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Apr 07, 2010

Comments

Devon T. Sowell

SolidWorks is telling their customers to take it or leave it, bad, very bad message. More and more of my clients want to drop SolidWorks Subscription Maintenance.

SolidWorks Service Packs DO NOT provide new Features, they can't. Why? Because if you're using Service Pack 0 and I'm using Service Pack 5, we CAN'T EXCHANGE FILES!

Devon Sowell

DF

Bentley do the same with MicroStation - no subscription, no patches/point updates.

John

Service packs can and do include new features. What they don't do is include new features that change the file format.

Check out the release notes for the past several releases if you would like to see what types of additions have been made.

The real debate is if subscription service should encompass only major upgrades and technical support.

The current system also ties service pack access into the subscription service.

Some users would like an additonal option that only includes upgrades.

SolidWorks used to offer this option, but very few customers purchased only upgrades.

Norm C.

And it is the same with Siemens PLM: you need a "webscription" account to download the maintenance packs. You need to be on maintenance to get this account.

I believe that amongst the CAD giants, Autodesk may actually be the only one providing bug fixes for free.

vistasp

@ Norm C : Autodesk is certainly not the only CAD major giving free fixes. Graphisoft has never charged for their ArchiCAD hotfixes. And recently, they distributed a hotfix for an older version which came as a pleasant surprise to many users who hadn't upgraded!

Norm C.

@ VistaSP

Well sorry, but I wasn't considering Graphisoft as a CAD giant. Unless their business is in the billion$ like DS, PTC, Autodesk and Siemens PLM...

vistasp

@ Norm C: Billion$? I guess my bar set is much lower then... ;)

BTW, my name has nothing to do with Microsoft's previous [shudder] OS.

Cheers.

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