Why CAD is expensive

[ctopher]

Came across this today. Thought I would share...

http://develop3d.com/comment/why-are-cad-systems-so-expensive

Chris
SolidWorks 09 SP4.1
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[GregLocock]

Said author seems a bit clueless when it comes to the cost of real engineering software.


Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[AnnaWood]

GregLocock,

Care to expand on your statement? What is the cost of real engineering software?

Cheers,

Anna Wood
Core i7 EE965, FirePro V8700, 12 Gb RAM, OCZ Vertex 120 Gb SSD, Dell 3008WFP 30" Monitor
SW2010 SP2.1, Windows 7 x64

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[crizzo]

From the article:

"The cost of CAD is mainly inflated to the price we think it’s worth to our business. "

wow do I disagree with that one.

As a beta tester and tech support for a major cam program, the development and testing that goes into the software is phenomenal. All that for a relative small customer base. xx,xxx thousand. As far as dealer "mark up", the support staff and knowledge base of the vendor is very much appropriate to their margin.

I'd be be willing to be adobe can amortize their development cost over a much wider user base. Oh, and with adobe you don't have the risk of crashing multi-million dollar cnc machines.

Speaking from the other side of the coin, and not just blowing my horn.

 

[GregLocock]

MSC ADAMS $30000
Full install matlab >$20000
LMS $60000
Expensive Nastran ~20000
etc

Bear in mind that people will have several of these packages in use at one time, for instance I run ADAMS and Matlab simultaneously because different parts of the model run in each program. In another job I'll run 5 licenses of ADAMS at once.





Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[TheTick]

SolidWorks was one of the leaders in bringing the price of CAD down. SW's price has not gone up much since I first bought a seat in 1998.

SW had many advantages in development that its competitors did not. SW was one of the first systems developed in a Windows-native environment. They were also able to simply purchase many technologies (notably Parasolid), so they did not have to develop many parts of SW on their own.

 

[rgrayclamps]

Hi,

Markets determine prices. I think they are appropriate. Otherwise, they would not have survived.

Best regards,

Alex