Who Suffers
From Free CAD?
You can get 15-day and 30-day demos, 6-month and 12-month versions, and completely free CAD, both 2D and 3D. Heck, you can get Inventor for free, legitimately: all you need is an email address that ends with .edu and Autodesk'll send it to you.
All this free software from first and second tier CAD vendors is having a negative effect on third tier vendors. The ceo of one tells me:
All the free giveaways of software from heavyweights such as UGS, SolidWorks, Think3, Google, Bentley, and others have an impact on our sales.
Ralph, this is a very interesting discussion!
I just posted a comment with my opinion on Novedge blog about the reasons for all this free CAD.
Posted by:Franco Folini | Feb 05, 2007 at 10:43
Back before the days of iTunes, I used to buy my CDs from Tower Records. They had a wide selection. I could get hard to find titles, but Tower also carried the Top 40. At this time, I also learned that Costco also sold Top 40 CDs at a lower price. It struck me as odd that a place like Tower Records, who specialized in CDs, could be beaten out on price by a company that sells giant bags of popcorn. I guess it's all about volume.
Posted by:Scott Sheppard | Feb 04, 2007 at 06:42
Wasn't that precisely the idea?
Posted by: | Feb 04, 2007 at 06:12