Bloatware – a tale of two CAD applications

You may have seen me mention in passing that AutoCAD is bloatware. That’s not just the general grumpy-old-user moan you see from long-term users like me, who can remember when AutoCAD used to fit on one floppy disk.

Yes, programs get bigger over time as new functionality is added and old functionality needs to be retained. Hardware gets bigger, better, faster over time to compensate for that. I get that. Understood.

The AutoCAD bloatware problem is much more than that. AutoCAD is literally ten times the size it needs to be, to provide the functionality it does.

How do I know? BricsCAD proves it. Here’s what I mean.

BricsCAD V17.2 64-bit Windows Download

Downloaded File	Size (KB)
BricsCAD-V17.2.03-1-en_US(x64).msi	248,812
Total (1 file)	248,812 (100%)

Equivalent AutoCAD 2018 Downloads

Downloaded File	Size (KB)
AutoCAD_2018_English_Win_64bit_dlm_001_002.sfx.exe	2,065,829
AutoCAD_2018_English_Win_64bit_dlm_002_002.sfx.exe	328,277
AutoCAD_2018.0.1_64bit_r2.exe	120,663
AutoCAD_2018_Product_Help_English_Win_32_64bit_dlm.sfx.exe	180,013
Total (4 files)	2,694,782 (1083%)

Which dog is which? They’re both cute, but which would you put your money on in a race?

(Original image: Przykuta)

(Original image: Lisa Cyr)

I’m actually being very generous to Autodesk in this comparison. The two primary AutoCAD download executables alone expand from 2.4 GB to 5.2 GB before install, requiring a total at least 7.6 GB of disk space before we even get to the same ready-to-install point as BricsCAD’s 0.24 GB MSI file.

No, it’s not because BricsCAD is a cut-down application compared with AutoCAD. The opposite is true. Overall, BricsCAD is significantly more feature-rich than AutoCAD. It near-exactly duplicates over 95% of AutoCAD’s functionality and then adds a big slab of its own on top of that. Some of it is in paid-for optional extras, but the code that provides that functionality is still included in the same small download.

This issue isn’t unique to AutoCAD. Super-morbid obesity seems to be standard among Autodesk products. The AutoCAD-based verticals that add a comparable level of functionality to that the BricsCAD download includes are much bigger again!

Anybody care to explain what’s going on here?

Bricsys shows Autodesk how to do mid-term updates

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BricsCAD V17.2 is out. Although there’s nowhere near as much new and useful in this mid-term update as in the full upgrade from V16 to V17, there’s more here than in Autodesk’s last mid-term update, AutoCAD 17.1. There’s even arguably more than in the uninspired AutoCAD 2018 upgrade, including those 17.1 features.

But that’s not the main reason I say Bricsys is schooling Autodesk in how to do mid-term updates. While Autodesk is restricting such updates (including the bug fixes and security updates included in those updates) to subscription and maintenance customers, Bricsys is doing no such thing.

BricsCAD V17 customers who have a perpetual license, even without maintenance (called All-In by Bricsys), will be receiving V17.2 free of charge. Bricsys still considers such users as customers who have paid good money and still need to be looked after, rather than a non-paying irritant, which appears to be Autodesk’s attitude.

Oh, and you don’t have to install some piece-of-junk automatic updater or malware-like download manager to get the software. You just do a straightforward browser download of a small file (by Autodesk bloatware standards) which is the entire product, and install over the top of your existing installation, effortlessly preserving your settings. If you’re doing a new install of V17.2 from scratch, you just install from that downloaded product. No need for multiple downloads and multiple-step installations. No need to have every PC in your fleet nagging your users and downloading the same huge files.

Autodesk isn’t in the hunt here for ease of maintenance. Not remotely in the same league. Seriously, go home and start again, Autodesk. Your ideas are bad and your execution is worse.

Here are some links to information about the V17.2 update (not neutral sources, obviously):

Bricsys Blog post
Techevate article
Direct modeling update information
BIM update information (BIM is an optional extra but this update is free if you already have it)
Sheet metal update information (another optional extra with a free update)

I will be benchmarking BricsCAD V17.2 and AutoCAD 2018 with great interest. In my preliminary tests, BricsCAD V17.0 performance walked all over AutoCAD 2018 in most areas, but commands involving object selection were the exception, with AutoCAD significantly quicker there. Bricsys is claiming large improvements in that area, but we’ll see.

New Autodesk subscription idea – any interest?

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Let’s say Autodesk came up with a new offer for customers currently under maintenance. Let’s say you could switch to subscription (rental) with the same price as maintenance, locked in with no increases for three years. In addition, you get to retain, but not upgrade, your perpetual license.

Let’s say you’re on maintenance which is up for renewal later this year. You currently have a perpetual license of AutoCAD 2018. If you accept this offer, you will always retain that AutoCAD 2018 license. You switch to subscription and pay the maintenance amount for one to three years. Your subscription fee is guaranteed to rise by no more than 20% total by year five.

As long as you continue to pay subscription, you get access to new releases (2019, 2020, etc). If you decide to no longer renew your subscription at any point, you can no longer use the new releases, but you can still fall back on using your perpetual license, which remains as AutoCAD 2018. The use of the software would be subject to the usual fair use restrictions, e.g. during the subscription period you can’t use AutoCAD 2018 on one PC while using AutoCAD 2019 on a different one.

Would you be interested in such an offer?

I’ve added a poll, so please vote and feel free to comment on why you would or would not be prepared to switch under those circumstances.

Would you be interested in switching to Autodesk subscription if you could keep your old (non-upgraded) perpetual license?

Yes (24%, 32 Votes)
Maybe (25%, 33 Votes)
No (51%, 67 Votes)

Total Voters: 132

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Please note that this offer is entirely hypothetical. It arose from a recent telephone conversation with a non-Autodesk person. I have no inside information that suggests Autodesk is considering such an offer.

New Autodesk subscription offer to perpetual license holders

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Don’t get too excited. Autodesk’s recent attempt to price-force perpetual license maintenance customers onto subscription (rental) remains in place, unchanged and just as unappealing as before. If you’re one of those customers, there’s nothing new here of interest to you.

This new offer, at 30% off the normal but extremely high subscription price, is at first sight even less appealing than the approximately 60% saving that the above offer provides. But it’s aimed at different customers, and there’s the remote possibility that such customers might find it worthwhile.

