Switching a company from SW to OS

billy2

Anyone know of an easy path to convince a company away from SW and into OS?

I'm helping out some friends who are using SW 2022 and they're buying me a license. I fell out of my chair when I found out the license is over $8k now. 

I don't remember buying my OS license and I never spoke to a salesperson at OS. I sent an email to Jon McClaney and it bounced back.

Seems like OS should be aware that Dassault Systèmes changed their pricing structure last year and they should be offering a promo or something.

 

Wesley_Wagner

It is, of course, very nice of your friends to offer to buy you a SW license. However, they do not need to feel like they must buy the most expensive CAD software that Dassault Systèmes sells. The "over $8k" price that you are referencing is likely the price of the SW Premium CAD package that is sold as a perpetual "desktop license"; in other words, it's a CAD license that doesn't expire at the end of the year. As far as I know, the one-year subscriptions are always less expensive than the perpetual licenses.

In addition, there are 3 levels of CAD packages available: Standard, Professional, and Premium. If your friends want to only buy you the Standard package, they will not need to dish out as much money as they would when buying the Premium package.

And, yes, Dassault Systèmes does offer promos sometimes. One of their big promos just ended on November 30, 2023. They also offer discounts on 2-year and 3-year SW licenses.

billy2

@Wesley_Wagner they changed their pricing last year to drive more towards the subscription service. A standard perpetual license is over $8k.

 We ended up paying for 1 year subscription and it was way too expensive.

michael_zeagler

Honestly, the feature sets of CAD platforms aren't 1-1 and if people are using the features on one platform that aren't in another you really can't switch. Onshape has such amazing features regarding workflow and development that it's a no brainer for anyone not using tolerance analysis, model based definition, plastics (which I'm not personally familiar with), or some other engineering function of something like Solidworks. I for one can't use it at work right now because I need simulation functionality that the simulation beta flat out lacks. Those are the major drawbacks I've seen people not being crazy about.

Also there are a lot of people who just flat out do not use dependencies and go bottom up out of an absolute aversion to the complications of trying to use them in a file-based system without PDM. That's less justified IMO, but it's also beating your head against a wall to try and change.

I use Onshape whenever possible for design. But in terms of engineering functionality legacy tools have a long head start.

billy2

@michael_zeagler I agree with everything you said, switching is hard especially when it's 3D to 3D. It was easier to justify the switch when everyone was going from 2D to 3D or when people were going from the board to CAD. Today it's parametric modeler to parametric modeler and that's hard to justify a change.

I'm being dunked back into SW and I'm squealing like a pig. It's changed a lot. Installing SW on an M1 mac hasn't been fun and then my magic mouse won't work properly.

I did buy a bluetooth 3 button mouse yesterday hoping I can rotate the model with ease. I'll figure it out eventually.

nick_papageorge073

billy2 said:

....snip.... Installing SW on an M1 mac hasn't been fun and then my magic mouse won't work properly.

...snip...

How are you doing this? Does SW have an ARM version? Or are you emulating Windows x86 on ARM? Is SW usable at all on an M1 Mac?

I have a Windows desktop machine with a fancy GPU dedicated to Creo that I use once in a blue moon for old CAD work. Maybe I can run it on my M1/2 Mac instead...

NeilCooke

@nick_papageorge073 SW is ARM compatible but Creo is not 

STEG

I helped many companies in switching and the key is to make it step-by-step, one user after the other. But they need to understand the benefits of switching... 

adrian_vlzkz

billy2 said:

Anyone know of an easy path to convince a company away from SW and into OS?

I'm helping out some friends who are using SW 2022 and they're buying me a license. I fell out of my chair when I found out the license is over $8k now. 

I don't remember buying my OS license and I never spoke to a salesperson at OS. I sent an email to Jon McClaney and it bounced back.

Seems like OS should be aware that Dassault Systèmes changed their pricing structure last year and they should be offering a promo or something.

 

First you need to establish WHY? 
There needs to be solid justification to shift primary CAD tools, if it's just for the sake of user preference it will be a very though sale.

What are the pain points and/or cost associated with the current tool?
Does Onshape address all/most of these, does the investment (time,money,effort) make sense...

What are the drawbacks/risks?
As mentioned, Onshape is not perfect and still does not compare in many areas. Will those gaps have impact?

Check this out:
https://www.ptc.com/en/resources/liveworx-on-demand/switching-to-onshape-building-a-business-case

billy2

I got SW running on apple silicon with a new version of both parallels & windows 11. Those didn't take long to install. SW was more difficult to get running and I had to edit my registry to clean out all the old serial numbers I had accumulated over the years. 

I did buy a 3 button, usb C, bluetooth mouse. It works really well and I have both hooked up at the same time. I just have to grab the correct mouse when switching apps. I did have to edit the registry to make the scroll wheel act as "natural". Switching mice and have the scroll wheel not matching was a bit much.

As far as switching... Things are going well, SW changing their pricing structure is helping. My friends are wanting to do production and I just don't feel a file based system with a sql access database running on a local network is going to cut it.