Mastercam allows the continuation/new ownership of a licence, providing the license is registered to the company, which is subsequently purchased.
So new owner of company = new owner of mastercam.
For safety reasons....I would get my USB dongle duplicated (backup).
And regarding USB....providing I had electricity, i could always rely on mastercam firing up and working.
Giving access to all historic files as well as earning me money 'grammin new ones.
Not relying on an internet connection and all related painful issues of windowze or graphics card updates yada yada.
But then I ran for 12 years with an internal network for 6 pc's (grammin/DNC/CMM/Office/printers) all on a server with no web access and it was flawless.
Just the 1x pc for interwebs/email/fax.
I know of 3 other's that will allow transfer of ownership. Under the right circumstances they will allow it.
As far as I can tell, only 3 things are keeping MC/SW afloat:
- ITAR compliance.
- Full 5 axis/complex turning/etc.
- Momentum.
MasterCAM and SolidWorks are boned in the long-term. Fusion is absolutely capable of any 3+2 axis part or turning you can throw at it, and the rest is in very active development and has all the guts from FeatureCAM and PowerMill just waiting to be integrated. ITAR compliance is slated to eventually be do-able with Fusion one way or another, so once that box is ticked?
MasterCAM/SW have momentum as their only defensive moat, and they are super screwed here. Why? Lets look at 10 years of total ownership cost, including maintenance, for basic 3 axis CAD + CAM:
- SW/MC: $69,800 ($5k + $2k/yr for SolidWorks, $18k + $3.2k/yr for MasterCAM).
- NX 3 Axis CAD/CAM Node Locked: $60,400
- Fusion 360: $3,960
I was not kidding when I said the cost difference would let the shop owner buy their wife a Porsche Macan...
Is SW/MC a better piece of software than Fusion? IDK - neither MC or SW have done much in innovation in the last 5+ years. NX CAM is obviously better, and very actively developed, and it is the most advanced CAD in the world... Very very few shops are going to make a positive ROI with that extra $54k going to a seat of NX over Fusion though.
And let us say you are a weirdo who buys a piece of software stripped of maintenance, so what about the simple single license cost compared to Fusion?
SW+MC costs you 58 years of Fusion
NX is 70 years of Fusion
IDK if you all can do math, but Autodesk has a LONG way to go before they start holding their customers hostages with prices on-par with the incumbents.
You want to keep arguing Fusion is dumb? Subscriptions suck? Fine... make realistic arguments that actually take the absurd price difference into account and explain to me why spending 50x for a "perpetual" license is the smarter play.
I get what you are saying here but I don't fully agree. There's variables that come into play where across the board where I don't agree you can just say cause Fusion is $X and SW/MC is $X over 10 years "Very very few shops are going to make a positive ROI with that extra $54k going to a seat of NX over Fusion though."
It's also not 50x the cost for a "perpetual" license. AD $3960 x 50 is $198,000.
So with your thought process here on ROI, why would any shop buy say a brand new Haas VFSS over a 5-10 year old machine? Why spend $50-75k more on a machine that does the same thing, yea the new one has bluetooth access, WOW, a warranty, great.
You can walk into any machine shop and cut costs significantly, on machines, tooling, perishables that will essentially do the same thing and save money across the board and increase ROI. My drum of Blaser coolant is 2x the cost of Hang's. I could buy Accupro Endmill's over Helical, cheaper tool holders.
IMO for me as an owner/operator, every part that comes of my machine starts in my CAM software, CAMWorks. I've been using it for almost 15 years now, I know it inside and out, when I went on my own and needed to buy software, I considered Fusion, but I knew I didn't have the time to learn a new software, I had PO's coming in and stuck with what I knew and am comfortable with and have never had an issue generating a program for any part I have ever came across. Much like most people that are comfortable in their own software whether it be MasterCam, Gibbs, NX or whatever it is. A lot of shops are willing to pay what their programmer/users are comfortable with cause they also don't have time to have their programmers dick around learning new software, especially if you are getting into more complicated parts. I've said this before on other posts, paying $4k a year for CAM/CAD sucks when that time comes around but I can easily justify it by saying its covered by my aluminum recycling annually. The $4k I pay for SW/CW is less than 1% of my annual revenue, and I am a 1 man home shop. Whats the cost % of CAM for a large company vs revenue .1% or less.
You keep mentioning SW/MC, isn't MC discontinuing the SW add in as of this year?
I would also applaud any company/owner that is willing to listen to their employee(s)/programmers and pay out the money for the software of their choice rather than trying look at the ROI over 10 years to buy their wife a Porche and force a software on a programmer. With the point you are trying to make, why don't programmers take their experienced software off their resume and companies quit putting what software they use.