Autodesk Subscription or Maintenance or?

Big changes to licensing of Autodesk products. I gathered some info I found on the topic. It may or may not be good for you.  Steve Johnson at blog nauseam that looked at the costs find that you should stick with maintenance.

Here’s what Autodesk says:

Autodesk believes that subscribing is the best way for our customers to get the greatest value from our tools and technologies and that subscription will fundamentally change how we deliver extended capabilities and new functionalities through connected services.  Only with subscription will you realize greater value through the following benefits:

• Latest and greatest product capabilities – Get access to Autodesk’s ongoing stream of innovation, updates to core products, cloud services for desktop products, and additional capabilities as soon as they are available, at no additional cost.
• Access to new industry collections – Available only through subscription, you’ll realize significant savings when you need two or more Autodesk software products.
• New and improved support – Enjoy faster response times and the option to receive help by scheduling a call with Autodesk technical support specialists.
• Simplified administration – Access tools that streamline deployment and software management when you standardize all of your Autodesk products on subscription.

On March 2, 2017 we announced several changes to our maintenance plan program. The changes are:

1. Because managing two business models (subscription and maintenance plans) is costly, in order to continue supporting maintenance plans, beginning May 7, 2017, maintenance plan renewal prices will increase by 5% in 2017, 10% in 2018, and 20% in 2019.
2. While we will continue to offer the choice of renewing your existing maintenance plans, effective February 20, 2017, multi-year maintenance plan renewals will no longer be offered.  If you currently have a multi-year maintenance plan (i.e. 2-year or 3-year term), you are able to renew it for one year at a time.
3. We have also announced a special offer for our maintenance plan customers.  Beginning in June 2017, you will be able to move (switch) products that are on a maintenance plan to a subscription for up to 60% less than the cost of a new subscription. You can take advantage of this offer during your renewal period and it is valid once per seat of a product on maintenance. The price to switch from maintenance to subscription will increase 5% in 2018 and another 5% in 2019, so the earlier you switch, the less it will cost. When switching, you can choose to switch to a subscription of the same product or to an industry collection.

It is our objective to provide you with as much information as possible.  Please see our FAQ for additional details and contact your Autodesk Sales Representative or Autodesk Reseller. Also feel free to use this forum to pose additional questions as these are big changes and we want to do everything we can to support you and your business. We appreciate your time and interest.

Subscription site at Autodesk.

Autodesk Maintenance Plans FAQ will help with these questions:

1. Overview

• 1.1 What is changing for customers with maintenance plans?
• 1.2 What are my options when my current maintenance plan comes up for renewal?
• 1.3 Will these changes affect all Autodesk customers?
• 1.4 Will I be able to continue renewing my maintenance plan?
• 1.5 Are the maintenance plan changes global?

2. Switching from Maintenance to Subscription

• 2.1 How will maintenance plan customers benefit from switching to subscription?
• 2.2 What are my options if I want to switch products on maintenance to subscription?
• 2.3 What cannot be changed when switching from maintenance to subscription?
• 2.4 When will I be able to switch products on active maintenance to subscription?
• 2.5 How can I switch my products from a maintenance plan to a subscription?
• 2.6 Can I continue to use my perpetual license software after switching my maintenance plan to a subscription?

3. Pricing for Switching

• 3.1 How much will it cost to switch products on maintenance to subscription?
• 3.2 Is there any advantage to switching my products on maintenance to subscription sooner rather than later?

4. Use and Support

• 4.1 What previous versions will I be able to use when I switch my subscription?

Autodesk’s Moving To Subscription forum

Autodesk Terms & Conditions

Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) Change to type of licenses provided through ADN

ADN subscription: How do I support customers on old versions? According to this post: “Under Subscription we will only support and provide the current release plus 3 releases back. Sorry but we are no longer able to provide perpetual license access.”

What does this mean? "Enjoy faster response times and the option to receive help by scheduling a call with Autodesk technical support specialists." According to this post: “Beginning May 2017, all subscribers will have the option of scheduling a call with an Autodesk technical support specialist to discuss and work through issues quickly.”

You find several posts on the subject at blog nauseam like this post and this post examining the alternatives to stay on maintenance or go with subscription.

See also posts on CADNOTES and ITAM REVIEW.

Interview with Amar Hanspal and Andrew Anagnost, Autodesk's interim co-chief executive officers.

According to Amar Hanspal: “So there’s a different price for each year, when that three-year lock in expires that customer immediately goes up to the terminal loyalty price a little over – roughly 60% more in their maintenance price, and then they’re kind of subject to ongoing price increases that will affect with our long-term pricing strategy.”

How is this going to affect education customers? According to this post: “even though your free educational licenses are based on a perpetual model (they are not subscription-based), there is no impact to the offer of free access to Autodesk software for qualifying students, teachers and academic institutions.  We will continue with this program as is and as described on the education home page on autodesk.com.”

To further learn about your specific options talk with your Autodesk reseller.

JTB World’s JTB FlexReport can help you monitor usage of Autodesk network licenses as well as standalone licenses as well as other FlexNet based licenses and several other network license systems. With the data JTB FlexReport provides you can be in a better position when it comes to knowing how historical usage has been and how to plan for the future.

JTB World will continue developing apps and make custom solutions for Autodesk products like AutoCAD and Revit. If you decide to go with or already use other CAD products like for example BricsCAD, DraftSight, GstarCAD or ZWCAD we can also help to create apps based on your needs. Feel free to contact us.

JTB XClipClean 2.0 released - clean up clipped xrefs and blocks

JTB XClipClean 2.0 is now released. A few bugs have been fixed and there is now installer available.

JTB XClipClean is an Xclip-cutter app for AutoCAD to clean up xrefs or blocks that been clipped so that the information that is outside the clip is removed. This is useful when you need to remove hidden geometry and minimize DWG file size. AutoCAD allows blocks and xrefs to be clipped using the XCLIP command. Sometimes for different reasons you have to clean up the blocks or xrefs that have been clipped. JTB XClipClean can help you with that by deleting and trimming geometry that is outside the xclip boundary.

Revit does not handle xclipped blocks and xrefs so XClipClean can be useful to run on drawings before taking them into Revit.

Inventor - AutoCAD and DWG drawing file provider

Autodesk Inventor can work with AutoCAD DWG files in different ways and sometimes it can be good to know if the DWG file was created by Inventor or AutoCAD.

Here are some quotes from the post Drawings in Windows Explorer: Inventor or AutoCAD? on the IMAGINiT Manufacturing Solutions Blog.

You can “right click on it and see if it shows the Inventor iProperties option through the Windows shell integration or use the Provider field in Autodesk Vault to see the creator of the program”. But there is a better way.

“Since the authoring program of the DWG has to be one that edits the native geometry of the DWG, a user has to know the correct program in which to open the file and make the edits.  For instance an Inventor DWG that contains modeling data will not be able to be exploded in AutoCAD because Inventor contains the modeling and assembly feature data.  Likewise an AutoCAD drawing containing vector geometry should be edited in AutoCAD so that the entities are properly modified or adjusted.”

About DWG Columns Mark Flayler says: “This is a must for any company with mixed AutoCAD and Inventor DWG files in legacy or production use around the company.  If you are looking for a large amount of seats there is even a volume discount for your engineering teams.  Go check it out and see the other things it can do as well.  Even for a single seat it is really inexpensive to increase your sanity and productivity.”

Check out the trial of DWG Columns here.