Start a NEW thread on FreeCAD help....
Start a NEW thread on FreeCAD help....
I'm registered to have a look at the EAA Solidworks webinar shortly. Last chance before I forget about it for good. I'm not hopeful that anything substantive will change but even Fusion360 handles cloud better than this debacle.
Anyone know if the webinar will be recorded for later viewing?
Sounds like nothing changed they are just spruiking the new offer introduced in August. And carefully avoiding any questions about why we are now stuck with a cloud version that is significantly worse than what we had.
This is extremely disappointing but not unexpected. Since I retired, I have had no access to Cad software. I am a former Catia user from the Aerospace industry. I was hoping to incorporate sometime next year and was considering the $4000 purchase of the basic Solidworks system when I did. But one of the things I was mostly concerned about was all the cad companies going to subscription service eventually, probably even Catia. The concept of your license expiring and you cant even access you legacy files is really concerning. I have now had this system going for 1 year and its due to expire within a month. In that 1 year it has been very difficult making the change from Catia to Solidworks, so I'm hardly up to speed. I have never seen an actual price on Catia, but it is a far better system, much faster and less resource hungry. That kind of surprised me. But it's probably well over 2 times the price and has about 25 to 50 add on modules that don't come free. My main concern is that if I purchase the professional stand alone version of Solidworks is that also going to become a subscription only service. So the decision I have to make is do I purchase a stand alone version of Solidworks now while its still available or do I bite the bullet and try to purchase a stand alone version of Catia now if its remotely possible. Problem is Solidworks appears to be a work in progress where as Catia is fully matured and I really haven't seen any significant changes to it of the last 10 years. Catia will work on an entire jet aircraft with the same dexterity as Solidworks handles a ball point pen.
My Solidworks computer has nothing but Solidworks on it. Very rarely is it connected to the internet for security reasons. Right now I am typing this message on a computer that is sitting besides my Solidworks computer. The cloud breaks that security. It sounds like it is about to become a FreeCad or Alibre computer very shortly.
A million times I've said don't exaggerate!
FreeCad seems to have great potential - I started learning it back in August - Version 19 - and today I downloaded Version 20. Haven't looked into it yet, but it's clearly evolving rapidly, and as its name implies it's somewhat less expensive than both Solidworks and Catia. Also, I seriously doubt the developers will hold us hostage to our data like Solidworks.
I just received an email from Dassault Systemes with 'Subject: Feedback on cloud-based engineering software survey'. It took five minutes to fill out the Survey Monkey questionnaire with the reasons for my contempt for cloud-based CAD software. The last question was "Is there anything else you would like to tell us?", to which I replied "Actively researching non-cloud-based CAD software alternatives."
I'm not sanguine that it will make any difference to DS marketing plans, but if you receive such an invitation, please take the time to fill it out.