The new offer is called FY18 Q1 Autodesk – Global Field Promotion and is aimed at bringing into the rental fold those customers who hold old perpetual licenses that are not on maintenance. If you have an old AutoCAD Release 14 lying around that has never been upgraded, or an AutoCAD 2007 license where you allowed the maintenance (then called Subscription) to lapse, you can trade it in for the 30% discount on a wide range of subscription products. You need to surrender the perpetual license, and you need to pay up front for three years of subscription. Read the FAQ for details.

Three years of subscription at only 30% off is actually really expensive. Depending on what product you go for, it could work out about the same as a perpetual license cost back when Autodesk used to sell software. Despite that substantial investment, you’ll be left with nothing whatsoever at the end of the three years. You will then be expected to wear a huge increase in rental costs when the 30% discount wears off. It works out to a price jump of about 43%, plus whatever price rises there may have been in the meantime.

Excited by this offer? No? Gee, you people are hard to please!

Don’t dismiss it out of hand, though. If you meet all of the following conditions, you should still consider this offer:

You have an old non-upgraded eligible license lying around.
You’re never going to want to use that license ever again.
You have an absolute need to rent one of the Autodesk products on offer, and would otherwise be paying 100% rather than 70% of the huge subscription fees.
You can afford to pay those high fees in advance for three years.
You’re definitely going to need that rented software for more than two years (otherwise it works out cheaper to rent at 100% for 2/3 of the time).
You can budget for a huge price increase at the end of the three year period, assuming you’re going to use the software long-term.
You don’t think Autodesk is going to come up with a more attractive offer later.

Maybe the Autodesk execs think this is going to be perceived as an attractive offer, but if they do there’s a fair bit of self-delusion going on. I fully expect this campaign to fail to live up to Autodesk’s expectations, and much better offers to follow later, in order to try to tempt the remaining hold-outs. No guarantees, obviously; it’s your money and your gamble.

Having had a good look at what Autodesk execs have been telling the stock market, I’ve been expecting this move. Old perpetual license holders have been identified as a target market. However, I was expecting the move to come later than this, and I was expecting the terms of the offer to be much more attractive. Are perpetual license converts thinner on the ground than Autodesk expected? Is Autodesk getting desperate for cash to make this quarter’s numbers look better than they otherwise would? Wouldn’t surprise me.

AutoCAD 2018 – at last, something to praise

1 Reply

This isn’t supposed to be an Autodesk-bashing blog. Really, it’s not. Sure, Autodesk (and anyone else) gets criticism where deserved. There’s been a lot of that lately, but only because Autodesk has thoroughly deserved it. I don’t make up things so I can have a go; Autodesk provides the material all by itself.

Among other things, I’m a customer advocate. I don’t care who you are, act in an anti-customer manner and I’m going to slam you. Hard but fair. Dish up bullshit to your customers and I will gleefully point that out and heap derision on you. Deal with it.

On the other hand, act in a pro-customer manner and I’m going to praise you. I do praise Autodesk (and anyone else) where deserved. There are dozens of examples of that on this blog. Lately, the pickings have been slim. Time to redress the balance a little.

I’ve mentioned before that Autodesk has some great documentation people, including Lee Ambrosius…

…who does a great job with developer documentation. That job’s less visible, but still very important and performed to an excellent standard. Lee is very technically knowledgeable and understands users, developers and their documentation requirements. Within the confines of the systems he’s forced to work with, Lee has done the very best job it would be possible for anyone to do.

Lee has again stepped up to the mark and done exemplary work with the AutoCAD 2018 developer documentation. See Lee’s post for details. This list of AutoLISP changes is an example of the sort of thoughtful addition Lee has provided. Thank you, Lee!

AutoCAD 2018.0.1 mystery partially resolved but questions remain

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As I mentioned earlier, the release of AutoCAD 2018 was followed almost instantaneously by the first update, 2018.0.1. At the time of writing, there was no official information about this update. Some information is now available, but more questions have arisen.

If, like me, you don’t/won’t/can’t have Autodesk desktop app running on your systems, the only current official way to get at the download is using Autodesk Account (but read the whole of this post before you go there). That’s also how you get at information about the update. Go to Management > AutoCAD > Downloads > Updates & Add-ons. From there, it’s not obvious how to get the information, but it’s under More options.

From there, pick View Details. This will show you the following information (after you pick More):

As you can see, the severity is considered high. If you pick View release notes, you can see the readme, or you can go straight to it if you have this direct link. Here are the fixes described in the readme:

Occasional crashes when ending an AutoCAD session using specific API code no longer occur.
Publishing annotative multiline attributes no longer results in incorrect annotative scaling.
PFB fonts can now be compiled successfully as SHX files.
The border of a mask is no longer plotted in PDFs when “Lines Merge” is turned on.

Although it would be easy to have a go at Autodesk for shipping a product that needs fixing within hours of release, that wouldn’t be entirely fair. No software is flawless. Stuff happens, and the sooner fixes are provided to resolve that stuff, the better. So I commend Autodesk for getting this fix out quickly.

That doesn’t mean Autodesk is blameless, though. Read on.

First, the way the information about this update was (or wasn’t) disseminated was sub-optimal. It has required too much prodding and guesswork to get to the point we are now, and we’re still not where we should be.

Next, there’s scant information in the readme. I don’t see any documented way of including this fix in a deployment, for example. That means it’s not possible to create a one-step automated install without resorting to trickery.

Further, this update isn’t available on the main Autodesk site. It needs to be. Even if you know the version number to look for, a search at autodesk.com will come up blank:

Using the Autodesk Knowledge Network Download Finder won’t help, either:

Fortunately, these direct links appear to work:

This brings me to my fourth point of criticism. See that the 64-bit executable has “r2” on it? The one I downloaded on 23 March doesn’t. The 64-bit executables are similar in size to each other but the binary content is different. The 32-bit 2018.0.1 has a date of 22 March and the 64-bit 2018.0.1 r2 has a date of 24 March. So it looks like the patch has been patched, at least for 64-bit users.

Information on this patch-patch is non-existent. Should somebody who downloaded and applied the 64-bit 2018.0.1, download and apply 2018.0.1 r2? Will that work? Do they need to uninstall 2018.0.1 first? How should they do that? Will the 32-bit 2018.0.1 also be updated to r2? Should those users hang off a few days to avoid wasting time or go ahead with what’s there now?

Over to you, Autodesk.

What’s in a name? AutoCAD 360 / mobile app confusion

AutoCAD 2018 – why did the DWG format change?

