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Solidworks Dropped Online Licensing - Gouging Customers

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Joined
Jan 4, 2014
Location
Portland, OR
SOLIDWORKS Online Licensing Discontinuation

So I've ranted on here a few times about how insane it is that our annual maintenance for ~10k in Solidworks seats is about 5k. They are gouging the heck out of customers and offering essentially no improvements or support for the cost of staying "up-to-date".

Today they got rid of online licensing. So now the product is actively getting worse. They are removing features that customers paid for.

I have 3 licenses. One for me that gets used at work and at home, one for a programmer that gets used at work and at home, and one that is shared by 3 workstations that use Solidworks a couple hours a week. My options are to buy (4) more licenses, or add a network license server for about the same cost. Also, I believe the network server will stop working if we ever let the maintenance (50% of cost/year) lapse.

I've got about 20k total into only 3 seats of Solidworks that will not ever be updated again, and will now have to node lock to 3 computers. Talk about poor value.

Guess I'm going to have to re-invest all over again in a different CAD system. Fuck you Dassault. :angry:
 
Oh, by the way, I went to node lock one of the systems, and of course the Solidworks online portal is down. So we can't use the online license, and can't switch it over to local. I guess nobody gets to work in CAD today...

I'd like to be a fly on the wall listening to phone support over there on Monday.
 
Where did you see the SW licensing thing.. Theres a Post about the online stuff being down today.

Still missing having the two licenses that were removed a while back when they switched to the current system.

After losing my HSM lifetime purchase when Autodesk bought them out and converted it to subscription, now HSM is abandoned and Fusion seems to be more expensive every year.

Seems one of these days that the machines will be subscription if you want to use the seat heaters...
 
Seems one of these days that the machines will be subscription if you want to use the seat heaters...

Having machines on perpetual lease might not be a bad thing, IF that included free of charge repairs on a timely basis.

But of course, even if that was in the contract, it would gradually be degraded away...
 
Where did you see the SW licensing thing.. Theres a Post about the online stuff being down today.

Still missing having the two licenses that were removed a while back when they switched to the current system.

Edited my post to include their announcement. Online licensing worked pretty great for folks who liked to work from home, or some of our machinists who wanted to learn/practice at home.

The online licensing was one of the reasons I chose to buy another seat this year, instead of trading SW for a CAD that is more enterprise friendly.
 
Is there any guarantee these days?

Only that every profitable company will eventually get bought out by a conglomerate who will try to minimize value and maximize profitability.

Once corporates get ahold of a product, their obligation becomes keeping shareholders happy instead of keeping customers happy.
 
This is bullshit. Pure and simple.

"Given the low adoption of online licensing, it is not feasible to maintain the complex infrastructure needed to support it. Consequently, we have decided to discontinue SOLIDWORKS Online Licensing."

Jesus, these people have no souls. Tell you what SW, how about you charge me (and the other users) the extra $3 dollars a year it costs to run the server instances that are used for the online licensing. What a crock of shit.
 
I'm not familiar with all the licensing terminology but I currently have sw installed in the shop and in the house. I switch back and forth daily. If I'm going to work in the shop I just deactivate it in the house and reactivate it in the shop. It takes 20 seconds or so. It looks like this will still be supported. Right? Will this work?
 
I'm not familiar with all the licensing terminology but I currently have sw installed in the shop and in the house. I switch back and forth daily. If I'm going to work in the shop I just deactivate it in the house and reactivate it in the shop. It takes 20 seconds or so. It looks like this will still be supported. Right? Will this work?

Wow, thanks Pete. Sounds like we should still be able to manually switch. I misread/misunderstood the original post. Still stupid to remove this feature.
 
So what happens if I transfer my license from my desktop to my laptop, and then say I break or lose my laptop. I have a seat of 2019 professional without maintenance.
 
So what happens if I transfer my license from my desktop to my laptop, and then say I break or lose my laptop. I have a seat of 2019 professional without maintenance.

Your SW reseller can deactivate the license remotely for free. BTDT.

You don't need to be subscribed to maintenance.
 
Wow, thanks Pete. Sounds like we should still be able to manually switch. I misread/misunderstood the original post. Still stupid to remove this feature.

Yup, I didn't even know they had the feature. Adobe's Creative Cloud is all online licensed and it works great.

