of the backplotting capabilities in the version of the CIMCO Editor that ships with Inventor HSM and HSMWorks. It’s clear that this is a capability that many of you are genuinely missing. We’d like to give you a little background on what happened here, and what we’re planning to do about it.

For the past few years, we have had a technology sharing agreement in place where we could redistribute the Professional version of the editor, in exchange for access to the HSM CAM kernel. This agreement expired at the end of last year, so we had to renegotiate the arrangement.

The arrangement we reached, at considerable increased cost to Autodesk, was to redistribute only the Standard version of the editor, with a corresponding reseller agreement, where we can provide access to the Pro-level features at an extra cost.

We are considering an amendment to the agreement with CIMCO that would allow us to include the Professional version with certain levels of the Autodesk HSM product. This is still under discussion, and we have no firm plans to do this.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and truly regret that we weren’t able to provide advance notice of the change.

We’ll keep you posted about what, if any, adjustments we are able to make in this area. As has been noted in various forum posts, those of you with access to prior releases are still able to use the older version of the editor, with backplot capabilities.

Thank you very much for your feedback concerning how much you value the backplot feature.”

Now let me get this right. Mr Anagnost it is not OK for people to tell you what you should pay for a product but it is OK for you to do so to your customers. OK got it. Controlling your expenditures is prudent fiscal management but increasing your costs to your customers is a value added benefit you bequeath to them. Check. Gotta love the psychobabble garbage these people put on things to try to make extortion more palatable for the rubes.

My answer to you Mr Anagnost is go get screwed. This customer at least is willing to continue to do business with you on the terms that brought me here but understand I am not your cotton picker. The very second you tried to make this a coercive relationship is when you lost me and many others. I hope you fail and they strip you of your ill-gotten gains and the exit door puts a big welt on your butt on your way out. I watched one of your kind destroy the O’Charleys restaurant chain which was at one time the livelihood of about 14,000 people. By the time the MBA moron Greg Burns got done with it went from 600 plus stores to 200 some and had to be sold off to an investment company because it was failing. He too was grossly over compensated way above worth while he was there and got a nice severance package as he arranged the buyout of the chain HE had caused to fail.

I will never forget when one of Burn’s big shots started removing quality ingredients from food so as to save money and so he could get bigger personal bonuses each year for cost containment. A friend of mine was pretty silly and when asked his opinion on the latest Honey Mustard Dressing with a drop of honey and a ton of corn syrup compared to the old with lots of honey in it what he thought of it. He was told by the Vice President in charge of food quality for the whole restaurant chain that his negative opinion did not matter. That “people were stupid and we are going to educate them as to what they are going to like”. I kid you not and this was the beginning of the end for the old O’Charleys.

People do know what they like though and I in particular do not like the terms Autodesk now offers. Crash and burn Anagnost and the sooner the better. Your two faced self serving hypocrisy is here for all to see.

Autodesk The Evil Empire Chooses Extortion

Two things prompted this post today. One was a comment on this forum https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/moving-to-subscription/buh-bye-permanent-license/m-p/7020059#M1286. The other as you will read below was from #936 of the “upFront eZine” It goes right along with what people are saying on the moving to subscription forums regarding feature shrink and ways to raise the cost of staying with Autodesk. Two methods appear to be the way they intend to do this. Thanks a lot Darth Vader Anagnost and the rest.

Number one is hold your data hostage where their value added model is the pain of leaving is greater than the pain of dramatic fee increases.

Number two is to remove features traditionally a part of a program and charge you an extra fee to get back what you once had as a seat holder and if you are stupid enough to go there as a subscriber. The removal of Backplotting from Cimco inside of HSM is a perfect example. It can be available right now for an extra fee on top of the 35% scheduled increase of perpetual by 2019. So they snip customary important parts off and put it in a fee building environment. In conjunction with this is that they will simply stop expending as much money improving and bug fixing their products. Why try to entice voluntary customer payments with improvements when you can just tell them what you want? All of the Autodesk products I read about in the subscriber forum have users complaining about feature atrophy and increased bugs and time to fix bugs. Don’t take my word for this. Verify for yourself what others are saying.

In any case.

It is a self-evident truth that once a company decides that legal extortion is their business model customer consideration other than being an ATM has ended. Anyone who says they can’t leave because reason #1 #2 or #3 does not remember well. Mercedes-Benz left Dassault for NX as did Chrysler. There are darned few customers of Autodesk that have to deal with that degree of complexity. Siemens as far as I can tell is not planning to end perpetual. I believe this enough to have renewed with Solid Edge. SE by the way is doing it right. You can rent the program or get permanent seats. I have been with SE now since ST1 and my cost has gone up $63.00 per year. You can I believe actually rent it to by the month or the year. No mandatory minimum. Plug my dongle in and stay off-line so no exposure to confidentiality agreements breaches or hackers due to forcibly being online EVER.

It is time to make your plan on how you are leaving and not to sit here and worry about how you can afford to stay.

Quote from Ralph Grabowski this weekend ought to shed some light on how Autodesk regards loyal customers. http://www.upfrontezine.com/2017/04/stuff-i-heard-at-cofes.html

“At one mini-session, a consultant relates a story of how Autodesk apparently is cranking up subscription fees upon contract renewals. In the case he reported, the mandatory fee allegedly went from $4.9M to $9.4M to pay for “necessary” add-ons, like consulting. The problem, of course, is that if any firm on subscription says No, the software simply stops working with the next 30-day check-in.”

OK the big bully is heading your way with a baseball bat to get your money. Not ask but to take it forcibly of course. You as a rational thinking being choose A, stand there and let him beat you up and then do the same tomorrow or B, walk away with your money intact and let someone with far less foresight take the beating. You WILL choose one or the other.

Folks just a thought here. Since Autodesk has proven itself to be a master of weasel words let me toss this one out there. OK you perpetual seat holders can keep your seat after 2019. Now comes a hypothetical policy statement by Autodesk.

In a continuing effort to provide improved software and support to our valuable customers we are pleased to announce the following. It has been a real cost burden to improve our products and have to deal with two customer license environments over the years but we value your loyalty and have chosen to enhance your experience with us. Starting in 2020 we will cease improving perpetual seat products which will however remain available to you as long as you wish and migrate significant improvements over to subscription customers only. These new features may be available to perpetual seat customers for an extra fee so check with your VAR. Subscribers will benefit from dramatic product improvements and rent as you need to fit your companies demand. Autodesk sees the future and it is subscription and we welcome you to our brave new world.

Autodesk’s Patronizing Screw You Love Letter

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.