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In my review of AutoCAD 2018, I had this to say about AutoCAD 2018’s changed DWG format:

Why does AutoCAD 2018 need a new DWG format? It probably doesn’t. The 2013 DWG format is capable of holding pretty much anything you want… Although Autodesk cites performance reasons with certain drawings, I strongly suspect the new DWG format was introduced purely to make life difficult for competitors, and to encourage wavering customers to stay with Autodesk for fear of losing compatibility. In other words, it seems likely this is an anti-competitive change rather than a technical one.

In a recent blog post, highly respected Swiss-based Autodesk development and research person Kean Walmsley had this to say on that subject:

The main reason for the break in compatibility is some longer-term work that’s going on inside the AutoCAD codebase. For now this is really only surfacing in small ways – I expect it’s contributing some performance benefits, for instance – but the work is absolutely critical to the long-term viability of the product.

Kean’s a straight-shooter and I’m always ready to be corrected if it can be shown that I’m wrong. So I would be interested to learn more detail about this long-term work that’s critical to the long-term viability of the product. It might be good news for customers or really terrible news. If the groundwork is being laid for a file format that’s more heavily cloud-reliant or subject to continuous change, say, that would be an absolute tragedy for customers.

Autodesk is clearly manoeuvring customers into a position of maximum tie-in using various nefarious means, and if the DWG format change is part of that then it’s to be condemned. Maybe further information would help alleviate such concerns. Kean can’t provide that information, and neither can the selected bloggers who were given some insight under NDA last week, but I’m sure someone at Autodesk could. That is, if there really is nothing to worry about.

Kean also had this to say:

AutoCAD continues to be a core part of Autodesk’s business – and it continues to receive significant investment in terms of development resources – but don’t expect that to translate to buckets of shiny new features: AutoCAD’s feature maturity means the investment is rightly being focused in other areas (at least for now).

This had me wondering if Kean mistyped “immaturity”, because almost every AutoCAD feature from the last decade was released immature and only the lucky few eventually got finished. There’s a huge mass of outstanding work left to do in AutoCAD just to bring its existing half-baked features up to scratch, practically all of which could be done without disrupting customers with a new DWG format.

As for the feature set itself being mature, I can’t agree with that, either. Maybe it’s considered mature within Autodesk because of defeatist thinking about what’s possible with DWG-based CAD software? Kean’s comments seem to reinforce that impression. From where I’m standing, the lack of progress in recent AutoCAD releases demonstrates a severe lack of imagination and hunger to improve the product, not any inherent natural plateau in CAD development.

I believe this because Autodesk’s keener competitors have shown that no such plateau exists. Bricsys has proven that it’s very possible to improve an AutoCAD-like DWG-based product out of sight with genuinely useful and productive new features, and they can do it without changing the DWG format. Incidentally, my preliminary tests indicate BricsCAD V17 opens and saves DWG significantly faster than AutoCAD 2018, again without the need for a new format. More on that in a later post.

Back to Kean:

This is a tricky balance – and could easily be interpreted as a big company not caring about (some of) its users and only being interested in milking its cash-cow – but the work happening behind the scenes is significant and I believe will ultimately prove to be of real value to our customers.

Real value? History has taught me to be dubious about that. Many things that Autodesk promotes as being of value to customers turn out to be of net negative value. Time will tell with this one.

Sorry, but I really don’t believe that Autodesk cares about AutoCAD and its users as anything but an income source. I know there are still honest, hardworking, enthusiastic people within Autodesk (like Kean) who want to improve the product on behalf of customers. Good luck to those people, because their efforts are being stymied by management. The results we’re seeing out here in customer land are dismal, and no matter what spin is put on that, it must be disheartening.

Autodesk people, caring about users? Sure. Autodesk, the public listed company, as directed from the top? Nope. Autodesk’s actions and inactions tell me otherwise. Zero cares are given. No words can fix that, no matter who they come from.

AutoCAD really is being treated as a cash cow; hang one of those bells around its neck and be done with it.

(Original image: Daniel Schwen)

Ask Teresa from Autodesk your maintenance and subscription questions

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As a follow-up to the Pixel Fondue video I posted earlier, Greg reports:

Since then Teresa Anania (Teresa from the letter) has contacted me and has agreed to do a pixelfondue livestream and answer some questions people may have. So…if you want to ask Teresa something directly post your question here and I will send it to her. I obviously can’t guarantee that I will ask (or she will answer) all questions. Teresa is (to her credit) reaching out to customers in a more personal way here – and maybe we can help her understand our feelings about AD’s move to subscription, especially how it pertains to current license holders.

Teresa Anania is Autodesk’s Senior Director, Subscription Success. It is indeed commendable that Teresa is prepared to step out of the Autodesk PR safe zone and field questions and comments from real people in an environment outside her control.

If you want to ask Teresa a question, hop over Autodesk forum and reply to Greg’s post. I’ll let Greg know about this post here too, so if you reply here he should see it.

AutoCAD 2018 – disable InfoCenter

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Here’s another AutoCAD 2018 download, just in case you haven’t had enough.

If you want to disable AutoCAD’s InfoCenter (and you should, unless have a specific reason for keeping it – here’s why), go get the updated download from uber-expert Owen Wengerd’s ManuSoft Freebies page. It works for AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT.

AutoCAD 2018 – there’s already an update

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If you downloaded and installed AutoCAD 2018 yesterday and don’t/won’t/can’t have Autodesk desktop app running on your systems, you may already have another download to do, because AutoCAD 2018.0.1 is out.

At the time of writing there is no sign of this update on Autodesk’s main site, but you can get at it using Autodesk Account. Go to Management > AutoCAD > Downloads > Updates & Add-ons.

All that’s downloaded is an executable. No readme, nothing. There is currently no official information about the reasons behind this update, what it includes, what it might affect, how to include it in a deployment, etc. You’ll need to make up your own mind whether to install this update now or wait for information about it. I suggest the latter.

Of course, if you’re using desktop app and allowing automatic updates, you don’t need to worry about any of that that. Just trust Autodesk to not break anything and hope for the best.

What’s the worst that could happen?

Edit: see this post for further information.

AutoCAD 2018 – bear this in mind

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Given the dearth of new functionality in AutoCAD in recent years, it’s understandable that Autodesk has taken to claiming credit for the same thing twice. The same features have been touted once for the 2017.1 mid-term update and again as 2018 new features. Even I fell for it, listing linetype gap selection as a 2018 feature in my original review.

For the purposes of reviewing the earlier AutoCAD releases and AutoCAD 2018 as upgrades, I have included the 2017.1 features in 2018, not 2017. Some of those features are praiseworthy, and there have been some minor improvements to some of the 2017.1 features in 2018, but let’s count them just once, please.

