FE software, can it be that cheap...??

[Fatstress]

Dear All,

I googled the web and found this:

Download Ansys AI-Nastran 1.0
Buy cheap OEM Ansys AI-Nastran 1.0 downloadable

$45 Buy Http >>

And the site :

http://www.cheap-software-megastore.com/index.php?target=desc&progid=1771

I would appreciate if somebody could tell me whether you really can get this software for this price? Because I learned from one of the thread that FE software can cost from 10 to 50 K $....

 

[corus]

FYI I found this on the web site

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/findsoftware/f/oemsoftware.htm

"Is it legal to install an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) version of software on a computer other than the one on which the software came?
OEM software is only distributed when sold with specified accompanying hardware. When these programs are copied and/or sold separately from the hardware, it is a violation of the license with the software publisher, and therefore illegal."

So there you have it.


corus

 

[6060842]

I agree it is an "illegal site".

I appreciate that using pirated software is wrong and its priced the way it is because of development costs, but consider this;
Here on this side of the pond we loose orders because it is cheaper to resource both materials, labour and design in the far east. Now this may be called fair competition, except that there are some well equipped design houses in the far east with all the latest software design tools. Why?, because there are no copyright laws over there

 

[cbrn]

Hi,
6060842, yes this may be a problem. But it's not a reason why you would become an illegal user if your country does have piracy laws. China (just to make an example I know directly) does not have such regulations. BUT the software houses themselves could claim for illegal use of their software (as they do have international copy-RIGHTS) and take consequent actions. In fact, I think they should. They probably don't because they hope to create a potentially-infinite bassin of new users which are able to use their software and will "push" their company to buy the software they already know, should one day their country adopt some kind of piracy regulation. Think of it: that's what happened in the early '80s with the earth-wide diffusion of AutoCad. Why Autodesk didn't make serious efforts to ban illegal users? The reason was clear after 10 years: beginning of piracy laws, everybody knew how to use AutoCad -> AutoCad became a "standard de facto" of the 2D CAD world.
Regards

 

[6060842]

cbrn

Agree with your point about China and I hadn't considered the Autocad case. I thought it was down to the fact that all other 2D CAD at the time was inferior.

I personally think that software houses turn a blind eye to students using pirate copies for exactly the same reason, so they in turn encourage future employers to use software they are familiar with.

I think software should be made cheaper for the student/indivdual user to learn so long as it is heavily caveated with;

"If thou make money from this software, thou shall go straight to hell !"

Tom

 

[JAE]

You always get what you pay for.

 

[civeng80]

Well only one way to find out.

Try and see only $45 to lose. Maybe you have tried already ? Never know if you dont give it a go !

 

[cowski]

Try and see only $45 to lose

Unless it is a phishing site, in which case you stand to lose a lot more!

 

[corus]

That's not what I would call a phishing site, where you give people your bank details etc. If you pay by credit card to download the software and if the goods don't arrive then you can claim the money back from the credit card company, who will then either pursue the individual/company or have them blocked from future transactions. Paying by credit card is one of the safest ways of paying for goods on the internet.

corus

 

[crisb]

Googling suggests the site is a scam.

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:qUa5S4ygzOgJ:

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ftware-megastore.com&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=uk

Quote

"Thanks for your help , sadly it appears i've been had after buying or believing I was buying it appears the site I downloaded it from is nothing more than a scam.

Not only do they take your money without providing you a serial number they also have a virus hidden in the set up called Hacktool the company url is

http://www.cheap-software-megastore.com/"

 

[CM400T]

I'm astonished that an illegal website would spark so many messages around it. It's not even worth a second look, much less to be looked into further.

I think if it's about getting legal free or low cost FEM software, the ace would be the Code Aster solver, it's unbelievably awesome & free. A lot of the other free software or lower priced software (someone already posted one site, a Google search points to another excellent listing at

http://www.freebyte.com/cad/fea.htm

), but none of them can hold a flame to Code Aster. Someone even wrapped it up with a pre& post for a convenient install at

http://www.caelinux.com

.

Like penny stocks, you'll find some on the freebyte page, that can be had for a dollarstore rate of under $ 50, but their element libraries are limited. Astonishingly, an old linear German code, called LISA which used to be priced between Eur 800 - 2000, is now under new ownership that's practically giving it away for free, actually $ 50.

I believe we are going to see this happen more and more to vendors in the future as the open source paradigm starts challenging propreitary software makers pound for pound. ANSYS has a choke-hold on the industry, like Microsoft on desktops. We need more codes like Code Aster who can compete against ANSYS to push their prices downward, and to tear up their one-way street licensing terms. The same thing applies to all the other vendors - we need to embrace quality open source FEM codes so that vendors of propreitary software are forced from a shrinking client base, to price their products downward and eliminate their restrictive licensing policies.

The future is open source. The future is free software.

 

[Fatstress]

CM400T,

I do not agree with you CM. The discussion worth every bit of it, at least for myself, and if I may see myself as being part of the FE community. After reading all the given comments the message is simple: share of information and a reflection and a review of our stand point. And it is not only about the illegal site, but the whole software industry and the community themselves. We agree that there is no such thing as being black or white, but still it should not be use as an excuse. If this should be specific for the FE community, I think simply, it is because of the need and the common feeling of helplessness and grieveness to realize that after all these years of development, FE softwares are still expensive while in the mean time FEA knowledge and experience is becoming an avoidable requirement especially for structure engineers.

"The future is open source. The future is free software."

Not for the sake of being free only, but for being fair.

 

[cbrn]

Hi,
in addition, I'd like to point out that the main cost of a modern FEA package is mainly split into three factors:
1) robustness of the algorythms. Everybody is able to self-program a valid FE code for solving 1-D elements in the linear domain. It's probably one of the easiest "things" to program in engineering. But when you begin to deal with non-linears, contact interactions, composite materials, multi-layer elements, birth-and-death, adaptive meshes, etc etc etc, and in addition all this "thing" must be optimized in order not to take millenia to solve, you can imagine the effort of the development people.
2) support. Have a problem with Ansys you can't get out of? No problem: apart from the fact that being one of the most known programs you can find a very huge users' comunity to help you, in "extreme" cases you have two levels of support: your reseller, and the main Company itself. You pay for it, but that makes a lot of difference wrt a "free" software (most of which is univ-born, so would you write e-mails directly to the teachers, researchers and students? Sometimes it may work, but usually...)
3) user interface. OK, this may not be a problem any more nowadays 'cause there are several pre- and post- already programmed and compiled by the "free comunity" which do a good (or at least acceptable) job.

Anyway, just because of the first two points you can not simply take a good free solver and claim that it would save the world instead of commercial packages such as Abaqus, Ansys and some others... It would save YOUR world and money UNTIL you run into one of their weaknesses (every program has some bug). Should this happen, good luck: it would be you and the program...

Regards