eevBLAB #55 - Solidworks Pricing is BULLSHIT - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 02:08:56 am
content: Solidworks jack the prices up in different countries and force local dealers to sell at higher local prices, just because they are dicks.I love how the Dassault Systèmes logo looks like BS!

author: sokoloff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 02:46:34 am
content: I filled out the form at one point and got a call back from a rep. She was very nice and the price quoted seemed like about 4-5% of what I was expecting to pay and probably 10% of what I willing to pay.Sales: "Solidworks is thirty-nine ninety-five, plus twelve ninety-five annually for support."Me: "Oh, that's a LOT cheaper than I'd have expected!"Sales: Laughs. "I've literally never heard that."Me: "Wait; what?!"It took a few more seconds to discover that I'd interpreted "thirty-nine ninety-five" as "$39.95" not "$3995"

author: Muttley Snickers
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 03:15:53 am
content: Wow, I thought the fifteen bucks I paid for a backup copy at the local computer swap meet was a bit over the top at the time, I later found another "dealer" selling the same version for five bucks less so was rather annoyed for not getting a better deal and being ripped off.

author: mrpackethead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 03:19:02 am
content: Did they get lessons of Altium?

author: ANTALIFE
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 04:08:19 am
content: Dave & Dave if you guys want a cheaper option for legit SW have a look at this:https://www.eaa.org/en/eaa/eaa-membership/eaa-member-benefits/solidworks-resource-centerA lifetime membership with EAA is 1295USD, though you best check what sort of features (if any) have been stripped out

author: Barny
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 05:17:42 am
content: I'm working wirh NX from Simens.Its not exaktly ceap but I am not aware of price fixing.Cars in the other hand are massive price fixed.Here in Austria its sometims massive cheaper to get the car delivered over thousands of km than bying the car local.And even fuel is massive price fixed. The price diferences are enorm even inside the country.If you drive 30 to 40km, the petrol stations have complete different priceing.

author: okurka
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 06:50:35 am
content: Quote from: ANTALIFE on October 18, 2018, 04:08:19 amIt says it's a personal-use version, so not valid for businesses.

author: ANTALIFE
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 06:52:39 am
content: Since when is Dave running a business ;^)

author: Scottjd
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 09:48:21 am
content: Hello Dave’s,I usually won’t chime in on such things, but I also don’t agree with the different priing models. This is something I’ve been doing to save money on hotels and plane tickets, sometimes even a vacation package deal. I assume it should work for software also. I just wish this would work buying a house,You should be able to get around this pricing using a VPN.I bought NORD VPN at 70% for three years, someone’s sponsored video promo. If I reminder what channel I’ll let you know. I think it was a video from “Smarter every day”. The usual discount i see is 50% to 60% off. So I think it was $100 maybe for 3 years, and I’ve already saved more then the price of the VPN.If it’s a software key and download then set up a computer (windows) as US, use the VPN to buy the US license, get the key and download the software. The computer sometimes needs to be set up as a US region windows install or the key might not work for the install on some softwares.This isn’t with all software, only some. You can try an Australia region windows install and see if it works installs and registers or claim you travel a lot.Also you may need to be from a US based IP address to register the software for a US license to talk to the US register sever usually only for the first install running the app. Again this is when the VPN can help greatly and save you money.Good luck.Scott

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 10:01:11 am
content: Quote from: Scottjd on October 18, 2018, 09:48:21 amYou have to be aware that the license may forbid doing this, so you may effectively have a very expensive illegal version. Of course, support is out of the window too.

author: NivagSwerdna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 10:47:34 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on October 18, 2018, 02:08:56 amOMG. It so does. That is brilliant.

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 11:28:12 am
content: Same here in Germany...Even worst, I was not allowed to use my USA license in Germany, ok... may be ....But I need Solidworks for some of my clients and a few years back, I bought a new license in Germany forEuro 12,900.-It is ridicules.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 04:00:30 pm
content: Hah, join the club. Until today Microsoft, Autodesk, Adobe, etc., etc, etc. do this in Brazil - just for comparison, a copy of Windows 10 Home (download, not a USB stick) is $200 plus taxes.In the 1990s it was much worse: identical software, english language manuals (not even translated to the local market, which could justify some added cost), non-existing support and much more could be obtained for 10x the price.

author: onesixright
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 08:14:50 pm
content: Indeed its fucking shit. Excuse my language.A long list of companies doing this and it's utterly annoying.You should have made it a 'regular' episode 😉Simply a mass boycot these products. They will roll over in a heartbeat, if everyone stop buying their stuff for 3 months. But that will never happend...