Blogs and sites that just regurgitate Autodesk’s take on what’s new in AutoCAD 2018 might inadvertently repeat the double-dipping. Bear that in mind when you read reviews.

AutoCAD 2018 – 2/10, would not rent

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It must be March, because another AutoCAD has just been launched. Despite this one being codenamed Omega, I’ve been assured it’s not the final AutoCAD release. The good news is that AutoCAD 2018 is twice the upgrade that 2017 was. But hold your excitement, because the bad news is that 2017 was only a 1/10 upgrade.

Autodesk has continued the well-established tradition of acting like a low-quality sausage machine, reliably popping out consistently unexciting products at regular intervals.

Here’s what’s in this year’s underwhelming sausage:

Xrefs now default to relative path attachment and there are a few associated tweaks including find/replace path
You can select objects off-screen (handier than it sounds)
File dialogs remember settings
A couple more dialogs can be resized
There are a couple more tiny user interface tweaks
The stuff from 2017.1 is included, of course, some seeing minor improvements since then
iDrop support is gone (will anybody miss this?)

Thrilled? Me neither. The xref stuff is worthwhile, and Autodesk does deserve credit for not adding any seriously undercooked “headline” features or pointless eye candy. That, along with the 2017.1 stuff, quietly fixing some old bugs, sorting out a few old feature issues and some unsung but worthy API documentation improvements, is just about enough to make this a 3/10 upgrade.

But wait! Autodesk earned itself a minus point to take it from 3 to 2 by inconveniencing customers with yet another API change (so your 3rd party stuff will need updating), and most unfortunate of all, a DWG format change. We had grown used to enjoying a lack of compatibility issues (with plain AutoCAD, anyway – don’t get me started on the verticals), thanks to the 2013 format surviving five releases rather than the traditional three. Now that’s over.

Why does AutoCAD 2018 need a new DWG format? It probably doesn’t. The 2013 DWG format is capable of holding pretty much anything you want, as Bricsys has shown with BricsCAD V17’s ability to compatibly store 3D parametrics and (optional) BIM and sheet metal features within that format. The changes to AutoCAD 2018 don’t come anywhere near that level of complexity. Although Autodesk cites performance reasons with certain drawings, I strongly suspect the new DWG format was introduced purely to make life difficult for competitors, and to encourage wavering customers to stay with Autodesk for fear of losing compatibility. In other words, it seems likely this is an anti-competitive change rather than a technical one.

Oh, and the desktop icon is the same as 2017, so if you run both releases side by side while you’re waiting for your add-ons to be updated, you’ll find it difficult to see at a glance which shortcut is which and what’s already running. Minor irritant, but an unnecessary cheapskate move.

There are alleged to be performance improvements; probably true in places. I did notice a slight improvement in 3D Orbit performance, with AutoCAD 2018 now about up to BricsCAD standards. However, this aspect of AutoCAD 2017 performance wasn’t a problem with the sub-20 MB drawings anyway, so you may not notice a difference.

In my experience with the Beta, AutoCAD 2018 was frequently appallingly slow, particularly start-up time, which was atrocious. Those 14 million lines of code have added up over the years, and AutoCAD 2018 is bloatware; literally ten times the size of the more fully-featured BricsCAD V17 Platinum, which starts up in the blink of an eye. However, I will reserve final judgement on AutoCAD 2018 performance until I have had chance to properly test the production version. I have not factored performance in to my overall mark.

There’s nothing in this release that comes close to justifying the annual maintenance fees, let alone throwing away your perpetual license and signing up for subscription. If Autodesk wants customers to think it will be worthwhile signing up for a lifetime of rental fees in the hope that substantial improvements will result, this weak release represents a singularly unconvincing argument.

Overall, 2/10. This is a sub-mediocre release that shows once again that AutoCAD is in maintenance mode. Autodesk appears completely disinterested in AutoCAD other than as a cash cow, and severely lacking in imagination about ways of seriously improving it. Omega might not be the final AutoCAD release, but given the glacial level of improvement being shown, it might as well be.

ADSK v ADBE – a tale of two graphs

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I’m no financial analyst, so I’ll just leave these graphs here for your own interpretation. They show the profit/loss numbers for two software companies beginning with A that have abandoned perpetual license sales and gone all-subscription (rental).

Among other significant differences, one company went with very low rental prices while the other has extremely high rental prices. How have these differing strategies played out for Adobe and Autodesk? Green shows profit; red shows loss.

Adobe moved to the all-rental model earlier than Autodesk. The Autodesk graph therefore covers a shorter period than the Adobe one. Feel free to slide the Autodesk one along to the point you think best matches the equivalent point in the Adobe timeline.

The black lines are trend lines. The thick one is linear, the thin one is a 4-quarter moving average. The linear trend lines are not directly comparable because of the different timeframes covered (the Adobe one includes the revenue recovery stage which Autodesk has yet to enter).

Neither of these graphs reflect deferred revenue (money that is received but not counted immediately). Full details of Autodesk’s financials are available here. Make your own financial decisions based on your own interpretations and/or using the advice of parties better qualified than myself. For now at least, the stock market loves what Autodesk is doing, even if Autodesk customers don’t. I just found the comparison interesting.

Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

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This is a revised version of the Autodesk license costs options – summary post, where I examined various payment options for CAD software and compared them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term. This version is based on limited new information from Autodesk. While this post can be read alone, to better understand the context you may wish to check out that summary and the preceding posts in the series:

1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary

In this post, I will examine the validity of the various assumptions I have made; lay out all the data with best/worst options lists; provide combined graphs; and sum up. All of these sections have been revised based on new information.

Assumptions

Because Autodesk still isn’t telling customers all they need to know in order to make a rational choice, I’ve had to make some assumptions in order to work out the relative viabilities of the various options. Here, I’ll lay those assumptions out and explain why I made them. Some of them are very soundly based, others less so.

