Dear fellow EAA CAD'ers,
I just want to say how badly this SUCKS. Having run SolidWorks since 2007, and in professional environments, it is classic Dassault Systems corporate greed.
The first place I noticed it, was when I saw that SW2007 could not open a later version, like from 2011, with "cannot open. Future version." riggggght.
How did 2007 know there would be a future version unless this planned/forced obsolescence was integrated intentionally. Strange Microsoft Word/Excel can open
previous MUCH older versions. And as SW matured, it ALWAYS has been unstable, and would crash for 'no' reason. In fact, SolidWorks is one of the ONLY programs
I have ever used that will crash, and disappear from the screen without a trace, no error dialogue...nothing, just a COMPLETE fail. And then they want to charge you
$1500 per year for a maintenance fee, which gets you the 'yearly' upgrade, and 'support' through the VAR ('Value' Added Reseller). Whenever we had crashes, the VAR
would say send a copy of the crash log, and MOST of the time, they would be like 'we don't know what is wrong or how to fix it, sorry'. Useless in my opinion.
AND, for an individual or struggling business, a base cost of around $5000/seat is outrageous, especially since now, every 'new' version, has virtually no practical upgraded
functionality, just useless GUI changes.
If SolidWorks would offer the same version as the EAA has been offered to members, for individual or minimal commercial use for less than $1000, or perhaps $500, they would
sell TONS of seats; an individual cannot justify $5000, but $500 is doable. Trying to force us to submit to a subscription model, where 'collaboration' is pushed, and 'cloud' is 'important',
is ridiculous. I don't collaborate with anyone as an individual 'inventor'. And I CANNOT stand 'the cloud', I mean 'someone else's computer', rather than storing my personal stuff on MY computer.
If you ask me, SolidWork's corporate bosses are SO not in touch with the majority, they have no idea what is going on. If you are not a massive corporation, they could give a crap about you, as is
evidenced by how they treat the 'not corporate' masses who appreciate the software. I have really appreciated the EAA benefit of the desktop SolidWorks software.
But I see this as a greedy dick move by Dassault Systems, and happy to tell them so. If they were to offer the same desktop version as this year to EAA members for $75 each year, I and I am sure,
many other members, would be happy for this benefit. But I will use Fusion 360 WAY before I will use a cloud version of SolidWorks. All they are doing is driving users to Autodesk and Fusion 360.
Having been kicked in the gut by this announcement, there is now less love for SolidWorks.
Rant over.
-Christian