I would've definitely used it with SW, had I known it existed. I suspect it's the same with most other people. Machine Activation is dated technology.
 
I'm not familiar with all the licensing terminology but I currently have sw installed in the shop and in the house. I switch back and forth daily. If I'm going to work in the shop I just deactivate it in the house and reactivate it in the shop. It takes 20 seconds or so. It looks like this will still be supported. Right? Will this work?

This is what we do at work to use 1 license over 3 computers, from what i can gather this will still work.

We have not been in maintenance for about 4 years and we had a computer die with a active license, we were still able to get our reseller to remotely deactivate the license.
 
I'm not familiar with all the licensing terminology but I currently have sw installed in the shop and in the house. I switch back and forth daily. If I'm going to work in the shop I just deactivate it in the house and reactivate it in the shop. It takes 20 seconds or so. It looks like this will still be supported. Right? Will this work?

I do the same thing when needed, I had no idea the online option was a thing.

Since I bought my own seat 3 years ago I've spent every year irritated with the price increase for SolidWorks/CAMWorks. It's ridiculous, as a machine shop, SolidWorks is just the CAD to my CAM CAMWorks seat and to be honest I haven't used any "new feature" of SolidWorks in over 10 years, I couldn't even tell you if anything was ever added. I prefer to have SolidWorks CAD over any other CAD/CAM package. I've tried multiple other CAM software as well and the only one comparable with a good integration of CAD/CAM IMO is NX, the CAD side on MasterCam, SurfCam, BobCad are all terrible. I know I can plug any of them into SolidWorks but I am and have been a CAMWorks user and prefer it over the others as well so I continue to pay the ridiculous prices but they get about 2 weeks of emails from me every renewal letting them know how ridiculous it is.

This last renewal they just added SolidProfessor in for $300 more for every seat, maybe that was just HawkRidge deal? Great cool option, but make it a damn option for those who want the online courses, don't force everyone to pay it, I ended up paying for it, but I'll never use it.
 
I do the same thing when needed, I had no idea the online option was a thing.

Since I bought my own seat 3 years ago I've spent every year irritated with the price increase for SolidWorks/CAMWorks. It's ridiculous, as a machine shop, SolidWorks is just the CAD to my CAM CAMWorks seat and to be honest I haven't used any "new feature" of SolidWorks in over 10 years, I couldn't even tell you if anything was ever added. I prefer to have SolidWorks CAD over any other CAD/CAM package. I've tried multiple other CAM software as well and the only one comparable with a good integration of CAD/CAM IMO is NX, the CAD side on MasterCam, SurfCam, BobCad are all terrible. I know I can plug any of them into SolidWorks but I am and have been a CAMWorks user and prefer it over the others as well so I continue to pay the ridiculous prices but they get about 2 weeks of emails from me every renewal letting them know how ridiculous it is.

This last renewal they just added SolidProfessor in for $300 more for every seat, maybe that was just HawkRidge deal? Great cool option, but make it a damn option for those who want the online courses, don't force everyone to pay it, I ended up paying for it, but I'll never use it.

I agree with most everything you said. I pay to keep the license current. I figure it's pretty integral to my business so ought to. When I've had issues I've only called for support a few times and it always seemed like I knew more than the support guys. I've changed VAR's twice to try to find someone who knew the CAM better.
 
I agree with most everything you said. I pay to keep the license current. I figure it's pretty integral to my business so ought to. When I've had issues I've only called for support a few times and it always seemed like I knew more than the support guys. I've changed VAR's twice to try to find someone who knew the CAM better.

I complain every year but I try to tell myself the maintenance cost is such a low % of my actual annual sales, its less than 1% and my CAM is the start/base of every part I make, it's a very important aspect of what I produce. I can justify the cost off my annual scrap money I get, but either way its still aggravating when you get the company/ software developer / VAR isn't doing what they could be to make things better for the users that actually use it 8-12+ hours a day.
 
This is just bizarre. Especially in such times as these when more and more people are being forced to work from home.

Imagine Netflix telling customers that your license must now be locked to a certain tv or device? Log out of the living room and log in to the bedroom.

I can use Fusion 360 on any device at any location. What a concept.

It’s just such a backwards move it’s hard to even comprehend.

Makes me a little worried about investing any more money in Soildworks.

Sounds like a desperate move.

John


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