Autodesk will continue to make maintenance available long-term. This has been repeated by Autodesk people at all levels and is currently pledged in writing on Autodesk’s web site. On the other hand, Autodesk has said one thing and done the other on multiple occasions, so who knows? Autodesk is also making noises about how terrible it is for the poor thing to have to go on operating in the same way that has made it billions for decades. I certainly can’t promise that Autodesk’s promise is worth the pixels it’s written on. It’s safe to assume that Autodesk will do all sorts of nasty things to maintenance customers over the next few years, but I’m relying on our fortitude in standing up to that.
The maintenance price increases of 5%, 10% and 20% are cumulative, resulting in actual price increases of 5%, 15.5% and 38.6%. This has been confirmed by Autodesk here.
Following that set of increases, the following year (2020) will see an increase of between 0% and 20% and the year after that (2021) will see a 0% increase. This is based on the figures shown in Autodesk’s example here. I’ve provided option 1c that assumes the best-case scenario (0% + 0%) and option 1d that assumes the worst-case scenario (20% + 0%).
Following that set of increases, from 2022 the cost of maintenance will increase by another cumulative 10% per year. I have adjusted this downwards from 20% on the basis that Autodesk’s example shows a total maximum increase of 20% from 2020 to 2022. In reality, anything could happen, and Autodesk isn’t telling us.
The dollar figures shown in Autodesk’s examples are accurate. There are some minor discrepancies between Autodesk’s quoted percentages and dollar amounts. Where dollar amounts are available, I have used those.
Subscription (rental) prices will be frozen until after 2019. I’ve assumed this because Autodesk will want to keep subscription looking good in comparison to maintenance while it tries to persuade people to come on board.
Subscription prices will increase 10% per year from 2020. Another guess. I’m pretty sure the price will keep going up, and it may be worse than this if Autodesk gets a sizeable portion of existing users tied in by then. Autodesk will rack up prices as high as it thinks it will get away with. My 10% assumption, if it’s low, will make subscription look better than it really is in my comparisons.
The offered 60%/55%/50% discount on subscription will be maintained for three years from the point of changeover, not three years from now. That appears to be implied in Autodesk’s statements, and a three-year lock-in appears to be a standard Autodesk marketing technique.
Following the three-year lock-in, the subscription cost will then change to 16% more than maintenance. This has been adjusted down from the 60% that was based on an apparent transcription error in an Autodesk earnings call transcript. A corrected version is available here: Autodesk (ADSK) Q4 2017 Results – Earnings Call Transcript. Incidentally, the statement that was initially attributed to Amal Hanspal is now reported to be from Andrew Anagnost.
This special subscription cost of 16% over maintenance will be based on the original pre-increase maintenance price. This has been stated by Autodesk and roughly corresponds to Autodesk’s example figures. This differs from my original assumption that the increase would be based on higher and ever-increasing costs.
The 16% premium subscription price will remain in place permanently, subject to normal percentage increases. This is heavily implied by Autodesk’s promise that customers who convert to subscription in 2017/8/9 will “keep this discounted pricing, which will be lower than maintenance plan renewal pricing and far below the cost of a new subscription”. This is described as a “guarantee”, but it’s rubbery. Don’t expect to see it written into a binding contract with figures.
The 16% premium subscription price will increase at 10% per year. This is a guess and Autodesk can increase it by 100% a year if it feels like it. However, I’ve used 10% a year for everything else, so I’m keeping this assumption consistent with the others.
For option 8, Autodesk will offer maintenance customers who switch over in 2022 a 50% discount on subscription, locked in for 3 years. Autodesk has made very similar offers over the last year or so. I’m assuming such offers will continue to arise from time to time, but there are no guarantees.
For option 8a, Autodesk will offer maintenance customers who switch over in 2022 a permanent 50% discount on subscription. If Autodesk gets as desperate in 2022 as it is now to convert people to subscription, such an offer could be made. Or not. In case it is, I’ve included the numbers.
Bricsys will continue to provide perpetual license and maintenance options. I’m highly confident in this one. Autodesk’s rental-only move is manna from heaven to Bricsys, and the availability of perpetual licenses is a big drawcard for disaffected Autodesk customers. Bricsys won’t throw away that competitive advantage.
For options 9 and 10, BricsCAD purchase and maintenance costs will rise by 10% a year (compound). Another guess. Based on the Bricsys price history to date, 10% may be on the high side. However, because Bricsys prices are so much lower than Autodesk ones, an error in this assumption will have a much smaller effect than errors in the Autodesk price assumptions.

Some or all of the above assumptions could be wrong. Autodesk has been invited to replace this necessary speculation with information and is welcome to do so. As with all content on my blog, I actively encourage being corrected on any factual inaccuracies.

Data

If you want to examine the full set of data and/or make adjustments to the values, assumptions or calculations, here is the updated Excel spreadsheet I used, AutoCADSubscriptionCostComparison2017-03-17.xlsx. I suggest you discard any earlier versions of the spreadsheet, including AutoCADSubscriptionCostComparison2017-03-16-1.xlsx that was incorrectly linked in this post for the first few hours of its life. Note that in this version of the spreadsheet, I have used bold to indicate the figures that are known to be correct.

The following tables show the cost winners and losers after the first three, five and ten years based on one North American AutoCAD license with a 2016 maintenance cost of $545 and (late) 2016 subscription cost of $1470. All values are in US dollars.

Three years

Average Annual Cost	Option
0	Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0	Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
0	Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0	Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
0	Option 8a – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (permanent 50% discount)
0	Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
474	Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
570	Option 3 – subscription in 2017
631	Option 4 – subscription in 2018
643	Option 5 – subscription in 2019
648	Option 1c – stay on maintenance (0% increase 2020/2021)
648	Option 1d – stay on maintenance (20% increase 2020, 0% 2021)
1470	Option 2 – subscription now

Five years

Average Annual Cost	Option
0	Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0	Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0	Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
0	Option 8a – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (permanent 50% discount)
303	Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
416	Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
607	Option 3 – subscription in 2017
650	Option 4 – subscription in 2018
679	Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
680	Option 5 – subscription in 2019
689	Option 1c – stay on maintenance (0% increase 2020/2021)
749	Option 1d – stay on maintenance (20% increase 2020, 0% 2021)
1561	Option 2 – subscription now

Ten years

Average Annual Cost	Option
0	Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
383	Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
439	Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
597	Option 8a – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (permanent 50% discount)
769	Option 3 – subscription in 2017
790	Option 4 – subscription in 2018
805	Option 5 – subscription in 2019
848	Option 1c – stay on maintenance (0% increase 2020/2021)
871	Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
979	Option 1d – stay on maintenance (20% increase 2020, 0% 2021)
1195	Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
1534	Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
1975	Option 2 – subscription now

Graphs

These graphs show all 13 options together.

Annual Costs

Cumulative costs:

Average annual costs over time

Feel free to mess with the spreadsheet to produce the graphs that interest you. If you hide rows, those options won’t show up in the graphs.

