Solidworks Financing Offer

ARB · Nov 28, 2006

Did anyone else recieve a 0% offer on a seat of Solidworks?
My VAR contacted me and I decided it was time for a seat of my very own.

I have a bunch of design work coming up and my old software just aint cutting it.

ARB

Joe788 · Nov 28, 2006

How long was the financing term?

appliedproto · Nov 28, 2006

They have had a 0% promotion for a few years now. But I think the terms are either 12 or 24 months.

ARB · Nov 29, 2006

Term lengths of 12,24,36 months. Only catch is you need to buy a year of maintenance for each year financed. I went with 24 month. Let's me get the software without pinching the cashflow too much. I had been kinda waiting for this offer to resurface. I did not jump on it last time. Which was a couple of years ago I think.

BOSTON · Nov 29, 2006

If you don't mind me asking what was the cost of Solidwork with maintenance for each year financed and how much per month

bcstractor · Nov 29, 2006

Hopefully you are buying 2006 and not 2007?

Chris P

SeymourDumore · Nov 29, 2006

BCS

If you buy 2007, you automatically get the license for 2006 and you may use either one.

CDiPrecision · Nov 29, 2006

I have had very good results with 2007... SP2 is out now. I dont do complex surfacing, but do all my CNC programming and Cavity/Core splits...been very pleased

bcstractor · Nov 29, 2006

CDi?

Do you use PDM Works?.. That is bad enough in 2006 - we're very concerned about 2007.

Chris P

Dan B · Nov 29, 2006

Hopefully you are buying 2006 and not 2007?

Why? What is wrong with 2007? We are on the verge of buying a few seats of SolidWorks. Is there something I should know about 2007 before we spend a ton of money?

Also, do you recommend the maintenance?

Thanks,

Dan

CDiPrecision · Nov 30, 2006

no, i dont.. i am freelance single seat operation..

failsafe7 · Nov 30, 2006

What does freelance single seat have to do with not opting for maintenance, just out of curiosity?

I don't own a seat of SolidWorks, so maybe I don't understand why one wouldn't choose maintenance. (I am forced to pay maintenance on my software just to keep up with customer versions and new functionality)

What does "maintenance" entail with SW?

Thanks.

appliedproto · Nov 30, 2006

What does "maintenance" entail with SW?

It's just a service contract that gets you all the SP's as well as all new versions, as long as you're enrolled (~$1500/yr).

I didn't subscribe, and now knowing how buggy SW really is, that wasn't the wisest choice. If you're using SW daily, then I'd recommend it.

BobWelland · Nov 30, 2006

I bought Solidworks without the maintenance contract and was rather annoyed by it. You do not get service packs without the maintenance contract. I finally ponied up and got the service contract (I think $1200/yr. for Solidworks Professional). You do get a years worth of updates and with Solidworks releasing a new version each year, you get the newest years model.

You can negotiate payment plans with Solidworks - I think that I payed over a year or something. I'm sure that someone with more negotiating savvy could have negotiated a better deal them me. At the end of the day, they are getting a lot of money for their software so there should be quite a bit of wiggle room price-wise.

Cheers,
Bob Welland

PS. appliedproto - you can subscribe to the maintenance contract at any time and be brought up-to-date.

Dan B · Nov 30, 2006

Personally, I find the concept of having to buy a contract to get bug fixes to be unethical. That would be like buying a new car, then paying another $10,000 to have a warranty.

I realize that the contract also involves phone support, but realistically, regardless of how many seats we buy, all questions would go through one person. So why would we need to pay multiple times for this service?

Also at issue is the fact that there is maintenance on every add-on that we would need, such as FormatWorks (which I feel is necessary as we work with some pretty nasty customer supplied surface files sometimes). The bottom line is that we are looking at around $40,000 a year in maintenance, and that's a pretty hard sell to our company president.

As far as upgrades, is it really worth it? Does SolidWorks get that much better every year that we could get a ROI on that $40,000 each and every year? Really, after about 4 years we would have paid enough to buy it all over again.

And what about 2007 vs 2006? IS 2007 a lemon? Our demo time with it was so short that we weren't able to really put it through it's paces.

Thanks,

Dan

failsafe7 · Nov 30, 2006

It's just a service contract that gets you all the SP's as well as all new versions, as long as you're enrolled (~$1500/yr).

What product level is that price for?

Personally, I find the concept of having to buy a contract to get bug fixes to be unethical. That would be like buying a new car, then paying another $10,000 to have a warranty.

It seems a bit dodgy. But in their defense, SW is one of the few companies in CAD (that I have seen) that does not *force* you to pay for first year maintenance upfront. It would be nicer to have one price, and include all maintenance, but from a marketing perspective, the added cost would alienate some in the mid-range market.