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 08:21:40 pm
content: Quote from: ANTALIFE on October 18, 2018, 06:52:39 amIf he's going to skirt the law, just pirate it at that point.One shitty thing that Solidworks does as well is prevent opening a 2018 file with Solidworks 2017. So if you are collaborating or sharing designs online, you are basically forced to stay on the latest version. Even Altium doesn't do this (they give a warning that certain features aren't supported, but can still open it).Although if you could get a hold of an old version it would probably be fine (in terms of features, stability), but again is legal grey area (according to them you are not allowed to transfer license).

author: taydin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2018, 08:28:52 pm
content: I use Alibre Design, which does most things that SolidWorks does, but without robbing you in broad daylight.

author: Robomeds
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2018, 01:01:46 am
content: I've been using Solidworks for about 20 years. It's a good solid product and my ProE skills fell to the wayside due to Solidworks. That said, as a user the virtually required yet buggy yearly upgrades along with forced backwards incompatibility is a big negative for me. What killed me when I used to use the program a lot was that we would wait 4 months after the upgrade to put it on our computers because X.0 was always buggy. It was usually 1-2 updates before you trusted the program. So you had about 6 months of stable code where you and your vendors and customers were all on the say revision. Then they would release the next year's package with mostly insignificant changes and the cycle would repeat. In the past I was lucky and could share a work license with my home computer. Sadly that is no longer the case. For personal use I just can't justify the price. I've been looking for a good alternative that is hobbiest affordable. Any suggestions? It doesn't help that I'm very comfortable with SW.

author: Icchan
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2018, 01:31:56 am
content: Quote from: onesixright on October 18, 2018, 08:14:50 pmI'm not trying to make excuses for the pricing as such, I just want to put things on perspective here...You can hardly boycott a software that hundreds multi-million (maybe billion?) euro companies use to design and make their products and theirprofit.They don't really give a damn about the price, they pay it so they can continue designing their new car, truck, train, a factory, jet airline, aircraft carrier or what ever huge product/project it is that has millions or billions riding on it. Not that someone's using solid-works for an aircraft carrier necessarily (more like Catia), but you get my point.World is basically running because these software, so they can ask what the hell they want for a license. A large company isn't going to invest potentially many millions in wasted work time to retrain their engineers to another software after having all their design architecture tied to it for maybe tens of years, just so save a "few bucks" per license.You as a single, small-time user or one man company? You all together might make as much seats as one single large company using it. So I don't think they really care :/That being saidIt is bullshit... too bad we can't really do anything but vote with our wallets. They will not change their policies for that unfortunately.

author: FrankT
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2018, 01:45:19 am
content: Quote from: taydin on October 18, 2018, 08:28:52 pmSame problem. In Australia we still buy from resellers at an increased price, except all support is through Alibre USA. I don't know what the resellers do to justify the price increase.

author: jonovid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2018, 05:22:40 am
content: there is a reason why pirates and hackers will clone it and sell or give it way for free.go figure!

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2018, 08:49:45 am
content: Quote from: jonovid on October 19, 2018, 05:22:40 amI am surprised, no one from China has said anything here.When I traveled China this year I saw a lot of installed Solidworks packages incompanies that did not pay anything at all and the company owners do not care.So, there must be a lot of illegally installed Solidworks seats around the world,probably just because the official license is so expensive.And ...My clients are totally happy with me using an older version of Solidworks.So, I have not signed up for the yearly renewal since 2015.However, this year I wanted to upgrade to Solidworks 2018, and expectedto pay one yearly fee of Euro 2000,- (including sales tax) to get the latest version.But .... NO!Solidworks Germany requires to have all last 3 years paid, so 6000 Euro!Next year it will be 8000!What kind of Bullshit is that.

author: Zbig
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2018, 01:37:23 pm
content: Adobe was doing the exact same thing with their Creative Cloud subscription. The European prices were much higher than the US ones. No resellers involved - just exaclty the same binaries downloaded from the same servers. The price literally changed when you switched your location on their site. It's most probably still the case - I just couldn't be bothered to recheck. When people on their forums began asking for the reasons of the price discrepancy, their non-answer was a long-winded drivel about the "cost of doing business" in Europe vs. United States which was basically a convoluted way of saying "because fuck you - that's why". To me, even more shocking was the fact that bunch of hipsters on the forum actually began defending the company's policyTalk about fanboyism.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2018, 02:27:08 pm
content: Both are cases of dominant market leaders doing whatever they please, knowing full well most people are going to have to take it. Adobe software is the defacto standard in graphics and Solidworks in most sectors where CAD is a thing.Even worse is that you don't really get value for money as development is slow or non-existent. Some shiny features are occasionally tacked on, but at its core it's still the same software that can throw a hissy fit over nothing. Engineers have learnt to tiptoe around the peculiarities and ways simple operations can throw errors but that really shouldn't be necessary for something that costs this amount of money, and each year too.Apparently Fusion 360 isn't enough of a threat to change things. It's a deal with the devil too, as it's not just Autodesk but also a cloud solution. Maybe getting shafted by Dassault is still better.

author: onesixright
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2018, 08:19:36 pm
content: Quote from: Zbig on October 19, 2018, 01:37:23 pmFor those looking for an alternative (for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign), Affinity is pretty cool (not affiliated).