Summary

Based on this revised set of figures and assumptions, the following conclusions can be drawn:

The cheapest thing to do, with zero direct cost, is drop maintenance and keep using your perpetual license as long as it still does what you need.
The next cheapest thing to do is switch to using BricsCAD. You’re well ahead of anything that involves sticking with Autodesk by a very significant margin. As a bonus, even if you stop paying anything to anyone you will end up with perpetual license of both AutoCAD and BricsCAD, and that’s two more than Autodesk wants you to have.
Delaying a switch to BricsCAD won’t save you a lot of money.
The financial implications of abandoning maintenance for a few years and then signing up for subscription are uncertain. It will depend on what Autodesk decides to do in the future in terms of offers to encourage people to sign up. If an offer similar to the current one arrives in five years, you’ll be well ahead. If not, you’re well behind.
Abandoning maintenance for a few years and then signing up for subscription will cost least if you stay off subscription as long as possible.
If you switch from maintenance to subscription with the special offer, it works out slightly cheaper the earlier you do it, contrary to my previous calculations.
Switching from maintenance to subscription with the offer works out slightly cheaper than staying on maintenance, again contrary to my previous calculations. However, Autodesk’s perception of this as “huge incentives for loyalty that we’re giving to maintenance customers” is delusional. The pricing of these options is grouped closely enough to be considered about the same into the longer term, within a reasonable margin for error and with allowance made for Autodesk mind-changes. Any saving that might eventuate will undoubtedly be significantly less than the money you have invested in the perpetual license you would be giving up.
Switching from maintenance to subscription without the offer costs a fortune and would be an utterly ridiculous proposition.

It’s worth noting that the special offer will lapse if at any stage you drop subscription for a while, or if you want to switch to a different subscription product. If you switch to subscription and take advantage of the supposed flexibility of the rental model by dropping a license for a while due to a recession, you’re back at full price. When that happens, see point 8 above.

You won’t have your perpetual license to tide you over, either; you gave that away. Signing up for this offer will permanently financially lock you into Autodesk subscription, whatever future price increases Autodesk decides its shareholders would like to see you pay. You’re also signing up for a lifetime of whatever conditions Autodesk decides to impose at each subscription renewal, however unreasonable you consider those conditions to be.

That’s why, despite Autodesk’s revised figures making the current deal less obviously terrible than before, the essential point from my first summary still holds true:

DO NOT switch from maintenance to subscription.

The savings from switching are relatively minor, can easily disappear with a wave of Autodesk’s magic wand, and don’t remotely justify giving up your valuable perpetual license. Remember, that license represents your safety net. It allows you to keep using your software for years without paying Autodesk, while you work out your escape route. Autodesk desperately wants that license because it gives you a tiny bit of control. Autodesk wants all of that control.

Don’t fall for it. Keep your perpetual license.

Video nicely captures Autodesk customer sentiment

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In this video starting at 42:21, Greg from Pixel Fondue had a few words to say about Autodesk’s attempt to price-force perpetual license owners onto subscription (rental). I think he captures the current Autodesk customer mood quite nicely.

Here are some of the highlights from Greg and others:

44:36 – If you’re gonna eff me, know my name.

45:20 – The only thing they forgot to attach to this was the head of a horse.

46:54 – If they didn’t think it was a tough sell, they wouldn’t have written a 2000 word essay…

49:14 – This is a trade-in, and they’re looking to take this [Entertainment Creation Suite]. So I give you this, this $12,000 investment … I give it back to you, plus like another $1,000 … and you give me the exact same thing. Except I no longer own it.

51:02 – Hi! Give us your thing you bought from us, we’ll rent it back to you… dumbass!

58:49 – It’s OK to be pissed, and Autodesk needs to know that people are pissed. So, Teresa, people are pissed. That’s a bullshit letter. Be honest with us.

Autodesk starts answering subscription questions, but many remain

1 Reply

Getting worthwhile non-rubbery information out of Autodesk on the maintenance to subscription push has been like pulling teeth. Well, one tooth has popped out now. There are a rotten mouthful still to go, but some progress is being made.

Here is the latest Autodesk communication on this subject. While it gives the impression of providing transparency, there’s still not enough there to provide enough certainty to convince any but the most naive customers to throw away their perpetual licenses. If you try pumping Autodesk’s numbers into my costing spreadsheet, you can get so far and then you’re back to guesswork again. If you guess low, it’s merely a bad deal. If you guess high, it’s an atrocious deal. For you, not for Autodesk; I’m sure Autodesk will be happy with whatever deal it decides to inflict.

There are huge holes in what has been stated that allow Autodesk to charge pretty much whatever they like in the future. I have about a dozen questions about those holes. If they get answered, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, I suggest you still assume it’s a trap to leave you open to future massive price gouging without the safety net and escape route that a perpetual license provides.

Autodesk license costs options – summary

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Note: an updated version of this post is available, using new costing information from Autodesk that was unavailable when this original summary was written.

In this series of posts, I have examined various payment options for CAD software and compared them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term.

In this fourth and final post, I will examine the validity of the various assumptions I have made; lay out all the data with best/worst options lists; provide combined graphs; and sum up.

However, that means this is a very long post. I want to ensure one essential point doesn’t get lost, so I’ll state it right up front. I will fully justify it later with objective evidence, but for now, here it is:

DO NOT switch from maintenance to subscription.

Just don’t do it. It makes no sense to do it on any level. You would throw away your valuable perpetual license, of course, but that’s not all. Despite what Autodesk is implying in its sleight-of-hand marketing, subscription will cost you more money.

Assumptions

Because Autodesk isn’t telling customers all they need to know in order to make a rational choice, I’ve had to make some assumptions in order to work out the relative viabilities of the various options. Here, I’ll lay those assumptions out and explain why I made them. Some of them are very soundly based, others less so.

