For graduates, Autodesk slashes Inventor's price to TurboCAD levels

You can get a commerical license of Inventor just for the cost of the annual subscription (plus an unstated processing free that's described as "minimal") if you get a job + if...

...you are a post-secondary grad who got the free educational version of Inventor.
...you participated in Autodesk's Assistance Program (and have the edu version).

The catch is that you don't get the license; your employer does -- a whole new take on Hire a Student.

The Price List

As best as I can determine, the annual subscription for Inventor (basic) is $795, although more expensive editions seem to be as much as $1,495 a year -- prices you'd expect to pay for various editions of IMSI/design's TurboCAD.

After hiring the Inventor-equipped grad, employers can purchase another 16 seats of Inventor with a 25% discount.

What It Means

Inventor sales have been lagging those of SolidWorks, and so this is one way to boost the number of commerical seats.

This program is akin to that of the shaving industry: give away the upfront cost of the software (razor) and make ongoing income from the annual subscription free (blades). 

Source.

Comments

[Tony]

Other CAD companies do this too. PTC has been offering CoCreate PE users the full version at a huge discount -- plus annual maintenance. It's a great deal if you like CoCreate -- and can handle the subscription costs.

[J Gerth]

Is PTC offering that to the user, or the employer? There's a huge difference, and frankly I'm glad I'm not working in an industry that uses Inventor.

The employer benefit is potentially huge -- and I can readily see various bosses hiring and firing to get cheaper seats of pricey software, or laying off older workers and hiring new kids on the block.

From a user's point of view, this just seems atrocious and wide open to abuse. Better if the free seat cam to the user, and he was responsible for subscription costs -- should not be hard (at least in smaller companies) to get the boss man to cover the sub cost if the software comes with the employee.

[Tony]

The PTC offers are for whoever is paying the bills, but you have to be on the CoCreate PE mailing list. I like CoCreate, but not enough to pay for maintenance for the full version.

VX is currently doing something a bit similar: if you download a trial version, they will e-mail you a discount code.

Both of these are much less restrictive than Autodesk's deal.

--Tony

[Steve Johnson]

The above comment looks like spam to me. I've had a couple like that lately on my own blog, with comments that aren't quite as cluelessly obvious as usual. I hesitated before killing the comments and blocking their IPs, but I still did it.

The giveaways with the above one are the commercially-named "person" and the reference to AutoCAD, which isn't the subject of the post.