author: onesixright
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2018, 08:21:20 pm
content: Quote from: HighVoltage on October 19, 2018, 08:49:45 amBasically thief's.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2018, 09:36:36 pm
content: Its been a very long time since I've used any Adobe software, and I do graphics related stuff all the time. I use Linux (but most FOSS programs are available on Windows, Mac, etc. too now) and free tools like Gimp, Inkscape, and many others.It's possible that at some point I may need to use commercial products again so I keep the old master disks around, in case I ever need them (upgrades are usually cheaper than buying new) but I have not had any of it on my machines or used any of those apps in - more than a decade now. When I have had to share files back and forth with users of those apps, we've always figured out a way to get whatever data we needed to one another. Some format which we both have.Unfortunately, the state of CAD software on Linux is not quite as developed as the tools on Windows. But I just have never needed CAD so much that I couldn't make do with what I've got access to.So far, it does what I've needed it to do. (Just little things)If I was a professional like a mechanical engineer, or architect or industrial design pro then I likely would shell out the big bucks to buy the high end CAD tools, and deduct the cost from my taxes.If I were those companies I would offer free versions with basic functionality for non-commercial users, not just college students. It would be a good business practice.Quote from: Mr. Scram on October 19, 2018, 02:27:08 pm

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2018, 10:35:41 pm
content: I also use Gimp, Inkscape and Blender as Adobe alternatives, but IMO the only one that has a polished and sensible interface is Gimp - the other two are quite unpalatable. However, it is just like the CAD tools: you suffer but you have no alternative...

author: cengland0
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 22, 2018, 10:46:34 pm
content: It's all about what the market will pay. Since people in Australia are willing to pay more, then they charge more. To fix the problem, everyone needs to stop buying it. Apple can charge a premium for their crap products because people keep paying that price for them. If people stopped buying their products, they would have to reconsider the prices they charge.It's very common for a pharmaceutical company to sell drugs to Canada for less than they sell it to us Americans. Even inside the USA, certain groups get better discounts. The VA pays the lowest price for drugs while people without any insurance pays the most.

author: thermistor-guy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2018, 01:52:46 am
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on October 19, 2018, 10:35:41 pmFor 2D CAD work, I've found QCAD easy to use, and good value for money (EUR 33). Available for Linux and Windows, and you don't need an internet connection to run it. Lately I've used it to make technical illustrations (circuit diagrams). QCAD has a CAM extension which I haven't tried.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2018, 11:36:38 am
content: Quote from: thermistor-guy on October 23, 2018, 01:52:46 amThanks for the tip. My use of CAD tools is very sporadic but it is good to have an alternative.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2018, 09:22:37 pm
content: what's a good FOSS replacement for 3D-cad ?

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2018, 10:13:32 pm
content: Quote from: f4eru on October 24, 2018, 09:22:37 pmGood? None.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2018, 10:51:39 pm
content: That should change in the years to come.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2018, 11:30:08 pm
content: Quote from: f4eru on October 24, 2018, 10:51:39 pmWhat indications do you have for that? Is there something to go on, or are they good intentions?

author: thermistor-guy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2018, 12:00:12 am
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on October 23, 2018, 11:36:38 amMy main uses for QCAD are to make test jig base plates with cutouts (for mounting connectors), and custom connector backcovers, out of sheet metal. Metalworking being my worst subject in school, I print the QCAD design as a pdf on a large adhesive label at 1:1 scale, stick it on the blank metal, then cut, file, drill, punch, and fold away. Just follow the lines (it works for me). I leave the label on - it has designations, version information, critical dimensions, centre lines, source file name, etc. that are very useful when I'm assembling or upgrading parts.What sold me on QCAD was that, when I first tried it, I could get some useful work done without reading the manual. That convinced me to buy it, buy the manual, and spend the time getting more familiar with it. It's hard to beat at that price.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2018, 06:44:24 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on October 24, 2018, 11:30:08 pmPure wishful thinking

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2018, 06:51:00 pm
content: Quote from: f4eru on October 25, 2018, 06:44:24 pmAh, I misunderstood you there. Indeed, a KiCad or GIMP quality FOSS CAD program would be nice but it's both a niche application and quite hard to do right.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2018, 02:07:19 am
content: You wouldn't believe all the lies the drug industry tells to try to justify the insane prices they charge Americans.They have beenexposed again and againtelling bald faced lies about their drug pricing structure and no-matter how clearly they havebeen exposedthey just keep on telling them.Quote from: cengland0 on October 22, 2018, 10:46:34 pm

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2018, 11:55:56 pm
content: Quote from: thermistor-guy on October 25, 2018, 12:00:12 amI bought a QCAD license, and I upgrade when they ask. It's not expensive, and it does what it's supposed to do.Someone asked about FOSS 3D CAD, and I think the only option there is FreeCAD, which is a mess.