Autodesk will continue to make maintenance available long-term. This has been repeated by Autodesk people at all levels and is currently pledged in writing on Autodesk’s web site. On the other hand, Autodesk has said one thing and done the other on multiple occasions, so who knows? Autodesk is also making noises about how terrible it is for the poor thing to have to go on operating in the same way that has made it billions for decades. I certainly can’t promise that Autodesk’s promise is worth the pixels it’s written on. It’s safe to assume that Autodesk will do all sorts of nasty things to maintenance customers over the next few years, but I’m relying on our fortitude in standing up to that.
The maintenance price increases of 5%, 10% and 20% are cumulative, resulting in actual price increases of 5%, 15.5% and 38.6%. This has been confirmed by Autodesk here.
Following that set of increases, the cost of maintenance will increase by another cumulative 20% per year. This is a total guess. I can’t imagine Autodesk reverting to 0% a year, but it’s always possible the increases could be worse than this. The increases could be more stepped than this assumed smooth progression (e.g. 50% one year, 0% the next). Anything could happen, and Autodesk isn’t telling us. I’ve chosen what appears to be a likely middle ground.
Subscription (rental) prices will be frozen until after 2019. I’ve assumed this because Autodesk will want to keep subscription looking good in comparison to maintenance while it tries to persuade people to come on board.
Subscription prices will increase 10% per year from 2020. Another guess. I’m pretty sure the price will keep going up, and it may be worse than this if Autodesk gets a sizeable portion of existing users tied in by then. Autodesk will rack up prices as high as it thinks it will get away with. My 10% assumption, if it’s low, will make subscription look better than it really is in my comparisons.
The offered 60%/55%/50% discount on subscription will be maintained for three years from the point of changeover, not three years from now. That appears to be implied in Autodesk’s statements, and a three-year lock-in appears to be a standard Autodesk marketing technique.
Following the three-year lock-in, the subscription cost will then change to 60% more than maintenance. This is being kept secret from customers but has been stated to stock market analysts by Amar Hanspal.*
This 60% premium will be based on the maintenance price at the time, not the original pre-increase price. I can’t imagine Autodesk choosing the lower-cost version of a 60% premium, can you?
The maintenance plus 60% price will be capped to always remain below the subscription price at the time. This is based on Autodesk’s promise that customers who convert to subscription in 2017/8/9 will always receive some non-quantified discount.
The amount the maintenance plus 60% price remains below the subscription price will be minimal. I’ve assumed $1 below the subscription price. Maybe that’s harsh, but because Autodesk is refusing to quantify this discount amount, I think it’s fair to assume we won’t like the size of it.
For option 8, Autodesk will offer maintenance customers who switch over in 2022 a 50% discount on subscription, locked in for 3 years. Autodesk has made very similar offers over the last year or so. I’m assuming such offers will continue to arise from time to time, but there are no guarantees.
Bricsys will continue to provide perpetual license and maintenance options. I’m highly confident in this one. Autodesk’s rental-only move is manna from heaven to Bricsys, and the availability of perpetual licenses is a big drawcard for disaffected Autodesk customers. Bricsys won’t throw away that competitive advantage.
For options 9 and 10, BricsCAD purchase and maintenance costs will rise by 10% a year (compound). Another guess. Based on the Bricsys price history to date, 10% may be on the high side. However, because Bricsys prices are so much lower than Autodesk ones, an error in this assumption will have a much smaller effect than errors in the Autodesk price assumptions.

Like all assumptions, those above could be wrong. On multiple occasions I have offered Autodesk the chance to correct these assumptions and replace necessary speculation with information. Indeed, when I re-started my blog in April last year I made a point of emailing Autodesk PR to inform them that I would be covering the subject of rental in a critical way and inviting their participation. No response.

As with all content on my blog, I actively encourage being corrected on any factual inaccuracies. I will happily correct errors that are pointed out to me by anybody, and have done so on several occasions. If at some point in the future, Autodesk decides to become transparent with the long-term cost implications of switching to maintenance and decides to open up to me in particular or customers in general, I’ll dedicate a new post to that information and link to it from this post.

Data

If you want to examine the full set of data and/or make adjustments to the values, assumptions or calculations, here is the Excel spreadsheet I used.

The following tables show the cost winners and losers after the first three, five and ten years based on one AutoCAD license with a 2016 maintenance cost of $545 and 2016 subscription cost of $1680.** All values are in US dollars.

Three years

Average Annual Cost	Option
0	Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0	Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
0	Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0	Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
0	Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
474	Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
652	Option 1 – stay on maintenance
672	Option 3 – subscription in 2017
681	Option 5 – subscription in 2019
695	Option 4 – subscription in 2018
1680	Option 2 – subscription now

Five years

Average Annual Cost	Option
0	Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0	Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0	Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
303	Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
416	Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
776	Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
790	Option 1 – stay on maintenance
796	Option 5 – subscription in 2019
895	Option 4 – subscription in 2018
1041	Option 3 – subscription in 2017
1784	Option 2 – subscription now

Ten years

Average Annual Cost	Option
0	Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
383	Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
439	Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
995	Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
1365	Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
1366	Option 1 – stay on maintenance
1748	Option 5 – subscription in 2019
1753	Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
1798	Option 4 – subscription in 2018
1871	Option 3 – subscription in 2017
2257	Option 2 – subscription now

Graphs

These graphs show all ten options together.

Annual Costs

Cumulative costs:

Average annual costs over time

I’m not sure how useful the combined graphs are; with ten options things can get a bit muddled. Feel free to mess with the spreadsheet to produce the graphs that interest you. If you hide rows, those options won’t show up in the graphs.

Summary

You may feel it’s pointless trying to work out the best thing to do up to ten years into the future. I disagree. We are forced to do so. Many customers have been paying Autodesk for decades, and without this disruption would probably have continued to do so for decades to come. Now Autodesk is asking us to make a decision that will have effects that go way beyond ten years into the future.

Ten years isn’t really that long in AutoCAD terms, particularly given the recent glacial level of progress. Remember the _XREF_XREF_XREF debacle as if it were yesterday? Still occasionally opening drawings with that problem? That bug was unleashed on the public ten years ago this month.

Autodesk is asking us to make a permanent, irreversible, long-term decision based on very limited short-term information. After that? We are expected to trust in Autodesk and hope for the best. Sorry, but if you’re prepared to meekly go along with that, you haven’t been paying attention. You might as well just give Autodesk your Internet banking login information and say, “Help yourself to whatever you like.”

If you run the numbers based on the assumptions above, it’s easy to see the best and worst things you can do from a cost point of view, particularly beyond the short term. The high-cost options all involve switching to subscription. The further ahead you look, the worse a deal subscription becomes.

Forget Autodesk’s talk of vanishing discounts, saving money by moving earlier, etc. The opposite is true. Doing what Autodesk wants will result in you paying much more; maybe three or four times the amount you need to. Because that’s the whole point of Autodesk’s rental scheme.

Here’s the bottom line.

Switching from maintenance to subscription will cost you more money.

As a bonus, you get to throw away a perfectly good permanent license. Burn your boats and enjoy a costly cruise to Empty Wallet Land on board SS Subscription? You’d have to be completely crazy.

Posts in this series:
1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary
5. Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

Edit:
* It appears Amar may have been misquoted in the transcript I read and the number is actually 16% rather than 60%. An updated transcript with the former number can be found here.
** I am informed that the price was reduced from $1680 to $1470 in August.

