Dassault shafting users who want to upgrade from V5 to V6! 1

[JurgenKreisel]

Just wondering how anyone else feels about Dassault charging customers to upgrade to Catia V6.
I am a current maintenance paying customer and have just been told that it will cost me thousands of dollars to upgrade/migrate my V5 software to V6. WTF are my maintenance dollars paying for. Where does Dassault think the money came from for them to develop V6.

The company I work for pays maintenance on several CAD and CAM packages and ALL except for Dassault let you upgrade to the latest version of their software for no additional cost.

Then to put salt on the wound I am informed that a new license program is used which does not support anything lower than V5R19. We do work for HondaJet and they still use V5R16. Now I am told that I would need to purchase a new seat of Catia V6 so that I can do work in both V5R16 and V6.

Regards
Ir-rate Catia Customer

 

[sourcec0d3]

That is messed up.

 

[Azrael]

I don't see your point, you are entitled to upgrade V5 to latest version and it's still alive. But if you want to move to V6 I believe there is an V5 to V6 program, where you trade in V5 licenses to get V6 licenses to a reduced cost, got the impression that that price is flexible.

Regarding the license software, you are right, that will be the case. We have also had those discussions but got good suggestions, either parallel use (time limited V5 license for free with the V6 license) or a V6 light user license (reduced price).

 

[JurgenKreisel]

Azrael, my point is that my company pays Dassault several thousand dollars a year to keep getting the LATEST version of the software and the latest version is V6. So you see no problem that Dassault decides to rename their software from V5 to V6 and CLAIM this is a brand new software package that you must purchase from us. The maintenance we payed Dassault was used to develop this NEW V6 software so why do I now have to pay a reduced price to get V6.
As said previously non of my other software packages (that I pay maintenance on) ask for more money when they come out with a NEW (refreshed) version of their software. I have been using CAD/CAM software for over 25 years so I do have some experience on software upgrades and the costs involved.

A long time ago we used a software product called Camax which was later purchased by I-deas which was later purchased by UG.
I never had to pay to convert my Camax seats to I-deas nor did I pay to convert my I-deas seats to UG. And the reason was that I was paying maintenance to make sure I always received the latest software.

My rant is done.

 

[DBezaire]

I do understand your pain JK but Camax was discontinued and Ideas was the replacement (remember these times fondly, we had 30 or so seats of Camax and our maintenance bill went from 18k to 85K Ideas. hell of a "Free" Upgrade!), Ideas was discontinued and again replaced by UG NX. V5 is still kicking out new releases with new features and services packs.

Win XP64
R20SP7/21SP5, 3DVIA Composer 2013, ST R20
Dell T7400 16GB Ram
Quadro FX 4800 - 1.5GB

 

[garich]

The way I understand it is that V5 products are transferable 1:1 to V6 products, but V6 requires a database infrastructure (enovia) that is very costly to install and maintain. If you are a small customer, or don't need the new features that the V6 platform offers, there is little reason to consider migrating.

gary

 

[DaSalo]

V6 is a different product. The whole point is to allow for multi-site concurrent development. If you don't need to do that than there is no point in switching to V6. If you do need to do that than you need to do the cost benefit analysis to determine if the extra collaboration that V6 allows is worth the additional cost. CATIA is for all intents and purposes the same in V6 as it is in V5. The difference is the PLM backbone that allows for enhanced collaboration. We are actively fighting pressure from our parent company to switch to V6. We don't engage in multi-site collaboration and don't want to deal with the extra PLM overhead. It only makes sense to switch if you actually need it.

CATIA V5 R20
PC-DMIS 2011 MR1