The typical CAD model is to rush the product out with your "new" and "improved" version before your competitor can - no matter how buggy it may be - then institute a series of clean-ups and band-aids. It's not the most functionally logical model, but it's unfortunately what it takes to keep these types of programs relevant. And, finally, if you agree to the contract, you are explicitly agreeing to support continual and concurrent development of the software. (there is a clause in the EULA that covers this)

I'm not defending or condemning the practice, just stating the fact.

smallshop · Nov 30, 2006

No it's not a lemon. They have introduced a lot of new stuff some of which may not be as polished as it will be after a few service releases (just guessing here). We are using 2007 with no problems. I still like the icons/interface of 2004 but have no real gripes about 2007. The Scan to 3D is not as robust as it could be(in Office Premium). The mesh prep wizard is excellent but the Auto surface extraction is glitchy. 3D sketching on a mesh works great and surfaces are easy to create from them. I haven't done any analalytical stuff on surfaces just recreating some with scan data from our Scanner.

Why don't you buy one seat and have your best guy kick the tires a bit? It always seems to me that each end user has specific repetitive uses of a given product and while I may rave about it, your use may vary enough to where it's not a good fit.

Did you visit Alibre as a potential tool fo your company? I know it's no SolidWorks but the collaboration tools are unbelievable and the cost is pretty amazing.

Bottom line for me is, SolidWorks is an awsome tool. It's easy to learn and works well. I use it with Rhino and while you have to develop a file saving protocol to bounce back and forth, they work great together. I believe Rhino 4.0 has some ability to create surface in a .prt file without messing up the history but I'm not sure how to do it. Worth checking into though.

Ted

Dan B · Nov 30, 2006

But in their defense, SW is one of the few companies in CAD (that I have seen) that does not *force* you to pay for first year maintenance upfront. It would be nicer to have one price, and include all maintenance, but from a marketing perspective, the added cost would alienate some in the mid-range market.

I suppose not giving you bug fixes is, in a way, forcing you to buy the maintenance. In my opinion, they should include the first year of maintenance when you buy a new seat at no extra charge. There are some companies that do that. Then you can decide in subsequent years if the extra cost can be justified. But, like I said, that's just my opinion.

Why don't you buy one seat and have your best guy kick the tires a bit? It always seems to me that each end user has specific repetitive uses of a given product and while I may rave about it, your use may vary enough to where it's not a good fit.

That's the way I'm leaning. I think one seat with training, and a couple of months of actually working with it is what we need to do. Of course, the reseller feels quite strongly that we should commit to the whole package up front. No surprise there, I guess. I don't doubt that it will work for us, but I would hate to commit to a couple of hundred thousand dollars, just to get "blind-sided" by something we didn't expect.

Did you visit Alibre as a potential tool fo your company? I know it's no SolidWorks but the collaboration tools are unbelievable and the cost is pretty amazing.

I have Alibre Xpress as one of the original 100,000 people who registered, so I have the extra "bonuses" that come along with that. The problem is that Alibre doesn't import curve data and point data that is almost always present in the data we receive from our customers. We often get single sided parts (stampings) that have a section through it to indicate direction and material thickness. Alibre ignores those on import. I voiced my concern on Alibre's forum, but it was pretty much ignored.

That's too bad, because other than that Alibre would fit our needs.

Dan

failsafe7 · Nov 30, 2006

I suppose not giving you bug fixes is, in a way, forcing you to buy the maintenance. In my opinion, they should include the first year of maintenance when you buy a new seat at no extra charge. There are some companies that do that. Then you can decide in subsequent years if the extra cost can be justified. But, like I said, that's just my opinion.

Well, yes, but like I said, the way a marketer prices a package is to list base price, and all the "other" charges are on the backend. You would be absolutely amazed how buying psychology works in this regard. It's easier to get a guy to pay $2K more for something if you call it "maintenance", than it is to tack it on upfront.

On another note: what prevents a person from "sharing" upgrades? Are your SP's tied to your machine or target ID, to a license key, or are they just general? Because I know that with some CAD packages, the SP's are generic, and are often available from an official FTP site, without paying a penny. It's not SolidWorks, but you can PM me if you are interested in knowing more. (and no, it's not pirated software - just a company too stupid to not allow anonymous ftp access)

I don't see what keeps guys from getting together and splitting maintenance cost, just to have access to the SP's, if it's possible to do so.

Anybody have any thoughts or facts on that?

appliedproto · Nov 30, 2006

On another note: what prevents a person from "sharing" upgrades?

Well, I still get SP upgrades from CAMWorks, and every time I install them I have to the get key updated by them. Not certain that's the same with SW. But at least CAMWorks is nice enough to send me updates!!

This yearly update is unintelligible for a niche product such as 3D CAD/CAM. This is not Madden Football, this is commercial software that should be professionally tested and it ready to go with the smallest amount of error.

There should be no need for maintanance programs, by the time you spend all your money on these programs, you could have owned a 2nd seat of the software. It makes no sense for the money they are asking for.

Solidworks Financing Offer

Titanium

Titanium

Stainless

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Titanium

Diamond

Cast Iron

Titanium

Hot Rolled

Cast Iron

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Diamond

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