It’s worth noting that even with the above adjustments entered into the spreadsheet, the conclusions made above still appear to hold true. Here’s the resultant average cost graph:

I’ll run another post later with more detail when I’ve collated as much information as I can. I have yet again invited Autodesk to provide information with which to replace the assumptions.

One invitation to Autodesk and another to Autodesk’s competitors

1 Reply

Dear Autodesk PR person, you are undoubtedly aware that I have published a series of posts that detail exactly why switching from maintenance to subscription is a bad deal. If you believe anything I have written to be in error, feel free to contact me with what you believe to be the correct information. I intend to publish an extensive detailed summary on Monday 13 March, with or without your input. You know where to find me, over to you.

Dear Autodesk-competitor PR person, if you are providing any kind of special offer to entice disgruntled Autodesk customers over to your fold under these special circumstances, let me know about it. I will pass the information on to my readers in another post, as-is, and not as any kind of recommendation. You can comment here in public or email me.

Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk

6 Replies

Note: due to new information from Autodesk, an updated summary has been posted.

In this series of posts, I’ll examine various payment options for CAD software and compare them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term.

In this third post, I examine what happens if you do something out of the box. Something Autodesk didn’t plan on you doing, and something it won’t like. What if you don’t renew your maintenance and then maybe hop on the subscription gravy train later? What if you don’t renew your maintenance and switch to a non-Autodesk product?

As stated in my first post, staying on maintenance is the baseline with which I’m comparing these options:

Option 1 – stay on maintenance
Assumptions: maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep your perpetual license, keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: increasing costs, expect more unpleasant “persuasive” surprises from Autodesk

3 year cost $1957 (average $652)
5 year cost $3951 (average $790)
10 year cost $13665 (average $1366)

Let’s say your maintenance renewal turns up this year and you ignore it. Keep using your AutoCAD 2018 perpetual license. Do the same in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, you assess the situation and decide if you really need to keep up to date. Let’s say you are convinced of the need to keep current by all the brilliant improvements Autodesk made to AutoCAD in the meantime. At that stage, become a new renter by signing up for subscription. You still retain your AutoCAD 2018 license and can revert to using it if Autodesk really screws up AutoCAD 2021. Best of all, Autodesk doesn’t get a cent from you for three years.

Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
Assumptions: subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: permanently retain your perpetual license, zero cost in the short term
Cons: lose previous version & home use rights for 3 years, expensive from 2020

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $3881 (average $776)
10 year cost $17532 (average $1753)

Or you could leave it another couple of years, in which case it looks like this:

Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
Assumptions: subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: permanently retain your perpetual license, zero cost in the short/medium term
Cons: lose previous version & home use rights for five years, expensive from 2022

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $0 (average $0)
10 year cost $13651 (average $1365)

It’s very possible that in 2022 or thereabouts, Autodesk will try to invite recalcitrant customers like you to the rental party with special offers (such as we have seen over the last year or so). For example, trade in your perpetual license and get 50% off subscription if you sign up for 3 years.

Choose the next option at this stage and you’re pretty much tossing a coin hoping that the offer will be made, but you can sit happily in zero-cost land, waiting for the opportune moment and that improves your chances of getting what you want. If that happens, the numbers pan out like this:

Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
Assumptions: subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020, 3-year 50% discount
Pros: retain your perpetual license until 2022, zero cost in the medium term, long-term average costs not too bad
Cons: lose previous version & home use rights for five years, lose your perpetual license eventually, expensive from 2025

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $0 (average $0)
10 year cost $9951 (average $995)

Not too terrible an option, then. Plus you have lots of options depending on how things pan out in the next five years. Here’s a graph that shows how the average annual costs compare over time for these three options:

Here’s how the annual costs look:

What if you’re determined to never rent, never pay Autodesk another cent and never give up your perpetual license, but you still want to keep up to date? Then you need to look to Autodesk’s competition. I’m aware that there are a lot of non-AutoCAD users now reading this blog, so you’re going to have to forgive me while I get AutoCAD-specific. You’ll have to research your own Autodesk product replacements and run your own numbers.

For the purpose of the exercise, I’m going to use BricsCAD Pro as the AutoCAD replacement. You should also consider others such as DraftSight, ZWCAD, progeCAD, etc.

I’ve chosen BricsCAD because I know from personal experience it is a capable product with a very high level of AutoCAD compatibility including commands, CUIs, LISP, etc, AutoCAD-beating performance and a long-standing trustworthy parent company committed to the perpetual license model. It’s so close to AutoCAD that training requirements will be close to zero and you can run the applications in parallel using a common set of custom files, even in a very complex custom environment.

It’s also ridiculously cheap compared with AutoCAD: US$880 including maintenance ($680 without), with both ongoing maintenance ($235/year) and upgrades ($265 V16 to V17) available.* Putting those numbers into the equation gives us this:

Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
Assumptions: BricsCAD maintenance cost 10% compound rise annually
Pros: permanently retain your AutoCAD perpetual license, gain an BricsCAD perpetual license, very low cost
Cons: lose AutoCAD previous version & home use rights, possible future compatibility issues if Autodesk throws a spanner in the DWG works

3 year cost $1423 (average $474)
5 year cost $2080 (average $416)
10 year cost $4390 (average $439)

Or you could combine options 6 and 9: do nothing for three years and then buy into BricsCAD when you’re sure that’s the right thing to do.

Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
Assumptions: BricsCAD purchase and maintenance costs 10% compound rise annually
Pros: permanently retain your AutoCAD perpetual license, eventually gain an BricsCAD perpetual license, zero cost in short term, very low cost overall
Cons: lose AutoCAD previous version & home use rights, possible future compatibility issues if Autodesk throws a spanner in the DWG works

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $1515 (average $303)
10 year cost $3826 (average $383)

Obviously, switching to BricsCAD is a way, way cheaper option than any method of keeping current with Autodesk, even allowing for the BricsCAD initial purchase price. Let’s see how those options look for average annual costs:

Nice low, flat lines there for the BricsCAD options. It doesn’t make a great deal of difference whether you hop in right away or wait a few years. Here are the annual costs so you can see where the cash requirements get lumpy:

It’s worth mentioning that in some markets, Bricsys offers an annual rental option at 40% of the perpetual-with-maintenance price. It’s not offered in the USA, and given the low cost of purchase I don’t think there would be much demand for it anyway. I wouldn’t bother with it; it’s not as if you want to encourage that sort of thing among CAD companies, is it?

That concludes the options I intend examining at this stage. Next, the summary.

* Thanks to Malcolm Davies of Techevate for providing the Bricsys US price list. Yes, that Malcolm Davies, former Autodesk 2IC.